Jul 19, 2019
Washington Post: Federal Regulators Eye Update to Rules Governing Children's Privacy and the Internet
By: Tony Romm and Craig Timberg
"Federal regulators this week began considering ways to update and potentially expand enforcement of the country's online children's privacy law, questioning whether swift advances in technology have outpaced rules meant to protect children younger than 13."
Wired: These Hackers Made an App That Kills to Prove a Point
By: Lily Hay Newman
"Two years ago, researchers Billy Rios and Jonathan Butts discovered disturbing vulnerabilities in Medtronic's popular MiniMed and MiniMed Paradigm insulin pump lines. An attacker could remotely target these pumps to withhold insulin from patients, or to trigger a potentially lethal overdose."
Vice: FaceApp isn’t Creepy Because it’s Russian, it's Creepy Because it’s Capitalist
By: Caroline Haskins
"Every couple of months, photos from FaceApp—a face-editing app that uses neural network to make users look younger, older, more feminine, or more masculine—goes viral. Two years ago, it rolled out a racist face-altering feature that made people into racist caricatures of different races. This week, the app’s viral filter was its aging feature, which makes users look like they’re elderly."
ZDNet: This is How Much Email Scammers are Now Costing Businesses Every Month
By: Liam Tung
"The US Department of Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has run an analysis on suspect transactions in the past year and found that US businesses in 2018 wired around $301 million per month to business email compromise (BEC) scammers."
CNET: Facebook will Reportedly be Fined a Record $5 Billion Over Privacy Mishaps
By: Queenie Wong
"The Federal Trade Commission is expected to hit Facebook with a record-setting $5 billion fine for its alleged privacy mishaps, according to The Wall Street Journal, which reported that commissioners voted this week to approve the settlement with the social network."
Fast Company: Instagram’s Design Gave Rise to the Influencer Economy. It May Also be its Downfall
By: Mark Wilson
"Influencers are publishing more than ever. They published 15 times more editorial posts and eight times more sponsored ads on Instagram in 2018 than they did in 2016. Yet consumers are starting to pay less attention to what they post, according to a new study by social media metrics firm InfluencerDB."
Wall Street Journal: We Tested 5G Across America. It’s Crazy Fast—and a Hot Mess
By: Joanna Stern
"All of the major U.S. carriers—Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint—are launching 5G across the U.S. WSJ's Joanna Stern embarked on a summer testing tour only to learn that 5G is blazing fast...if you're outside, near a cell tower, with some way to keep the phone cool."
Ars Technica: My Browser, the Spy: How Extensions Slurped Up Browsing Histories from 4M Users
By: Dan Goodin
"When we use browsers to make medical appointments, share tax returns with accountants, or access corporate intranets, we usually trust that the pages we access will remain private. DataSpii, a newly documented privacy issue in which millions of people’s browsing histories have been collected and exposed, shows just how much about us is revealed when that assumption is turned on its head."
Wall Street Journal: Russia, Iran, North Korea Launch Hundreds of Cyberattacks on U.S. Political Groups, Microsoft Says
By: Dustin Volz
"Suspected nation-state hackers from Russia, Iran and elsewhere have launched nearly 800 cyberattacks against political organizations over the past year that have been detected by Microsoft Corp. , with the vast majority of the attempts targeting groups based in the U.S."
Tampa Bay News: Radio Station WMNF Victim of Ransomware Cyberattack
"Archived episodes of the station's news and public affairs programming may be lost permanently."