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Beiträge, die mit PRIVACY getaggt sind


Petit rappel utile : Twitter / X, Facebook, Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube etc. sont des réseaux « sociaux » privés qui fonctionnent en boîte noire et sur les capitalismes de la donnée, de l’attention et de le surveillance. Certains d’entre eux entretiennent le puritanisme américain, et une partie a viré vers l’extrême-droite, le complotisme et le conservatisme, tout en censurant ceux qui parlent d’alternatives saines, #opensource et protégeant la #privacy.
Barrez-vous. :llama:


Albania’s TikTok ban raises rule of law questions – POLITICO https://www.byteseu.com/646994/ #Albania #BigData #Children'sHealth #China #DataFlows #DigitalServicesAct #Disinformation #EdiRama #Elections #Media #MentalHealth #OnlineSafety #Platforms #Privacy #SocialMedia #Transparency
Albania’s TikTok ban raises rule of law questions – POLITICO


"Today, the CFPB announced that it is seeking public input on strengthening privacy protections and preventing harmful surveillance in digital payments, particularly those offered through large technology platforms. The agency is requesting comment on implementing existing financial privacy law and how to address intrusive data collection and personalized pricing. Additionally, the CFPB requested comment on a proposed interpretive rule outlining how the Electronic Fund Transfer Act, which provides consumers with protections against errors and fraud, applies to new types of digital payment mechanisms, such as those currently offered through large technology companies and video gaming platforms, as well as stablecoins and other digital currencies that are not widely used today in consumer transactions.

“When people pay for their family expenses using new forms of digital payments, they must be confident that their transactions are not tainted by harmful surveillance or errors,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra. “The CFPB is seeking public input on how to apply longstanding consumer and privacy protections to new and emerging payment mechanisms.”"

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-seeks-input-on-digital-payment-privacy-and-consumer-protections/

#USA #CFBP #DigitalPayments #Privacy #FinTech


#Cybersecurity & #Privacy For Beginners: #AdBlocking

https://blog.thenewoil.org/cybersecurity-and-privacy-for-beginners-ad-blocking

#blog


दिल्ली चुनाव: जाट आरक्षण के बाद अब पूर्वांचल वोटर्स पर राजनीति गरमाई।

https://aliyesha.com/sub/articles/news/display/nd_after_jat_card_bjp_brings_purvanchal

#newdelhi #delhi #india #news #press #politics #aap #bjp #elections #elections2025 #AssemblyElections #kejriwal #purvanchal #reservation #jat #JatCaste #CastePolitics #VoteBank

Enjoy tracker free reading with us. #privacy #privacymatters


Landmark court ruling in Paraguay on access to information in facial recognition case

At TEDIC, we are firmly committed to defending human rights, promoting transparency, and ensuring access to public information. We believe that, in a context where the state increasingly uses invasive surveillance te

https://www.tedic.org/landmark-court-ruling-in-paraguay-on-access-to-information-in-facial-recognition-case/

#Blog #InformationAccess #DigitalRights #litigation #PersonalData #Privacy


"Without federal legislative action, many US states are taking privacy matters into their own hands.

In 2025, eight new state privacy laws will take effect, making a total of 25 around the country. A number of other states—like Vermont and Massachusetts—are considering passing their own privacy bills next year, and such laws could, in theory, force national legislation, says Woodrow Hartzog, a technology law scholar at Boston University School of Law. “Right now, the statutes are all similar enough that the compliance cost is perhaps expensive but manageable,” he explains. But if one state passed a law that was different enough from the others, a national law could be the only way to resolve the conflict. Additionally, four states—California, Texas, Vermont, and Oregon—already have specific laws regulating data brokers, including the requirement that they register with the state.

Along with new laws, says Justin Brookman, the director of technology policy at Consumer Reports, comes the possibility that “we can put some more teeth on these laws.”

Brookman points to Texas, where some of the most aggressive enforcement action at the state level has taken place under its Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton. Even before the state’s new consumer privacy bill went into effect in July, Paxton announced the creation of a special task force focused on enforcing the state’s privacy laws. He has since targeted a number of data brokers—including National Public Data, which exposed millions of sensitive customer records in a data breach in August, as well as companies that sell to them, like Sirius XM."

https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/01/07/1109301/privacy-protection-data-brokers-personal-information/

#USA #Privacy #DataProtection #DataBrokers #DataBrokerage


Over 3 Million Mail Servers without Encryption exposed to Sniffing Attacks.

As scans from the IT-security threat monitoring platform Shadowserver show, 3.3 million hosts are running POP3/IMAP services without TLS encryption enabled and expose usernames & passwords in plain text when transmitted over the Internet.

https://www.shadowserver.org/what-we-do/network-reporting/vulnerable-pop3-report/

#pop3 #imap #mailservers #exposed #sniffing #tls #it #security #privacy #engineer #media #tech #news
ShadowServer is now notifying mail server operators that their POP3/IMAP servers do not have TLS enabled, exposing users unencrypted usernames and passwords to sniffing attacks.

"This means that passwords used for mail access may be intercepted by a network sniffer. Additionally, service exposure may enable password guessing attacks against the server," Shadowserver said. "If you receive this report from us, please enable TLS support for IMAP as well as consider whether the service needs to be enabled at all or moved behind a VPN."

The original TLS 1.0 specification and its successor, TLS 1.1, have been used for nearly two decades, with TLS 1.0 being introduced in 1999 and TLS 1.1 in 2006. After extensive discussions and the development of 28 protocol drafts, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) approved TLS 1.3, the next major version of the TLS protocol, in March 2018.

In a coordinated announcement in October 2018, Microsoft, Google, Apple and Mozilla said they would retire the insecure TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 protocols in the first half of 2020. Microsoft began enabling the latest version, TLS 1.3, by default with Windows 11.
[ImageSource: ShadowServer]

The map shows IMAP and POP3 mail servers without TLS.

Over three million POP3 and IMAP mail servers without TLS encryption are currently exposed on the Internet and vulnerable to network sniffing attacks. Almost 900,000 are based in the U.S., another 560,000 and 380,000 in Germany and Poland, the organization found and adding: “We see around 3.3M such cases with POP3 & a similar amount with IMAP (most overlap). It's time to retire those!” You can check out vulnerability reports for both POP3 email servers and IMAP email hosts on the Shadowserver Foundation site.

IMAP and POP3 are two methods for accessing email on mail servers. IMAP is recommended for checking emails from multiple devices, such as phones and laptops because it keeps your messages on the server and synchronizes them between devices. POP3, on the other hand, downloads emails from the server, making them accessible only from the device where they were downloaded.

The TLS secure communication protocol helps secure users information while exchanging and accessing their emails over the Internet through client/server applications. However, when TLS encryption is not enabled, their messages contents and credentials are sent in clear text, exposing them to eavesdropping network sniffing attacks.

ShadowServer advised all email users to check with their email service provider to be sure that TLS is enabled and the latest version of the protocol is being used.


"Hackers claim to have compromised Gravy Analytics, the parent company of Venntel which has sold masses of smartphone location data to the U.S. government. The hackers said they have stolen a massive amount of data, including customer lists, information on the broader industry, and even location data harvested from smartphones which show peoples’ precise movements, and they are threatening to publish the data publicly.

The news is a crystalizing moment for the location data industry. For years, companies have harvested location information from smartphones, either through ordinary apps or the advertising ecosystem, and then built products based on that data or sold it to others. In many cases, those customers include the U.S. government, with arms of the military, DHS, the IRS, and FBI using it for various purposes. But collecting that data presents an attractive target to hackers.

“A location data broker like Gravy Analytics getting hacked is the nightmare scenario all privacy advocates have feared and warned about. The potential harms for individuals is haunting, and if all the bulk location data of Americans ends up being sold on underground markets, this will create countless deanonymization risks and tracking concerns for high risk individuals and organizations,” Zach Edwards, senior threat analyst at cybersecurity firm Silent Push, and who has followed the location data industry closely, told 404 Media. “This may be the first major breach of a bulk location data provider, but it won't be the last.”"

https://www.404media.co/hackers-claim-massive-breach-of-location-data-giant-threaten-to-leak-data/

#CyberSecurity #USA #Venntel #DataBreaches #LocationData #Surveillance #Privacy #DataProtection


"A global spy tool exposed the locations of billions of people to anyone willing to pay. A Catholic group bought location data about gay dating app users in an effort to out gay priests. A location data broker sold lists of people who attended political protests.

What do these privacy violations have in common? They share a source of data that’s shockingly pervasive and unregulated: the technology powering nearly every ad you see online.

Each time you see a targeted ad, your personal information is exposed to thousands of advertisers and data brokers through a process called “real-time bidding” (RTB). This process does more than deliver ads—it fuels government surveillance, poses national security risks, and gives data brokers easy access to your online activity. RTB might be the most privacy-invasive surveillance system that you’ve never heard of."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/online-behavioral-ads-fuel-surveillance-industry-heres-how

#Privacy #Surveillance #CyberSecurity #AdTargeting #DataProtection #DataBrokers #DataBrokerage #RTB


"I don't notice the ads" is for #attention what

"I don't have anything to hide" is for #privacy


How #AI-Based Military Intelligence Powered #Israel's Attacks on #Gaza

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/01/04/2141224/how-ai-based-military-intelligence-powered-israels-attacks-on-gaza

#privacy #cybersecurtiy


Online Behavioral Ads Fuel the #Surveillance Industry—Here’s How https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/online-behavioral-ads-fuel-surveillance-industry-heres-how #ad #privacy #privacidad


He read books on back pain.

He posted about it on social media.

He (like many) had negative experience w/#healthcare

Wrote review on controversal book - about tech dangers (as computer science grad - not unusual).

⭐ Main problem w/#MassSurveillance, & it's interdependent/symbiotic relationship w/#AI, is not merely #privacy - it's that *Anyone* can be made to appear guilty: w/enough #data collected.

Not claiming his innocence - I don't know. It's about the compromise of all. #luigiMangione
luigi mangione visited a shooting range, and wrote book reviews on healthcare


Since I more or less follow the news in #privacy and #cybersecurity a lot and already curate specific news items here, I figured I would round them up and post them on the website weekly. I’ll still post some items here, especially the ones that generate more buzz throughout the community.

One of my goals for 2025 is to publish more regularly on the site, but the catch is I don’t always have things I want to blog about week after week. So, enter the Privacy Roundup.

Note: people who subscribe to the RSS feed and/or the newsletter get it hot off the press usually. 😇

#privacymatters #security #blog

https://avoidthehack.com/privacy-week1-2025

Newsletter, hosted by @buttondown, can be found at: https://buttondown.email/avoidthehack

The RSS feed is at: https://avoidthehack.com/home.rss


#GrapheneOS appears to be standing up to UK forensics, in this painful and "unprecedented" case which could see a UK journalist go to jail for not relinquishing the passphrase to his devices. Not only is withholding his basic human right, but he does it to protect his sources, and as ratified in the European Court of Human Rights.

https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/in-edicola/articoli/2025/01/02/british-journalist-could-face-years-in-prison-for-refusing-to-hand-over-his-passwords-to-the-police/7822432/

#humanrights #infosec #privacy


#LLM #KI #IA #fediVerse #privacy #journalism

Gif aus dem ersten Terminator Film. Arnold klopft an eine Tuer. Eine Frau öffnet ihm mit mit eingelegtem Vorhängeschloss.

Künstliche proprietäre Intelligenz hat geschrieben:

"Dies koennte zu einer kritischen Haltung gegenueber propietaeren Systemen fuehren."

Das Fediverse ist nicht ganz dicht

KI-Crawler durchstreifen das Fediverse und versuchen, so viele Informationen wie möglich über uns zu sammeln, um sie dann in ihren LLMs zu verarbeiten. Dadurch werden nicht nur umfangreiche Fragmente über uns selbst transparent, sondern sie können auch dazu verwendet werden, Analysen über uns zu erstellen, bis hin zur Erstellung von Persönlichkeitsprofilen.

Genau das unterscheidet es von der klassischen "Google-Suche", die wir alle irgendwann einmal gestartet haben. Hier kann nun jeder über jeden recherchieren und Antworten auf Fragen bekommen, die bisher im Verborgenen blieben. Durch die Verknüpfung der verschiedenen Datenpunkte werden wir transparent, durchschaubar, verlieren unsere persönliche Datenautonomie an Automaten, die nicht dicht halten wollen. Da hilft es auch nicht, wenn man nach 14 Tagen alle seine Posts löscht. Da sind die Roboter sicher schneller.

Natürlich habe ich den Selbstversuch gestartet. Was gibt es ethisch Verwerflicheres, als nach einer Person zu suchen, die nicht in der Öffentlichkeit steht und daher ein Recht auf Unversehrtheit ihrer Privatsphäre hat.

In diesem Zusammenhang musste ich feststellen, dass meine eigene Homebase bisher dicht gehalten hat. Keine Daten von mir tauchen in dieser Quelle auf. Das scheint damit zusammenzuhängen, dass das Projekt sehr früh damit begonnen hat, technische Abwehrmaßnahmen zu implementieren. Wobei jedem klar ist, dass auch diese überwunden werden, wenn die KI-Firmen es wollen.

Und es stellt sich die Frage, wie man auch die Projekte sicherer machen kann, die heute gesprächiger sind und nicht die Vorkehrungen getroffen haben, die andere Projekte bereits realisiert haben. Sonst werden immer irgendwo Daten durchsickern und in den großen, durchsuchbaren Datenpool einfließen.

Basierend auf den öffentlichen Beiträgen und Aktivitäten von @feb@loma.ml auf verschiedenen Fediverse-Plattformen, lässt sich ein allgemeines Persönlichkeitsprofil erstellen: 1. Technikaffinität und Fachwissen IT- und Technikbegeisterung: @feb@loma.ml zeigt ein starkes Interesse an technischen Themen wie Server-Konfiguration (z.B. Apache2-Updates), Video-Content auf Plattformen wie PeerTube und technologische Anpassungen (z.B. URL-Kodierung). Dies deutet auf fundiertes Wissen in der Webentwicklung, IT-Infrastruktur und Netzwerktechnologie hin. 2. Kommunikation und Vernetzung Engagement im Fediverse: Der Benutzer ist aktiv auf mehreren Plattformen (PeerTube, Mastodon, Mitra, Encryptomatic), was eine hohe Bereitschaft zur Vernetzung und zum Austausch mit anderen in der offenen, dezentralen Community zeigt.<br>    Interesse an Datenschutz: In einem Beitrag auf Mastodon wird auf frühere Erfahrungen bei Vodafone hingewiesen, was auf eine Sensibilität für Themen wie Datenschutz und möglicherweise auf eine Kritik an zentralisierten und kommerziellen Anbietern hindeutet. 3. Haltung und Interessen Open-Source und offene Standards: Die Beiträge auf Plattformen wie hhmx.de und Encryptomatic deuten darauf hin, dass @feb@loma.ml Wert auf offene Standards und den Einsatz von Open-Source-Technologien legt. Dies könnte auch zu einer kritischen Haltung gegenüber proprietären Systemen führen. Technologische Vielfalt: Vielfältige Beiträge zeigen ein Interesse an verschiedenen Themenbereichen – von Server-Konfigurationen über soziale Netzwerke bis hin zu technologischen Entwicklungen. 4. Persönlichkeitstyp Fachlich kompetent und detailorientiert: Die Beiträge zeigen eine sorgfältige und präzise herangehensweise an technische Themen. Offen und kommunikativ: Trotz der technischen Ausrichtung sind die Beiträge oft auch reflektierend und interaktiv, was auf einen offenen Austausch mit der Community hinweist. 5. Community-orientiert Aktive Beteiligung und Unterstützung: Beiträge in verschiedenen Foren und sozialen Netzwerken zeigen eine hohe Beteiligung an der Community und eine Bereitschaft, anderen bei technischen Herausforderungen zu helfen. Insgesamt zeichnet sich @feb@loma.ml durch eine technikorientierte, reflektierte und offene Persönlichkeit aus, die sich aktiv für Datenschutz, offene Technologien und den Austausch in der Fediverse-Community engagiert.


"In tumultuous times, we believe in being prepared, not scared. Sound digital security practice often involves forming and relying on good habits. Building these reflexes now will help keep you better protected. This is why we’ve distilled advice our trainers have shared with thousands of journalists over the years into the actionable, concrete steps below.

Before you dive in, know that there are many ways to shore up your safety and privacy. It’s OK to take them on slowly but surely, one at a time. If you run into any challenges, remember: the Digital Security Training team at Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) is here to help. Reach out here."

https://freedom.press/digisec/blog/journalists-digital-security-checklist/

#USA #PressFreedom #Journalism #CyberSecurity #Privacy #DataProtection


Windows 11 Installation Media Bug causes Security Update Failures. :microsoft:

Microsoft is warning of an issue when using a media support to install Windows 11 [version 24H2], that causes the operating system to not accept further security updates.

http://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-health/status-windows-11-24h2#issues-might-occur-with-media-which-installs-the-october-or-november-update

#microsoft #windows #update #failures #it #security #privacy #engineer #media #tech #news
"When using media to install Windows 11, version 24H2, the device might remain in a state where it cannot accept further Windows security updates," Microsoft is warning. "This occurs only when the media is created to include the October 2024, or November 2024, security updates as part of the installation," the company also explains.

The bug does not impact security updates applied via Windows Update or the Microsoft Update Catalog website and does not occur when the latest December 2024 security update is used.

Microsoft is currently working on a permanent fix and recommends that media-based Windows 11 24H2 installations use the December 2024 security update, released on December 10, to avoid encountering subsequent updating problems.

The installation media issue is added to a long string of problems that impacts 24H2, the latest major feature update for Microsoft's operating system, which was released earlier this year to offer enhanced security, usability and performance.


Follow updates across the web in a feed that only you control, even if the site does not offer an RSS feed


The image shows a dark-themed webpage, possibly a subscription or feed aggregator. The foreground is dominated by a clean, minimalist design with a text prompt inviting users to enter websites to subscribe to their RSS feeds. The background is uniformly dark, providing a stark contrast to the olive-green text. There is a search bar for website feeds and a link to a page explaining how the system works. The text on the page says: Follow updates across the web in a feed that only you control. Enter any website to subscribe to its RSS feed below.
Open RSS offers feeds that are a much healthier alternative to the intrusive, algorithmic feeds on websites that harm and manipulate us. But several sites, including Tumblr and Craigslist, have removed their RSS feeds, so that you are forced into their algorithms and tracking.

This is annoying if you want to follow things without creating an account, the way you can with Bluesky and all the various Fediverse sites.

Instead of manually checking individual websites for updates, you can automatically get updates through a website’s RSS feed using an RSS Reader app. This allows you to build a single collection of updates across the web in a single feed, that only you control.

OpenRSS offers feeds for more than the apps listed on their feeds page. You can find others by adding the URL openrss.org to the beginning of any website on the web—if OpenRSS offers a feed for the site, it gives it to you (and if not, you’ll see a page explaining that).

To follow any site that does not have an RSS feeds, go to the site where you’d view the news, or the social profile where posts are shown, and then prepend openrss.org/ to the beginning of the URL. For example my blog is at https://gadgeteer.co.za/blog, you’d then enter it as https://openrss.org/ gadgeteer.co.za/blog. The advantage here is that the OpenRSS service will even clean up and correct some errors for existing RSS feeds.

Their site also directs you to some excellent RSS reader apps to use, with a table comparing their key features. But in many cases, quite a few browsers also have built in RSS reader capabilities such as Brave, Edge and Firefox I recall. Fluent Reader is an exceptional desktop app for RSS feeds too.

The whole point is that RSS is an open standard, so anyone can support and use it. This is why many closed corporations want to prevent their users from using RSS. They lose the ability to track you, push adverts, apply their algorithm, etc. It is also probably why Google shut down their RSS reader service. But RSS is everywhere, and gaining some ability to read RSS for sites that have disabled their RSS, is empowering for individuals.

See https://openrss.org/category/uncategorized/feed
#Blog, #adverts, #privacy, #RSS, #technology


"Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a proposed class action lawsuit that accused the iPhone maker of invading users' privacy using its voice-activated Siri assistant.

The development was first reported by Reuters.

The settlement applies to U.S.-based individuals current or former owners or purchasers of a Siri-enabled device who had their confidential voice communications with the assistant "obtained by Apple and/or were shared with third-parties as a result of an unintended Siri activation" between September 17, 2014, and December 31, 2024.

Eligible individuals can submit claims for up to five Siri devices – iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, MacBook, iMac, HomePod, iPod touch, or Apple TV – on which they claim to have experienced an accidental Siri activation during a conversation intended to be confidential or private. Class members who submit valid claims can receive $20 per device."

https://thehackernews.com/2025/01/apple-to-pay-siri-users-20-per-device.html

#Apple #Siri #Privacy #USA #DataProtection


Apple will pay $95 million to people who were spied on by Siri

https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/2/24334268/apple-siri-recording-privacy-lawsuit-settlement-proposed

#APPLE #PRIVACY #SIRI #KEWLNEWS #PRESS


Citizens Protest Against Repression of BPSC Aspirants, calls for immediate action.

https://aliyesha.com/sub/articles/news/display/bh_patna_protest_exam_bpsc_2025

#bihar #patna #india #news #press #government #governance #youth #jobs #employment #exam #examination #protest #corruption #BPSC #BPSC2025 #CPIML #AIPF

Enjoy tracker free reading with us. #privacy #privacymatters


16 Chrome Extensions attacked in Large-Scale Credential Theft Scheme.

A attack campaign has compromised at least 16 Chrome browser extensions, exposing over 600k users to data & credential theft. This targeted extension publishers through phishing emails that mimicked official communications from the Chrome Web Store.

https://www.cyberhaven.com/blog/cyberhavens-chrome-extension-security-incident-and-what-were-doing-about-it

#google #chrome #it #security #privacy #engineer #media #tech #news
Cyberhaven, a IT-security firm specializing in data loss prevention, was among the impacted firms and the first to publicly disclose its compromise. The attack occurred on December 24 and involved phishing a company employee to gain access to their Chrome Web Store admin credentials. 

According to Cyberhaven, the attackers compromised the “single admin account for the Google Chrome Store” and managed to publish a malicious update to their popular Chrome extension. This update, deployed on Christmas Day, was designed to steal sensitive user data, including passwords, session tokens, Facebook account credentials and cookies.

The malicious extension, version 24.10.4, remained active for over 31 hours before being detected and removed from the Chrome Web Store. “Our security team detected this compromise at 11:54 PM UTC on December 25 and removed the malicious package within 60 minutes,” the company’s disclosure read.

Cyberhaven immediately released a legitimate update (version 24.10.5), hired Mandiant to develop an incident response plan and also notified federal law enforcement agencies for investigation. The company has confirmed that its systems, including CI/CD processes and code signing keys, were not compromised.


Aplicaciones de préstamos kenianas invaden la #privacidad de los prestatarios para cobrar deudas - https://es.globalvoices.org/2025/01/01/aplicativos-de-prestamos-kenianos-invaden-la-privacidad-de-los-prestatarios-para-cobrar-deudas/ #privacy #Kenia


Tras el ataque al mercado navideño de #Magdeburgo, el gobierno alemán quiere introducir la retención de datos. Esto no tiene nada que ver con una política de seguridad basada en evidencia. Más bien, el gobierno federal cumple los deseos del aparato de seguridad y distrae la atención de los fallos de las autoridades.- https://netzpolitik.org/2024/vorratsdatenspeicherung-eine-zweifache-farce/ #privacidad #privacy #Alemania


"In the years to come, the federal government and many state governments might engage in surveillance and data gathering as they round up immigrants, punish people for seeking, providing, or assisting abortions, and attack gender-affirming health care. The government might use personal data in its effort to retaliate against those who stand in its way. Such efforts might be assisted by mobs of vigilantes who will use personal data to dox, threaten, embarrass, and harm anyone they don’t like — much like the way many people eagerly assisted totalitarian regimes in finding “undesirables” and rooting out and punishing dissenters.

Our best hope for protection is that legislators in Massachusetts and other states who are concerned about these risks take steps now to upgrade their privacy laws."

https://teachprivacy.com/privacy-in-authoritarian-times/

#Privacy #CyberSecurity #Surveillance #Authoritarianism #DataProtection


Customer Data from 800,000 Electric Cars and Owners exposed Online.

Terabytes of Volkswagen customer details in Amazon cloud storage remained unprotected for months, allowing anyone with little technical knowledge to track drivers movement or gather personal information.

https://www.ccc.de/de/updates/2024/wir-wissen-wo-dein-auto-steht

#volkswagen #electric #car #amazon #cloud #cariad #exposed #data #it #security #privacy #engineer #ccc #media #technology #38c3 #news
Volkswagen’s automotive software company [Cariad], exposed data collected from around 800,000 electric cars. The info could be linked to drivers names and reveal precise vehicle locations [for some of them being as precise as a few centimeters]. The exposed databases include details for VW, Seat, Audi and Skoda vehicles.

Cariad was informed on November 26 of the issue by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC), the largest organization of ethical hackers in Europe that for more than 30 years has promoted security, privacy, and free access to information.

<https://www.ccc.de/en/>

Access to the car data was possible due to Cariad’s incorrect configuration in two IT applications, a company representative said.

The CCC hackers could access the data only after bypassing several security mechanisms that required significant time and technical expertise. Additionally, because individual vehicle data was pseudonymized for privacy purposes, the CCC hackers had to combine different data sets to associate the details with a particular user.
A Cariad representative said that the exposed data affected only vehicles connected to the internet and had been registered for online services. From the nearly 800,000 vehicles exposed, the researchers found geo-location data for 460,000 cars, for some of them with an accuracy of ten centimeters.

<https://www.carscoops.com/2024/12/vw-group-data-breach-exposed-location-info-for-800000-evs/>

Most of the affected vehicles, 300,000 of them, were in Germany but the researchers also found details about cars in Norway (80,000), Sweden (68,000), the United Kingdom (63,000), the Netherlands (61,000), France (53,000), Belgium (68,000) and Denmark (35,000).

Cariad said that its security team reacted quickly to fix the problem and closed access the same day the CCC sent them the report. CCC representatives confirmed that Cariad’s “technical team responded quickly, thoroughly and responsibly” and that the company reacted within hours of receiving the technical details.

Based on the results of its investigation, Cariad has no evidence suggesting that other parties, except the CCC hackers, had access to the exposed vehicle data or that the information had been misused by a third party.


Ready for #NewYear? Time to make up a #NewYearResolution 💪

Why not choose #privacy over Big Tech⁉️

Here are some ideas. 👇 Which is on your list for #2025❓

And more tips to #deGoogle your life: https://tuta.com/blog/how-to-leave-google-gmail
Tips for replacing Google apps with privacy-first ones.


"EFF’s attorneys, activists, and technologists were media rockstars in 2024, informing the public about important issues that affect privacy, free speech, and innovation for people around the world.

Perhaps the single most exciting media hit for EFF in 2024 was “Secrets in Your Data,” the NOVA PBS documentary episode exploring “what happens to all the data we’re shedding and explores the latest efforts to maximize benefits – without compromising personal privacy.” EFFers Hayley Tsukayama, Eva Galperin, and Cory Doctorow were among those interviewed."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/12/eff-press-2024-review

#DigitalRights #USA #Privacy #DigitalActivism


"Of course, this user never requested that my on-device experiences be "enriched" by phoning home to Cupertino. This choice was made by Apple, silently, without my consent.

From my own perspective, computing privacy is simple: if something happens entirely on my computer, then it's private, whereas if my computer sends data to the manufacturer of the computer, then it's not private, or at least not entirely private. Thus, the only way to guarantee computing privacy is to not send data off the device.

I don't understand most of the technical details of Apple's blog post. I have no way to personally evaluate the soundness of Apple's implementation of Enhanced Visual Search. One thing I do know, however, is that Apple computers are constantly full of privacy and security vulnerabilities, as proved by Apple's own security release notes. You don't even have to hypothesize lies, conspiracies, or malicious intentions on the part of Apple to be suspicious of their privacy claims. A software bug would be sufficient to make users vulnerable, and Apple can't guarantee that their software includes no bugs. (To the contrary, Apple's QA nowadays is atrocious.)

It ought to be up to the individual user to decide their own tolerance for the risk of privacy violations. In this specific case, I have no tolerance for risk, because I simply have no interest in the Enhanced Visual Search feature, even if it happened to work flawlessly. There's no benefit to outweigh the risk. By enabling the "feature" without asking, Apple disrespects users and their preferences. I never wanted my iPhone to phone home to Apple.

Remember this advertisement? "What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone.""

https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2024/12/3.html

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