If you are really concerned about privacy, then you probably shouldn’t use Facebook. But if you are like a billion people on the planet, you’ve decided that Facebook’s tradeoff between sharing and privacy is worth it. That’s certainly reasonable. Plenty of non-Facebookers today complain that they miss out on a lot [Keep reading]
In the technology arms race between parents and children, kids have a new weapon: Yik Yak. A simple app for mobile devices, Yik Yak sets up temporary, anonymous chats among users who are near each other, based on GPS location. It’s less than four months old, but already, it’s causing [Keep reading]
Privacy is a funny thing. A lot of people are perfectly willing to take it away from other people, but get really angry when you take their privacy away. Like Sen. Diane Feinstein. She unleashed a torrent of criticism today against the CIA, accusing the agency of hacking computers than [Keep reading]
Edward Snowden’s coming out party at the SXSW conference on Monday was largely a geekfest, with most discussion focused on what technology firms should do to allow consumers snoop-free communications. You can review the discussion in plenty of places if you like, but I suspect if you care about those [Keep reading]
Now that Glenn Greenwald has launched First Look and Ed Snowden is….live online, I have some advice for the two men who desperately want to make sure U.S. government digital surveillance doesn’t slip from the headlines. Let’s get right to the point. Please search that treasure trove of documents you [Keep reading]
So Newsweek found the founder of Bitcoin. Bitcoin, as most of us already know, is the world’s most recognizable cryptocurrency, that being a decentralized digital currency, about which you can learn more about over at VanillaCrypto. Outing its founder is a great journalistic coup. It’s also precisely the kind of [Keep reading]
If you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product. WhatsApp just managed to score $19 billion by making a product that users actually want to pay for, rather than tricking them into being a product others paid for. Maybe….just maybe…this signals a shift in the way technology companies [Keep reading]
Roughly two-thirds of partners in a committed relationship share passwords, a practice that makes most security professionals shudder. Older, retired couples are also very likely to share an e-mail account, social media account, or online calendar, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center. That makes sense: plenty [Keep reading]
If you want to share bad news, send it along on the Saturday of a long weekend. Kickstarter has been hacked, and its 5.6 million user-investors put at risk for identity theft, the firm told customers in an email sent on Saturday. Hackers may have stolen usernames, email addresses, mailing [Keep reading]
The question is as old as the first case of credit card fraud. “What can I do to protect myself?” I’ve been hearing that question a lot lately, as tales of leaked credit card data and other personal information mount. Target, Neiman Marcus…you know the list now. These high-profile hacks [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan