Latest Privacy Risk news

ExpressVPN bug has been leaking some DNS requests for years

ExpressVPN has removed the split tunneling feature from the latest version of its software after finding that a bug exposed the domains users were visiting to configured DNS servers.
- Bill Toulas
- February 11, 2024
- 10:09 AM
- 0
OpenAI rolls out imperfect fix for ChatGPT data leak flaw

OpenAI has mitigated a data exfiltration bug in ChatGPT that could potentially leak conversation details to an external URL.
- Bill Toulas
- December 21, 2023
- 11:44 AM
- 0
SMS delivery reports can be used to infer recipient's location

A team of university researchers has devised a new side-channel attack named 'Freaky Leaky SMS,' which relies on the timing of SMS delivery reports to deduce a recipient's location.
- Bill Toulas
- June 17, 2023
- 10:07 AM
- 0
Strava heatmap feature can be abused to find home addresses

Researchers at the North Carolina State University Raleigh have discovered a privacy risk in the Strava app's heatmap feature that could lead to identifying users' home addresses.
- Bill Toulas
- June 11, 2023
- 10:15 AM
- 1
Android leaks some traffic even when 'Always-on VPN' is enabled

Mullvad VPN has discovered that Android leaks traffic every time the device connects to a WiFi network, even if the "Block connections without VPN," or "Always-on VPN," features is enabled.
- Bill Toulas
- October 11, 2022
- 03:48 PM
- 3
Estonia arrests hacker who stole 286K ID scans from govt database

A Tallinn man was arrested a week ago in Estonia under suspicion that he has exploited a government photo transfer service vulnerability to download ID scans of 286,438 Estonians from the Identity Documents Database (KMAIS).
- Sergiu Gatlan
- July 29, 2021
- 05:13 PM
- 0
Twitter Reveals That Firefox Cached Private Data For Up to 7 Days

Twitter disclosed an issue in the way the Mozilla Firefox web browser cached data that may have lead to private media shared in DMs and data downloads being inadvertently stored in the browser's cache.
- Sergiu Gatlan
- April 02, 2020
- 04:15 PM
- 2
GitLab Backtracks on Forced Tracking After Negative Feedback

GitLab, the provider of a web-based DevOps platform, reversed course on its decision to implement product usage tracking in the form of third-party telemetry for paying customers who use the company's proprietary products.
- Sergiu Gatlan
- October 24, 2019
- 03:58 PM
- 0
Arizona Lawmaker Wants to Tax Porn to Fund Border Security

Arizona Representative Gail Griffin proposed the House Bill 2444 which requires a $20 porn tax to access adult content using an Internet-connected device, with the collected money to be used for funding border security and dream centers.
- Sergiu Gatlan
- January 22, 2019
- 04:28 PM
- 3
DNA Testing Kits & The Security Risks in Digitized DNA

The addition of digitized DNA provides hackers with another target to exploit and opens up a new and challenging frontier for cybersecurity professionals. There are significant implications involved in digitizing DNA. "The cyber-physical nature of biotechnology raises unprecedented security concerns," coauthors Jean Peccoud, Jenna...
- Candice Lanier
- December 07, 2018
- 10:43 AM
- 0
Chrome Extensions, Android and iOS Apps Caught Collecting Browsing Data

An investigation by AdGuard, an ad-blocking platform, has revealed a common link between several Chrome and Firefox extensions and Android & iOS apps that were caught collecting highly personal user data through various shady tactics.
- Catalin Cimpanu
- July 25, 2018
- 05:27 AM
- 1
Polar App Disables Feature That Allowed Journalists to Identify Intelligence Personnel

Finnish-based fitness tracking app Polar has temporarily disabled its global activity map feature after last week journalists used it to track down the real-world identities of military and intelligence personnel.
- Catalin Cimpanu
- July 09, 2018
- 09:08 AM
- 1
Facebook Acknowledges It Shared User Data With 61 Companies

In a 747-page document provided to the US House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee on Friday, Facebook admitted that it granted special access to users' data to 61 tech companies.
- Catalin Cimpanu
- July 02, 2018
- 04:01 PM
- 0
App Masks Hidden Printer Tracking Dots to Keep Whistleblowers Safe

Four academics from the Technical University in Dresden, Germany (TU Dresden) have created an app that detects and masks the hidden dot patterns that laser color printers secretly hide on all printed documents.
- Catalin Cimpanu
- July 02, 2018
- 03:13 AM
- 1
macOS Breaks Your OpSec by Caching Data From Encrypted Hard Drives

Apple's macOS surreptitiously creates and caches thumbnails for images and other file types stored on password-protected / encrypted containers (hard drives, partitions), according to Wojciech Reguła and Patrick Wardle, two macOS security experts.
- Catalin Cimpanu
- June 18, 2018
- 08:00 AM
- 1
Amazon Is Selling Facial Recognition Software to US Law Enforcement

Public record documents obtained from two US states reveal that Amazon has entered the surveillance market, where it's been silently advertising its facial recognition software to law enforcement agencies.
- Catalin Cimpanu
- May 22, 2018
- 02:19 PM
- 0
Users Warned of Critical Email Encryption Security Flaw

A team of nine academics is warning the world about a critical vulnerability in the OpenPGP and S/MIME email encryption tools. The flaw, if exploited, allow an attacker to decrypt sent or received messages, according to the researcher team.
- Catalin Cimpanu
- May 14, 2018
- 03:23 AM
- 1
LinkedIn Fixes AutoFill Button That Allowed Rogue Harvesting of User Data

A prodigious 18-year-old bug hunter from Chicago has discovered and reported a critical vulnerability in a LinkedIn social button that could have been abused to harvest LinkedIn user information, some of which may not have been public.
- Catalin Cimpanu
- April 19, 2018
- 06:57 PM
- 0
JavaScript Trackers Caught Siphoning Data From "Login With Facebook" Feature

JavaScript libraries from various advertising and analytics services are siphoning user data from web pages where the "Login with Facebook" feature is being used.
- Catalin Cimpanu
- April 19, 2018
- 12:25 AM
- 0
Google Chrome Extension Detects "Zero-Width Character" Fingerprinting Attacks

Software developer Marco Chiappetta has built a Google Chrome extension that can detect attempts to fingerprint text using the "zero-width character" technique.
- Catalin Cimpanu
- April 04, 2018
- 03:35 PM
- 0