Online password manager LastPass is in lockdown mode after the company discovered unusual activity on its network late last week. That activity turned out to be hackers who got away with user email addresses, password reminders, server per user salts, and authentication hashes, according to LastPass.
We've talked about anti-tracking extensions before. These are the tools that prevent online advertisers from tracking you online, allowing you to retain your privacy. There are many to choose from--including Disconnect, DNT+, and Ghostery--but recently AVG came out with a new extension for Chrome called Crumble that's worth trying out.
You know it, I know it, Wikipedia knows it, and now Windows knows it: the Ask Toolbar is a bad thing that nobody wants on their PC. The next time the Ask Toolbar tries to sneak onto your computer it will be marked as "unwanted software" (that's a nice way of saying malware) by Microsoft's security tools. Microsoft previously warned it would take action against software that tries to prevent users from changing their browser's default search engine.
Congress is losing sleep over the possibility other nations could endanger web security, and now it wants the four major browser makers to weigh in. The House of Representatives' Committee on Energy and Commerce recently sent letters to Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla with questions about how the backbone of HTTPS security could be violated.
Plex gave its users an important security upgrade last week. The home media streaming platform announced all its users are getting free SSL certificates, enabling them to connect to their media over an encrypted HTTPS connection. The new feature is a partnership with certificate authority DigiCert. Plex says the project is "one of the largest implementations of publicly trusted certificates, ever."
More than three years ago, Google unified its privacy policy. Now it's unifying your privacy (and security) information. The company recently announced an overhaul to the Google account dashboard that puts nearly every privacy and security feature in one place. The new My Account section includes Google's privacy and security checkups, the ability to mange ad settings, your search and browsing history, location history via Google Maps, and password changes. Google Wallet is still separate from the My Account dashboard.
The next time someone tags you in a Facebook post, the social network can send you a super secret notification that not even the National Security Agency can read--at least as far as we know. On Monday, Facebook announced that you can now add an OpenPGP key to your Facebook profile.
Everyday people are transforming the way police officers behave thanks to the power of camera-enabled smartphones. Now, the advocacy group Transparency Toolkit wants to transform the way the national security state behaves using other common tech tools: Google and LinkedIn.
Google recently added another option to its Takeout service that lets you export data from your Google account, and the latest addition is one of the most important: Your Google search history.
The latest version of Firefox has a new security feature that aims to put a band-aid over unencrypted website connections. Firefox 37 rolled out earlier this week with support for opportunistic encryption, or OE. You can consider OE sort of halfway point between no encryption (known as clear text) and full HTTPS encryption that's simpler to implement.
Advertising companies aren't just tracking your web browsing habits--some marketers secretly monitor your email usage to discover a startling amount of information about you, too.
Microsoft says the Superfish adware that potentially exposed thousands of Lenovo PCs to man-in-the-middle attacks is well under control.
With the backing of Google and Microsoft, the FIDO Alliance wants to kill passwords through biometrics like fingerprints and eye scans. Yahoo, however, is trying a different approach--one that looks a lot like the two-factor authentication we have now.
Google is adding a new warning to Chrome in its continuing efforts to protect users from harmful actors on the web. The new red flag for Google's browser warns you when you're about to visit a site that encourages users to download harmful and unwanted software.
Major technology companies just can't help tampering with our web traffic to deliver advertising. Security researchers recently discovered that consumer-grade Lenovo computers ship with software called Superfish Visual Discovery that injects advertising into websites on browsers such as Google Chrome and Internet Explorer.