Google is rolling out some important changes that will make it easier for people who use their services to control their data. They're starting with their most widely used service, which is search. In the weeks ahead, it will be easier than ever for users to delete their search history, on both PC and Android devices. The official company announcement reads, in part, as follows: "Today, we're making it easier for you to make decisions about your data directly within the Google products … Read more
Yahoo Is Compensating Victims Of Their Massive Data Breach
Yahoo has the dubious honor of having been on the receiving end of the largest data breach in history. As a consequence, the company has recently agreed to pay $50 million in damages and provide free credit monitoring services to its impacted users. The company actually suffered a pair of breaches in 2013 and in 2014, although this information was not disclosed by the company until 2016. All of the company's 3 billion users were impacted, and more than 200 million of them saw losses arising … Read more
Hackers Now Targeting Girl Scouts, Raising Privacy Concerns
As far as hackers are concerned, no target is safe. Not even the Girl Scouts. Recently, one of the Girl Scouts' official email accounts was accessed by an "unauthorized third party" and as a result, as many as 2,800 girl scouts in Orange County, California may have had their personal information compromised. Gaining access to the account naturally gave the hacker access to every email sent from that account that had not already been deleted. When the breach was discovered, the Girl … Read more
IBM Invests Billions To Purchase Popular Red Hat Linux
IBM has recently announced what is to be the largest open source acquisition in history. They're buying Red Hat for a staggering $34 billion dollars. This, as the saying goes, changes everything. IBM has lagged behind its competitors for years in the area of cloud computing. When the ink dries on this deal, they'll move from a virtual non-entity in the market to the world's #1 hybrid cloud provider. If you're a Red Hat supporter, don't worry that the company is going away. The company … Read more
Uninstall Fake App Called “The Album by Google Photos”
If you take a lot of photos with your Android device, you're probably constantly on the lookout for a better way to organize them and access them. That's exactly what the authors of the malicious app called "The Album, by Google Photos" are hoping for. The app put in a brief appearance on the Microsoft store, where it claimed to be from Google but it's clearly not. Unfortunately, the authors have gone to great lengths to make it appear legitimate, and as such, it has been downloaded and … Read more
HIPAA Fines For Data Breaches Continue To Grow
Anthem is one of the largest insurance providers in the United States. Unfortunately in 2015, they had the dubious honor of suffering the largest health data breach in history. It left protected health information of nearly 79 million of their customers exposed. As a result, a division of the US Department of Health and Human Services called the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), levied the largest fine against the company in the agency's history. They were fined a staggering sixteen million … Read more
Teens Now Are Using Instagram More Than Facebook
Move over Facebook. Where teens are concerned, Instagram reigns supreme, according to a recently published survey. Piper Jaffray has been tracking how teenagers use the internet for nearly twenty years, and the second report of this year has some interesting findings indeed. Here are the highlights: 85 percent of teens report using Instagram at least once a month, up from 79 percent in the fall of 2016. 84 percent of teens report using Snapchat at least once a month, up from 80 … Read more
Data Breach Affects Federal Healthcare System
You probably haven't heard of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Systems. They're a low-profile division of the Department of Health and Human Services responsible for administering the Affordable Care Act. Recently, the company announced that they detected anomalous activity in the systems related to the healthcare.gov website that brokers and insurance agents use to assist people who apply for healthcare coverage. The abnormal activity was detected in the Federally Facilitated … Read more
Latest Windows 10 Update Causing Audio Issues
Microsoft hasn't been terribly impressive lately when it comes to Windows 10 updates. In fact, it's fair to say that they've been a complete mess. Just recently, they've issued updates that have deleted user files and caused crashes after creating incompatibilities with keyboard drivers. Now, (courtesy of the most recent Windows 10 update), many users are reporting that they've got no sound due to corrupted or incompatible audio drivers. The company has made hasty corrections to their … Read more
Malicious Messages In PlayStation Can Cause It To Crash
Gamers take the games they play seriously. So seriously, in fact, that they're not above resorting to dirty tricks to score a win. Recently, social media has been abuzz with reports of a messaging app bug on Sony's PlayStation devices. Specifically, there's a bug in both the Android and iOS messaging apps that allow malicious gamers to send a poisoned character via group chat that will brick your gaming console. If you're in the middle of a tense death match, you lose by default, because … Read more
