The European Union’s highest court has ruled that the U.K.’s Investigatory Powers Act, aka the “snooper’s charter,” is illegal.
The EU objects to the government’s “general and indiscriminate” retention of emails and other electronic communications. While the EU acknowledges that this information can be helpful, they argue that it should only be gathered in specific targeted instances to stop terrorism or serious crime.
New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance wants the Trump administration to help create federal legislation requiring Apple and Google to remove default encryption from their smartphones.
The recommendation comes from the DA office’s second report on Smartphone Encryption and Public Safety, presented by Vance at the opening of the Manhattan DA’s new cyberlab. New York County is currently sitting on 423 iPhones it can’t break into, even with a warrant, so the DA’s office is pushing for change.
Apple has seriously stepped up its security game with iOS 10.2, according to a new report that found encrypted iTunes backups are now much more difficult to hack.
Apple’s pro-encryption privacy standoff with the FBI may not have been in the news too much as of late, but Apple’s strong stance in favor of encryption continues to ruffle feathers among authorities.
Today. U.K. prime minister Theresa May gave a speech at the Tory party conference, in which she took what many are calling a veiled dig against Apple by referring to a “household name” that is refusing to work with officials to fight terrorism.
After protecting your private conversations with end-to-end encryption, it seems WhatsApp wants to give you even greater peace of mind by adding passcode protection to its app.
The feature was uncovered by a team of translators which helps convert WhatsApp into other languages.
Allo, the exciting new messaging platform from Google, landed on Android and iOS today — but you might want to think twice before you rush to download it. Every conversation you have with Allo will be logged by Google (unless you remember to go incognito).
When you hear the term ‘virtual private network’, or VPN, your eyes might glaze over as you suddenly hit your limit for nerdiness tolerance. Despite all the great reasons to use a VPN — anonymous and more secure browsing, avoiding geo-restrictions, so on — it can seem like something reserved for those with a deep technical understanding of computers. Windscribe is an example of a VPN made to be simple — operating as both a simple browser extension and desktop app, it’s easy to set up and use, and right now you can get it for just $39.99 at Cult of Mac Deals.
Getting online means getting in line for a whole bunch of headaches — identity theft, data surveillance, hackers, location restrictions. A virtual private network (VPN) is a great way to protect and anonymize your online activity, and TigerVPN is offering a great deal on a lifetime subscription.
Right now you can get a lifetime of TigerVPN for $49 at Cult of Mac Deals.
Facebook has begun testing end-to-end encryption with a new feature called Secret Conversations. Users will have the ability to chat confidentially without having to worry about being snooped on — but not everyone can enjoy super secure messaging just yet.
If you go online (and now is not the time to pretend you don’t), you’re vulnerable to data violations of all sorts: identity theft, activity monitoring, geo-restrictions.
A great way to secure yourself against these problems is to connect to the internet via a virtual private network, or VPN, that carefully channels and anonymizes your traffic. And right now we’ve got a great VPN, with a great name, at a great price: two years of Hide My Ass! VPN for $69.99.
Apple has explained why it released its first iOS 10 beta with an unencrypted kernel. Some security experts suggested the move may have been unintentional, but it was part of Apple’s plan all along.
Apple is finally dropping the ban hammer on HTTP.
As part of its overall efforts to increase security on iOS, Apple revealed to developers at WWDC that it will soon force all apps to use a secure HTTPS connection to access web service, so that users’ data stays encrypted while in transit.
Getting online is getting in position to be hacked, snooped or blocked. Hotspot Shield dramatically reduces the risk of all of the above, encrypting your data through high speed connections with a secure and private network even via public Wi-Fi. If you’re uneasy about identity theft, frustrated by geo restrictions, or having your activity tracked, sign up with Hotspot Shield Elite VPN for life for $39.99 at Cult of Mac Deals.
U.S. lawmakers are said to be giving up on their push for new encryption laws that would require companies like Apple to create software backdoors that allow the government to access our devices.
It’s thought the lack of White House support and Apple’s high-profile battle with the Justice Department, which was unable to force the company into providing an iPhone unlock, are some of the reasons why supporters are losing hope.
Renowned practical cryptography expert Jon Callas is returning to Apple to help the iPhone-maker stay ahead of hackers and the FBI in its on going battle with security.
Callas co-founded well known secure communications companies such as Silent Circle, Blackphone, and PGP Corp. This will be his third stint at Apple where he is expected to ramp up security features across Apple’s wide ranging product line up.
If identity thieves and data snooping have you feeling uneasy when you get online, you should consider logging on with a virtual private network. By distributing your traffic among a set of globally distributed, secure servers, Celo’s VPN service anonymizes and encrypts your online activity in a way that adds significant security to your browsing, even on public Wi-Fi networks. And right now you can get a lifetime subscription to Celo’s VPN service for only $29.
Fighting Apple may, according to some, have been the FBI’s worst PR disaster in history, but even its failure to convince Congress of its goals isn’t stopping its war on encryption — with FBI director James Comey telling reporters this week that more litigation can be expected as the feds seek to hack devices.
After the FBI successfully hacked the iPhone 5c as part of the San Bernardino shooting case, newly-released court papers show that Los Angeles police investigators have obtained a method of unlocking its higher-end sibling, the iPhone 5s.
The iPhone 5s belonged to the dead wife of former The Shield actor Michael Jace, who was killed at the couple’s South L.A. home in 2014. The keycode security bypass took place last month, and was achieved with the help of an unnamed “forensic cellphone expert.”
Apple’s encryption showdown with the U.S. government may be more or less dormant for now, but Facebook-owned WhatsApp has its own courtroom drama happening in Brazil. It scored a slight win today, however, as a judge overturned a decision yesterday that would have shut the whole thing down across the country for several days.
The controversy surrounds the messaging app’s end-to-end encryption. Specifically, the developer’s inability (and/or unwillingness) to crack it to comply with law enforcement requests.
The FBI has had three weeks to examine the unlocked iPhone belonging to San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook, and U.S. law enforcement officials are finally ready to say whether they were able to find anything of use on the handset.
The answer? Not much. Although that’s not the way they’re presenting it.
Chinese authorities have demanded Apple give the country complete access to its source code within the last two years, but Apple says it has refused to comply with the government’s demands.
Apple’s top lawyer, Bruce Sewell, defended the company’s position before U.S. lawmakers at a congressional hearing today, after the iPhone-maker was accused by law enforcement officials of refusing to help the U.S. government while at the same time freely giving information to China for business reasons.
Apple has released its latest report on government information requests, showing how many times it has been asked to hand over data on its users over the six month span running from July to December 2015.
At a time when Apple was increasingly finding itself at odds with the Justice Department over the topic of encryption (something which exploded earlier this year with the San Bernardino shooting case), U.S. law enforcement made requests relating to 5,192 individual Apple accounts.
Do you know how many times a day you unlock your iPhone? Every time you do, you’re participating in Apple’s user-friendly encryption scheme.
Friday, the company hosted a security “deep dive” at which it shared some interesting numbers about its security measures and philosophy as well as user habits. To be honest, we’re less concerned with how Apple’s standards work than the fact that they do and will continue to. But that’s kind of the point behind the whole system — Apple designed its encryption system so that we don’t even have to think about it.
The FBI signed a $15,000 contract with Israeli-tech firm Cellebrite to crack the iPhone 5c at the heart of the San Bernardino shooting investigation. However, according to a new report, Cellebrite may not have been the ones who successfully hacked the smartphone, after all.
Instead, the Feds reportedly broke into the iPhone 5c with the aid of a group of professional hackers who discovered and brought to the bureau a previously unknown iOS flaw — letting them get around the iPhone’s four-digit pincode feature, without accidentally erasing the iPhone’s data in the process.
Israeli tech firm Cellebrite, a.k.a. the mobile forensics firm which helped the FBI hack the iPhone 5c at the center of the San Bernardino shooting case, is reportedly “optimistic” about hacking the more secure iPhone 6.
The story in this instance involves an Italian father, Leonardo Fabbretti, wanting to access the iPhone photos, notes and messages belonging to his adopted son Dama, who passed away from bone cancer last September at the age of 13.