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Google Adds New Option to 'Auto-Delete' Your Location History and Activity Data

Google Adds New Option to 'Auto-Delete' Your Location History and Activity Data
May 02, 2019
Google is giving you more control over how long you want the tech company to hold on to your location history and web activity data. Google has introduced a new, easier, privacy-focused auto-delete feature for your Google account that will allow you to automatically delete your Location History and Web and App Activity data after a set period of time. Google's Location History feature, if enabled, allows the company to track locations that you have visited, while Web and App Activity tracks websites you have visited and apps you have used. Until now, Google allowed you to either altogether disable the Location History and Web and App Activity feature or manually delete all or part of that data, providing no controls for regular deletion so that users can manage their data efficiently. However, an AP investigation last year revealed that even if you turn off the Location History feature in all your accounts, Google services on Android and iPhone devices continue to trac

How to Stop Facebook App From Tracking Your Location In the Background

How to Stop Facebook App From Tracking Your Location In the Background
Feb 22, 2019
Every app installed on your smartphone with permission to access location service "can" continually collect your real-time location secretly, even in the background when you do not use them. Do you know? — Installing the Facebook app on your Android and iOS smartphones automatically gives the social media company your rightful consent to collect the history of your precise location. If you are not aware, there is a setting called "Location History" in your Facebook app that comes enabled by default, allowing the company to track your every movement even when you are not using the social media app. So, every time you turn ON location service/GPS setting on your smartphone, let's say for using Uber app or Google Maps, Facebook starts tracking your location. Users can manually turn Facebook's Location History option OFF from the app settings to completely prevent Facebook from collecting your location data, even when the app is in use. However, unf

Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future

Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future
Mar 21, 2024Operational Technology / SCADA Security
When you read reports about cyber-attacks affecting operational technology (OT), it's easy to get caught up in the hype and assume every single one is sophisticated. But are OT environments all over the world really besieged by a constant barrage of complex cyber-attacks? Answering that would require breaking down the different types of OT cyber-attacks and then looking back on all the historical attacks to see how those types compare.  The Types of OT Cyber-Attacks Over the past few decades, there has been a growing awareness of the need for improved cybersecurity practices in IT's lesser-known counterpart, OT. In fact, the lines of what constitutes a cyber-attack on OT have never been well defined, and if anything, they have further blurred over time. Therefore, we'd like to begin this post with a discussion around the ways in which cyber-attacks can either target or just simply impact OT, and why it might be important for us to make the distinction going forward. Figure 1 The Pu

Google Sued Over Misleading Users About Location Tracking Feature

Google Sued Over Misleading Users About Location Tracking Feature
Aug 21, 2018
Google was in the news last week for a misleading claim that "with Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored," which is not true. Now, the search engine giant is once again in the news after a San Diego man has filed the first lawsuit against Google over this issue. Last week, the Associated Press investigation revealed that the search engine giant tracks movements of millions of iPhone and Android device users, even if they have disabled the "Location History" setting to prevent it. However, it turned out that to fully opt-out of having your location activities stored by Google, you also have to disable the 'Web and App Activity' control as well, about which the company has mentioned deep into its product documentation. In response to the AP investigation, Google defended itself by saying, "there are a number of different ways that Google may use location to improve people's experience," and that "we provide c

Automated remediation solutions are crucial for security

cyber security
websiteWing SecurityShadow IT / SaaS Security
Especially when it comes to securing employees' SaaS usage, don't settle for a longer to-do list. Auto-remediation is key to achieving SaaS security.

WhatsApp may let you Recall Sent Messages and Track Friends Location in Realtime

WhatsApp may let you Recall Sent Messages and Track Friends Location in Realtime
Feb 02, 2017
Are you the victim of sending awkward WhatsApp messages to your friends, families, and colleagues while you're drunk? No need to panic now, as you'll soon be able to recall your drunk or mistakenly sent text messages on WhatsApp – a much-demanded feature. Recall Unread Messages Sent Mistakenly The most popular instant messaging service is reportedly testing the ability to edit or completely recall messages that have already been sent, allowing you to edit or delete a message from your friend's phone if it is yet to be read. This new feature, first spotted by Twitter account @WABetaInfo , may be included in a new beta version of WhatsApp's next update before making it into a full consumer release. If so, the update will add " Revoke " and " Edit " options for messages with gray tick marks that have not yet been viewed by the recipient. Blue ticks on WhatsApp represents that the recipient has seen your sent messages. If the sender click

Uber Now Tracks Your Location Even After Your Ride

Uber Now Tracks Your Location Even After Your Ride
Dec 09, 2016
Uber was in controversies at the mid of this year for monitoring the battery life of its users, as the company believed that its users were more likely to pay a much higher price to hire a cab when their phone's battery is close to dying. Uber is now tracking you even when your ride is over, and, according to the ride-hailing company, the surveillance will improve its service. Uber recently updated its app to collect user location data in the background. So, if you have updated your Uber app recently, your app's location tracking permissions have changed, allowing the app to monitor your location before and five minutes after your trip ends, even if you have closed the app. A popup on the Uber app will ask you, "Allow 'Uber' to access our location even when you are not using the app?" You can click " Allow " or " Don't Allow " in response to this request. If you don't allow it, Uber won't track you. According to t

Apple Tracks Who You're Chatting Using iMessage — and Shares that Data with Police

Apple Tracks Who You're Chatting Using iMessage — and Shares that Data with Police
Sep 28, 2016
Doing conversations with your friend on iMessage and thinking that they are safe and out of reach from anyone else other than you and your friend? No, it's not. End-to-end encryption doesn't mean that your iMessages are secure enough to hide your trace because Apple not only stores a lot of information about your iMessages that could reveal your contacts and location, but even share that information with law enforcement via court orders. According to a new document obtained by The Intercept , Apple records a log of which phone numbers you typed into their iPhone for a message conversation, along with the date and time when you entered those numbers as well as your IP address, which could be used to identify your location. Actually, every time a user type a phone number into their iPhone for a message conversation, iMessage contacts Apple servers to find out whether to route a given message over the iMessage system. "Apple records each query in which your phone c

Photos On Dark Web Reveal Geo-locations Of 229 Drug Dealers — Here's How

Photos On Dark Web Reveal Geo-locations Of 229 Drug Dealers — Here's How
Sep 21, 2016
It's a Fact! No matter how smart the criminals are, they always leave some trace behind. Two Harvard students have unmasked around 229 drug and weapon dealers with the help of pictures taken by criminals and used in advertisements placed on dark web markets. Do you know each image contains a range of additional hidden data stored within it that can be a treasure to the investigators fighting criminals? Yeah it's true — "A picture is worth a thousand words." Digital images come with basic metadata, as well as EXIF data that contains information about the device with which it was taken. EXIF, stands for " Exchangeable Image File Format ," may contain image dimensions, date and time (when it was originally taken and modified), the model of camera and its settings, information about the software used for editing, it's creator and copyright information, as well as GPS co-ordinates of the location where the photo was taken. If a criminal, let's say a

Iran Bans Pokémon GO — It's My Way or the Highway!

Iran Bans Pokémon GO — It's My Way or the Highway!
Aug 06, 2016
Pokémon GO has become the world's most popular mobile game since its launch in July, but not everyone loves it. Pokémon GO has officially been banned in Iran. The Iranian High Council of Virtual Spaces – the country's official body that oversees online activity – has prohibited the use of the Pokémon GO app within the country due to unspecified " security concerns, " BBC reports . The Iranian council did not detail why the country has actually banned its citizen from playing the wildly popular game. Although many countries, including Russia and China, have expressed security concerns over the smash hit augmented reality game, Iran has become the first country to introduce an official ban of Pokémon GO. Since its launch, Pokémon GO has officially been released in more than 35 countries so far with over 100 Million downloads and continues to make an estimated $10 Million in daily revenue. Despite strict Internet restrictions in Iran, Pokémon fans have still

Beware! Advertisers Are Tracking You via Phone's Battery Status

Beware! Advertisers Are Tracking You via Phone's Battery Status
Aug 02, 2016
Is my smartphone battery leaking details about me? Unfortunately, YES! Forget about supercookies, apps, and malware; your smartphone battery status is enough to monitor your online activity, according to a new report. In 2015, researchers from Stanford University demonstrated a way to track users' locations – with up to 90 percent accuracy – by measuring the battery usage of the phone over a certain time. The latest threat is much worse. Two security researchers, Steve Engelhard and Arvind Narayanan, from Princeton University, have published a paper describing how phone's battery status has already been used to track users across different websites. The issue is due to the Battery Status API (application programming interface). How Does Battery Status API Help Advertisers Track You? The battery status API was first introduced in HTML5 and had already shipped in browsers including Firefox, Chrome, and Opera by August last year. The API is intended to allo
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