This sounds great until you start wondering, “Wait a second. Did they access U.S. computers of private citizens without a warrant?” Jackson Healy reports: The Department of Justice on Tuesday announced that they had removed invasive malware from more than 4,200 U.S. computers that were targeted by hackers funded by the People’s Republic of China….
Category: Govt
FTC Finalizes Order Prohibiting Gravy Analytics, Venntel from Selling Sensitive Location Data
The Federal Trade Commission finalized an order prohibiting Gravy Analytics and its subsidiary Venntel from unlawfully tracking and selling sensitive location data from users, including data about consumers’ visits to health-related locations and places of worship. In a complaint first announced last month, the FTC alleged that Gravy and Venntel violated the FTC Act by unfairly selling sensitive consumer…
Hackers Claim To Have Compromised Data Broker Used By U.S. Government To Dodge Warrants
Over on TechDirt, Karl Bode writes: Gravy Analytics, the parent company of Venntel, is like many dodgy data brokers. The company gleans vast troves of sensitive U.S. behavior and location cellphone data, then generally sells access to that data to a long line of folks. Including the U.S. government, which has increasingly turned to buying…
Secret Service Admits It Didn’t Check if People Really Consented to Being Tracked
Joseph Cox reports: The Secret Service never actually checked whether people gave proper consent to be tracked by a mobile phone location monitoring tool, despite claiming the data was collected with peoples’ permission, the agency admitted in an email obtained by 404 Media. The email undermines the Secret Service’s and other U.S. federal agencies’ justification…