Thomas Brewster reports: Anyone pumped for this week’s launch of Google’s Home Hub might want to temper their excitement. A smart home is a surveilled home. That’s been the concern of privacy activists since citizens started lighting up their abodes with so-called “smart” tech in recent years. Take Google’s current smart home division, Nest Labs. It’s been…
Category: Online
Twitter Under Formal Investigation for How It Tracks Users in the GDPR Era
David Meyer reports: Twitter is being investigated by Irish privacy authorities over its refusal to give a user information about how it tracks him when he clicks on links in tweets. When Twitter (TWTR, +3.70%) users put links into tweets, the service applies its own link-shortening service, t.co, to them. Twitter says this allows the…
Former NASA contractor hacked into women’s accounts, threatened to publish their nude photos
Alene Tchekmedyian reports: Richard Gregory Bauer didn’t hide his identity when he gathered information to hack into the email and social media accounts of his female friends, family members and co-workers. In some cases, the U.S. attorney’s office said, he told them via Facebook that he was working on a class project and posed a…
Google sets new rules for third-party apps to access Gmail data
Catalin Cimpanu reports: Google will roll out stricter rules for third-party apps that want to access users’ Gmail inboxes. The new rules are scheduled to enter into effect next year, January 9, 2019. This is Google’s response after the company came under criticism in July for letting third-party apps roam free and access users’ Gmail…