If you saw strange pop-up messages in TweetDeck this morning, you weren't alone. It wasn't the work of the Syrian Electronic Army, just some relatively harmless XSS exploitation.
Caitlin McGarry | 12 Jun | Read more
When you signed up for Facebook countless years ago, your posts defaulted to public until you changed your privacy settings. In a new commitment to privacy, Facebook will now set the default for new users--if there are any people left in the world without Facebook accounts--to friends-only.
Caitlin McGarry | 23 May | Read more
eBay's 128 million active users will find a rude surprise in their inboxes today: News that a cyberattack struck one of the company's databases between late February and early March and compromised important customer data.
Caitlin McGarry | 22 May | Read more
The Federal Trade Commission has a tiny problem with the way Snapchat describes its core feature, disappearing messages. The thing is, the FTC says, Snapchat's messages don't actually disappear. They can be saved in a variety of ways, from simple screenshots to outside apps.
Caitlin McGarry | 09 May | Read more
Nico Sell doesn't work on games, but she's meeting with creators at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week because they all need what she's selling: Security.
Caitlin McGarry | 20 Mar | Read more
End-to-end encryption is widely considered the best defense against a surveillance dragnet, but the tech companies that many of us interact with on a daily basis--Facebook, Google, Twitter--have been slow to offer protections for users. The Verge reported Wednesday that Twitter, which had reportedly planned to encrypt direct messages, has dropped the project to focus on more pressing matters.
Caitlin McGarry | 19 Mar | Read more
Edward Snowden has a piece of advice for you, the average American Internet user: Employ whatever encryption tools you have at your disposal to make the National Security Agency's job a little bit harder.
Caitlin McGarry | 10 Mar | Read more
Julian Assange doesn't use the blustering rhetoric you might expect from the founder of the activist publishing group WikiLeaks. Assange is responsible for leaking documents that have changed America's political landscape-- State Department cables and Iraq War logs--yet to a South by Southwest audience on Saturday, he spoke quietly and matter-of-factly even when uttering the most inflammatory statements.
Caitlin McGarry | 09 Mar | Read more
Austin, Texas is in full-on party mode as South by Southwest kicks off Friday, but the normally lighthearted Interactive portion of the festival--best known for turning Twitter and Foursquare into stars--is taking a serious turn this year by addressing the National Security Agency's PRISM program head-on.
Caitlin McGarry | 07 Mar | Read more
Another day, another revelation about intelligence agencies' ability to peer into your private life: The Guardian reported that GCHQ, Britain's surveillance agency, captured stills from Yahoo webcam chats between 2008 and 2010.
Caitlin McGarry | 27 Feb | Read more
Facebook ads are an endless cause of controversy. Some of the social network's ad formats use your likes as brand endorsements that show up in other users' feeds. Last summer, Facebook had to fork over $20 million to settle a class-action suit over its Sponsored Stories ads, but privacy groups are now saying that settlement isn't good enough.
Caitlin McGarry | 13 Feb | Read more
At 8 p.m. on New Year's Eve, a driver fatally hit 6-year-old Sofia Liu as she walked with her mother and brother in a San Francisco crosswalk. Car accidents happen all the time in major cities, but this is different: The driver was in between fares as a contractor for Uber. Liu's family this week filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the transportation app in California Superior Court.
Caitlin McGarry | 28 Jan | Read more
You're completely mastered your social networks' privacy settings. Facebook? Check. Twitter? Locked down. Google+? Deleted. (Just kidding! Sort of.) But then Facebook removes a setting and Instagram adds messaging, disrupting the delicate ecosystem of privacy protections you've worked so hard to create. Security firm AVG says they have the cure with PrivacyFix, free software that lets you manage privacy settings across all your social networks from a centralized dashboard.
Caitlin McGarry | 27 Jan | Read more
You use a social network--at least one, maybe a few. Everyone does. You probably know all about your preferred network's privacy settings, enough to make sure that the whole world doesn't know your business. But if you're paranoid--aren't we all?--you can find ways to lock down your privacy that go above and beyond even two-factor authentication.
Caitlin McGarry | 22 Jan | Read more
Facebook changed its privacy policies on Friday, but unlike previous overhauls, there's not much to rage about this time.
Caitlin McGarry | 16 Nov | Read more