Privacy, Government, Surveillance, and You.

One of those "containers" apparently has a massive breach on their hands: 117 million LinkedIn passwords being sold. (That's roughly 25% of their total user base.)

Perhaps certain people need to rethink who they trust. And do vary your passwords. Please.

At least I'm not on LinkedIn.

Well... fuck... the last time I had changed the password was a few months, ago, I think.

edited 20th May '16 11:34:14 AM by Quag15

>And do vary your passwords. Please.

now you tell me,all my passwords are combinations of 1234 and hunter2

Seriously though,the hotmail breech was bad..this is worse,much worse

edited 20th May '16 12:06:53 PM by Ultimatum

What Hotmail breach?

And am I the only one here who uses LastPass to handle passwords?

From now on, I don't think so. Thank you for the link, I'll be checking if it's worth it.

edited 20th May '16 2:41:02 PM by Quag15

IIRC, Password management software is a rather useful utility; it allows identity thieves to crack only one password in order to gain immediate access to everything you use, which is quite convenient for them.

edited 20th May '16 3:17:23 PM by TobiasDrake

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/jaylee/article/How-serious-is-the-Hotmail-breach-7514437.php

Also,regarding Last Pass,I don't trust someone else to manage my passwords for me,suppose Last pass itself is hacked,what then?

edited 21st May '16 9:53:32 AM by Ultimatum

Last year, they suspected a breach. You know what they did after they triple-checked everything and then patched up the suspected holes? I got an email that can be summed up as "We have suspicions that someone tried to hack our database with malicious intent. We believe with reasonable certainty that the data hasn't been compromised, but just to be sure, please change all your passwords."

They're nigh-paranoid about security, that's for sure. And IINM, they invest quite a lot into their security systems.

That article's behind a paywall. Try not to use those.

it wasn't when I read it before.

 The National-Security Exposé So Secret Even Edward Snowden Didn’t Know About It

There's an amendment in the works that would allow the FBI to access your browser history without a warrant. Sigh. REALLY GUYS?!

edited 8th Jun '16 4:31:04 PM by speedyboris

There's a difference between a Constitutional amendment and an amendment to a bill up for debate, FYI. We're dealing with the latter here (and it's far from the first time), so stop being super-alarmist.

Al Franken writes a letter to the creators of Pokemon Go, asking for clarification on the game's privacy policies. Basically it sounds like when users link the game to their Google account, it shares much more information than usual.

"...And unlike many such services, for which a person signs up with a Google or Facebook account but only hands over limited information to the third-party app, Niantic's privacy policy said it gathered access to a user's full account—including the contents of his or her Gmail account—when the user signs up for Pokemon Go"

Whoa. Good catch, Al. I also wonder to what extent users in the game can access or influence each other. Anyone here actually play the game?

I have not. No smartphone, for one thing.

Unrelated anecdote: I saw a teenage girl at the dentist yesterday who was holding her phone up to a fishtank, hoping it would trigger something in the game. Yeah...

edited 13th Jul '16 8:25:25 AM by speedyboris

I can maybe shed a bit of light on that.

Basically what happened was that the app appeared to be requesting that users on iOS who were signing into the game with a Google account give Niantic full access to their Google account. People saw this and pretty much assumed that this meant that Niantic was reading their emails, their Google Drive files, etc. when that wasn't the case. Only a handful of people took this as some conspiracy to get into people's accounts. Turns out that the game wasn't supposed to be getting full access.

A day after this was discovered, an update was released that changed the permissions to more accurately reflect what was needed, though anyone still signed in with their Google account needed to re-sign in to have the changes take effect. All it accesses now is basic info.

As for what users can see about other people, it's very minimal, other players don't even show up in game unless you're battling their AI controlled representative in certain locations. You're not going to be able to determine where someone you meet on the street playing the game lives or anything through the app.

It's also worth mentioning that plenty of people did not sign into the game using Google, instead using separate Pokemon Trainer Club accounts that already existed. Facebook login is not possible.

edited 13th Jul '16 5:38:52 PM by strawberryflavored

FindFace and the looming prospect of total surveillance

They have to get a picture of you first.

We all know it's coming. And believe me, there are photos of you out there, whether you know about them or not. It's far too late to claw back from this situation; rather, we can adapt to it by developing new laws and privacy structures to stop abuses.

In Russia, it's not hard to do it (especially in the urban areas).

I suppose in the US that sort of thing would be used to detect violent BLM protesters and other "problematic" folks. That is, provided it would even have any sort of legal traction (I don't know a lot about US law in regards to this hypothetical case).

Problem is, lawmaking and jurisprudence are usually behind the times when it comes to technological and non-privacy innovations and have play a constant game of catch-up.

edited 19th Jul '16 7:42:45 AM by Quag15

And? You can't put the technological genie back in the lamp. We either accept that this is going to happen eventually and figure out how to deal with it, or we turn into the kind of paranoid dickwads you see in reality shows about preppers.

I feel generically bad for Russians who will suffer private and/or public harassment because of this, but it's their government and they alone have the ability to change it. I would rightly be called an interfering busybody if I thought otherwise.

edited 19th Jul '16 7:47:08 AM by Fighteer

Judging by past posts written by Knit Tie in the Russia thread about his countrymen, I highly doubt that.