2019-07-24 19:06
President Trump’s Attorney General, William Barr, has demanded the tech industry create encryption backdoors because he views encryption as a security risk. Barr made his illogical tho… Read More
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Online Privacy blog by Private Internet Access VPN. Learn how an anonymous VPN can help protect you and your family along with other top tech news and info.
2019-07-24 17:43
Kazakhstan is actively spying on its citizens’ internet connections to Facebook, Twitter, VK, Instagram, Youtube, Google, along with many other sites. New research published by Ram Sun… Read More
2019-07-23 18:45
A team of researchers from Microsoft, the University of Pennsylvania, and Carnegie Mellon have revealed a study showing that Google and Facebook are keeping tabs on your porn viewing habits… Read More
2019-07-22 16:00
Private Internet Access now accepts anonymous payments through BEAM, providing our users with yet another way to protect their privacy and anonymity when signing up for our service. What is… Read More
2019-07-20 19:00
Amazon was founded almost exactly 25 years ago. Initially it sold books, and people saw it as an interesting early example of e-commerce, but probably assumed that it would remain a fairly s… Read More
2019-07-19 16:30
On July 17th, 2019, the government of Kazakhstan enacted a new cybersecurity measure that aims to spy on its citizens’ internet traffic. Specifically, the Kazakh government ordered all… Read More
2019-07-17 20:30
ABC News Florida’s I-Team issued a breaking news story last week, revealing government documents that prove that the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (DMV) sells… Read More
2019-07-16 22:00
Illustration by Carty Sewill Art can change the world. Warhol showed us all the beauty in our everyday; from Coke bottles to Campbell’s soup cans. Social change is led by those brave e… Read More
2019-07-12 16:00
Last October, Privacy News Online wrote about an ambitious project from Google’s sister company, Sidewalk Labs. It aims to take the idea of a “smart city” to the next level… Read More
2019-07-08 19:00
Privacy News Online noted back in February a growing disquiet at the huge amounts of personal information that sites like Facebook and Google routinely gather about us, and how it is used fo… Read More
2019-07-05 20:00
Facebook has been appearing on this blog with increasing frequency. In one way, that’s natural. A social network, by definition, is about people and their personal information, and so… Read More
2019-06-21 16:00
Customer service is a crucial part of many businesses, so it comes as no surprise that digital technologies are increasingly being applied to this field. By its very nature, a customer servi… Read More
2019-06-11 13:00
About one year ago, ISP’s like Comcast, Verizon & AT&T killed net neutrality, giving themselves control over everything we see and do online. Millions of citizens fought back… Read More
2019-06-11 01:40
Images of travelers and their license plates collected by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have been compromised, thanks to a federal contractor who did not follow protocol. The… Read More
2019-06-07 16:00
A previous post discussed what has happened in the world of the GDPR during its first year. Although only a few rulings have been handed down, there are many legal complaints working their w… Read More
2019-06-01 16:00
A year ago, arguably the most important event in the recent history of privacy occurred: the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) started to be enforced. To mark that anniver… Read More
2019-05-31 16:00
Readers of this blog know that a VPN is an indispensable tool for today’s digital world. VPNs address a key part of the challenge of staying safe online. They protect how data is trans… Read More
2019-05-22 16:00
Last week, researchers Gaëtan Leurent and Thomas Peyrin released a paper detailing improvements to the original SHAttered project that theoretically allow chosen-plaintext attacks again… Read More
2019-05-18 16:00
The next-generation of mobile communications, 5G, is currently a hot topic in two very different domains: technology – and politics. The latter is because of President Trump’s at… Read More
2019-05-15 16:00
I wrote a piece last year about the serious problems with shared hardware. It covers the additional attack surface of introducing virtualization technology to your servers, and the additiona… Read More
2019-05-13 16:00
Full-body scanners are now a routine sight at airports. Most people are resigned to these virtual strip-searches, despite the obviously intrusive nature of appearing naked to the machines&rs&hell…Read More
2019-05-10 16:00
Another week, another declaration from Mark Zuckerberg that he’s really serious about putting privacy at the heart of Facebook. During his keynote speech at the Facebook Developer Conf… Read More
2019-05-09 12:00
In April, China’s State Administration of Press and Publication introduced sweeping changes to approval guidelines in the gaming industry. Following the recent blackout of game approva… Read More
2019-05-08 16:00
As we march on into the “Internet of Things” where your fridge and toaster need security updates… There has been a call from multiple companies and organizations to standa… Read More
2019-05-04 17:34
What Happened? Today, many users were met with an error saying that their extensions were no longer valid and have been disabled by Firefox. This is because in mid-2018, Mozilla changed the… Read More
2019-05-03 16:00
Streaming services like Hulu and Netflix are well known for leveraging data, and characterizing users. They’re household names. But you’ve probably never heard of another streami… Read More
2019-05-02 19:00
Russian president Vladimir Putin signed the “Sovereign Internet” bill into law yesterday. The bill is supposed to help protect Russia’s internet infrastructure from being … Read More
2019-05-01 16:00
When security professionals consider a career as a professional hacker, there’s much to consider. There’s some amazing benefits, like working on projects that you’re intere… Read More
2019-04-30 17:00
Social purpose corporation Purism, which produces privacy-respecting hardware and software, is launching a brand new suite of apps and services titled Librem One. The purpose of this n… Read More
2019-04-29 16:00
In Massachusetts, a judge has forced a number of people to attempt to unlock an iPhone to determine the owner and get access to the underlying data. This reaffirms what has already been said… Read More
2019-04-27 16:00
As numerous posts on this blog have noted, some of the biggest threats to privacy come from Internet giants like Facebook and Google. The centralized nature of their services allows them to… Read More
2019-04-26 16:00
The Internet of Things (IoT) is increasingly part of our everyday lives, with so-called “smart” speakers especially popular, But for all their undoubted technical merits, they al… Read More
2019-04-24 16:00
Chinese Megacorp Huawei has been in the news over the last few months because companies and entire nations have been banning their equipment over spying concerns. There has been little publi… Read More
2019-04-17 16:00
There’s a lot of talk about the invasive practices of FaceBook right now, but somehow Google has skated by largely unfazed by the public outcry against privacy violations and the snowb… Read More
2019-04-13 19:00
Online freedom of speech is under attack around the world. The EU’s new Copyright Directive is about to become law, and brings with it a need to filter all uploads to most sites. Once… Read More
2019-04-12 09:00
Last month, Privacy News Online looked at a 3000-word essay entitled “A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking“, written by Mark Zuckerberg. It’s a measure of the pol… Read More
2019-04-11 16:03
Julian Assange, the controversial founder of Wikileaks, has been arrested in London after being ousted from the Ecuadorian Embassy where he has taken refuge for seven years. The reasoning fo… Read More
2019-04-10 16:00
When we talk about privacy as a concept, we tend to drill into the benefits of privacy and the crucial role that it plays in our lives as individuals. In aggregate, privacy extends its role… Read More
2019-04-09 15:12
Congress is Voting on Net Neutrality The House of Representatives are voting on the Save The Internet Act today! As usual, the ISP’s are trying to ruin the bill with amendments t… Read More
2019-04-04 21:00
LAS VEGAS, Nevada, April 4th, 2019 — Private Internet Access (PIA), one of the leading virtual private network (VPN) services is forging its first OEM partnership with Purism, maker of… Read More
2019-04-03 16:00
DNA is without doubt one of the new frontiers for privacy – and for the loss of it. As we wrote last year, genetic privacy is becoming a thing of the past thanks to relatives using DNA… Read More
2019-04-01 02:00
The United Kingdom waits with abated breath to find out when and how porn blocks will be implemented across the country. We are sure of one thing right now, though: The porn blocks are not s… Read More
2019-03-31 23:58
Apparently, sometime in the last year, Mark Zuckerberg’s Brain-Computer Interface, the DoD’s invisibility cloak projects, and a proprietary goop designed with input from Gwyeneth… Read More
2019-03-31 09:45
Taiwan will block Baidu and Tencent from running video streaming services on the island. This past week, Chiu Chui-Cheng, deputy minister of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, told the… Read More
2019-03-29 20:41
Welcome to the Online Privacy News Update for March 29th, 2018. Today, the world is reacting to. Read below for other privacy related news from today. NSA phone surveillance may end s… Read More
2019-03-29 20:01
A group of bipartisan Senators and House Representatives have introduced legislation that would end the NSA’s mass surveillance of American phone records. The bill is titled: “En… Read More
2019-03-29 16:57
Earlier this month, Finland’s Parliament of Åland passed two new surveillance laws in a nearly empty room. The surveillance laws expand spying powers by military and civilian int… Read More
2019-03-29 03:13
Welcome to the Online Privacy News Update for March 28th, 2018. Today, the VPN industry let the world know that Russia had asked the world’s VPNs to censor websites. Read below for oth… Read More
2019-03-29 01:53
A team of four researchers from South Korea’s KAIST, the country’s premier tech institution, have discovered 36 new vulnerabilities in 4G LTE that have wide ranging security and… Read More
2019-03-28 17:50
The Roskomnadzor, Russia’s government censorship agency, has issued formal notices to ten non-Russian VPN providers demanding that they “hook up” to the Roskomnadzor’… Read More
2019-03-28 12:11
Over fifty individuals – including eight American citizens – are accusing the US government of violating their privacy rights by tracking them in a secret database compiled and s… Read More
2019-03-27 18:20
Here is the Online Privacy News Update for March 27th, 2018. Today, the world is still coming to grips with the EU Parliament’s passing of Article 13 and Article 11 (now known as Artic… Read More
2019-03-27 16:00
Back in 2017, Privacy News Online wrote about a massive police system being built in China that would allow “predictive policing” – the ability to spot criminals before the… Read More
2019-03-26 18:12
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued seven letters to internet service providers (ISPs) and mobile broadband providers in the United States demanding a special report regarding thei… Read More
2019-03-26 13:54
The European Union (EU) has passed all articles, including Article 13 and Article 11, of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive. Article 13 of the copyright directive man… Read More
2019-03-25 15:00
Supporters of net neutrality in America need to mobilize this week as the legislative battle to bring back net neutrality heats up. The current front runner in saving net neutrality is none… Read More
2019-03-20 16:00
When I prepare for travel, I take some steps to make sure that my protected data will not be read or otherwise mishandled by customs. I then follow-up with rigorous steps to ensure that my i… Read More
2019-03-19 23:52
The Russian government has passed a new censorship law that allows it to target individuals and websites for such nondescript crimes as spreading “fake news” and “disrespec… Read More
2019-03-19 00:11
Several websites including Voat, ZeroHedge, Archive.is, LiveLeak, and others have been blocked in Australia and New Zealand in direct contravention to civil liberties that citizens are suppo… Read More
2019-03-16 16:00
Last week, you could have been forgiven for thinking that privacy had finally arrived. Mark Zuckerberg published a 3000-word essay entitled “A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Network… Read More
2019-03-15 19:03
On the 15th of March, the German Bundesrat (Federal Council) voted to amend the Criminal Code in relation to internet based services such as The onion router (Tor). The proposed law has been… Read More
2019-03-14 16:39
Pi Day is an annual celebration of mathematics and all the technology that it has enabled in the modern world. 3/14 is known as Pi Day every year because the date’s numbers represent t… Read More
2019-03-13 17:00
With a constant stream of news of big organizations that have neglected their security, we often forget that the most vulnerable organizations are the small and medium businesses that don&rs&hell…Read More
2019-03-13 16:00
PrivateStorage is a joint venture product developed and maintained by Least Authority and Private Internet Access. As firm believers in protection of our customers’ privacy, we joined… Read More
2019-03-11 15:25
The Great Firewall of Russia, “PutinNet,” Russian digital sovereignty, or the new Iron Curtain – whatever you want to call it, Russian internet censorship is about to reach… Read More
2019-03-10 15:00
It’s time to #WinWithPIA during our custom gaming computer giveaway contest. In keeping with our long standing tradition at Private Internet Access of giving back to our community, PIA… Read More
2019-03-09 17:00
Everyone knows that surveillance is ubiquitous – on the Internet, in the street, at work, at school, in our homes. What made that constant spying possible was the amazing advance of di… Read More
2019-03-08 22:35
Will the United Kingdom (UK) start forcing its internet users to prove their age with documents and use a unique identifier if they wish to freely browse pornorgraphic websites on April 1st… Read More
2019-03-06 17:00
I have been writing a number of articles about the state of the NIST post-quantum cryptography competition, with short summaries on the projects and what they are all about. What I haven&rsq&hell…Read More
2019-03-02 17:00
02Back in 2017, Privacy News Online wrote about workplace surveillance. The systems described were all based on monitoring how employees were using company technology. They noted every email… Read More
2019-02-27 17:00
We have been talking about the National Institute of Standards and Technologies’ contest to find the most attractive new algorithms for quantum resistance. (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) I… Read More
2019-02-23 17:00
Authorities around the world have been calling for backdoors to be added to strong encryption for years – part of an even older battle. The view among all top security experts is that… Read More
2019-02-21 22:55
In today’s world, people who commit fraud, or scammers, frequently attempt to masquerade as another person or entity. Identity theft happens for a multitude of reasons, including but n… Read More
2019-02-20 17:00
In the first article of this series, I wrote about the NIST Post-Quantum Competition and which ciphers advanced to the second round, meaning that they passed through basic scrutiny and were… Read More
2019-02-19 16:43
Previously, the Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC) used Domain name System (DNS) filtering to ferret out which domains users were trying to visit, compare them to the blacklist… Read More
2019-02-16 17:00
It would be an understatement to say that Facebook is under intense scrutiny at the moment. Mostly this has come from data protection authorities in the EU, using the GDPR as a means for cha… Read More
2019-02-13 18:54
The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, a popular online tool for immortalizing and viewing historical internet content is blocked by default in the United Kingdom. According to the Op… Read More
2019-02-13 17:00
In the previous article, I wrote about the NIST Post-Quantum Competition and which ciphers advanced to the second round, meaning that they passed through basic scrutiny and were advanced bas… Read More
2019-02-09 17:00
Privacy News Online has written a number of articles looking at the threat to privacy posed by the widespread use of micro-targeted ads. At the heart of the idea is that the more online site… Read More
2019-02-06 17:00
The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) has announced the round 2 candidates for post-quantum cryptography. What is post quantum cryptography? Post Quantum Cryptography is… Read More
2019-02-02 17:00
Last June Privacy News Online wrote about complaints filed just six minutes after the EU’s tough privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), started to be enforced. The… Read More
2019-01-30 17:00
As a privacy activist, I spend a majority of my time talking about the dangers of the widespread loss of privacy in society. Today, we are going to sidestep a lot of the usual chat to talk a… Read More
2019-01-26 20:00
Back in August last year, Danica Sergison gave good advice here on Privacy News Online about how to help children think critically about privacy. That’s crucial, since the world they w… Read More
2019-01-24 17:00
Chromium Moves to Weaken Ad-Blockers Googles’ developers of Chromium, the framework that makes up not only the Chromium browser, but many other browsers like Google Chrome, Microsoft E… Read More
2019-01-19 17:00
The idea of deep fakes – AI-assisted fake videos – first entered the mainstream around a year ago. After an initial burst of interest, people stopped searching for the term, alth… Read More
2019-01-18 20:10
I’ve written here in the past about how bitcoin is not as anonymous as you think. Despite its reputation, bitcoin transactions are actually recorded openly and publicly. I’ve als… Read More
2019-01-18 17:00
When talking about privacy in the modern world, we are often faced with a common dismissive argument. Someone in the group always drags out the “I don’t have anything to hide, so… Read More
2019-01-12 20:00
It will hardly be news to readers of this site that mobile apps are tracking us on a massive scale. And yet a story in the New York Times last month about how apps are routinely monitoring u… Read More
2019-01-12 19:00
Cryptojacking or cryptocurrency mining is the covert use of your computer’s Central Processing Unit (CPU) and Graphics Processing unit (GPU) to mine for cryptocurrency. With the rise o… Read More
2019-01-11 20:00
Your first foray into cryptocurrency will almost certainly take place on a cryptocurrency exchange – a place for buying and selling bitcoin. Travel back in time a few years, and there… Read More
2019-01-11 18:30
This is part 4 of a series. See: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 Up until 1998, the NSA had been a purely defensive intelligence agency, that was tasked with cryptography (enemy code breaking… Read More
2019-01-09 17:00
OpenVPN is the old guard of the VPN world. It is powerful, stable, and it has a large and enthusiastic dev community backed by multiple commercial interests. A new dot release is scheduled t… Read More
2019-01-08 17:00
When you delete a file in Windows, all it really does, is delete an entry in the master file table that tells the computer where the actual file is stored. Without permanently deleting… Read More
2019-01-06 17:00
As new privacy laws attempt to address the different ways that companies collect, store and use biometric data, it’s also important to keep an eye on how the courts are interpreting an… Read More
2019-01-05 18:00
Cyberstalking is a serious crime with scary statistics. Most people are victimized for an average of two years, which can have serious consequences on your emotional and mental health. Despi… Read More
2019-01-05 17:00
Identity and privacy are closely bound up. Typically, you use proof of your identity to access your private information. Alongside traditional approaches like passwords and hardware tokens… Read More
2019-01-04 20:00
If you’ve never changed your DNS address, you’re probably still using the one given to you by your ISP. It’s really easy to change the DNS server and by doing so, you can e… Read More
2019-01-04 20:00
If you’ve never read the famous bitcoin white paper, now is a good time to do so. Bitcoin’s elusive creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, outlines his vision for a cash system that exists w… Read More
2019-01-04 19:00
Whether you’re writing a school essay or looking for a piece of information online, Wikipedia can be a helpful resource. The English Wikipedia has over 5 million educational articles… Read More
2019-01-04 17:00
This is part 3 of a series, which started with: “How the NSA Spies on Us All – Part 1: The Early Years“ With ECHELON up and running, the NSA was free to provide intelligenc… Read More
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