The question of accountability under national law for the wrongs committed by international companies has been debated and litigated for many years in many different courts and across many different countries…
New privacy rules are coming, and Australian websites will have to smarten up their act.
http://heatherbuckley.co.uk
On March 12 2014, the way Australian organisations will have to handle online privacy is going to change significantly. We investigated whether these organisations are ready and found in most cases, they’re…
Young children cannot consent to personal information being shared online, or understand the possible implications.
Lotus Carroll
Children consistently delight and surprise us, and make us hoot with laughter. It’s only natural to want to share these moments with friends and family. But the trend of posting information about our young…
Like butter wouldn’t melt: Francis Maude thinks we’re doing pretty well on cybersecurity.
Cabinet Office
Anyone who took the time to read the UK government’s latest update on its cybersecurity strategy could be forgiven for thinking that a man called Edward Snowden never existed. Most people who are even…
The backlash against state surveillance is growing stronger by the day.
ubiquit
More than 500 high-profile names, including authors, musicians and five Nobel laureates, have signed a petition to the United Nations calling for a bill of digital rights to be developed in the wake of…
Data protection may soon come at a price.
Randomskk
Data privacy is on our minds like never before. In a relatively small amount of time many of us have gone from carrying out our daily transactions in person to conducting them digitally. We pay energy…
How do you keep your private info under lock and key?
IntelFreePress
Twitter has announced it is introducing perfect forward secrecy to help users protect their information from spies and cyber-criminals. Even if we don’t realise it, we all rely on cryptography when we…
With more internet users going dark, will tech companies follow them?
Owen's/Flickr
With each new revelation of the scope of the American National Security Agency’s spying, perceptions of the importance of privacy are hardening around the world. Systematic monitoring of the world’s communications…
We turn in droves to the sites that know most about us.
The Next Web
You might think that as we grow increasingly concerned about the way our personal information is used online, we are choosing to turn away from those that infringe on our privacy. However, sites that adopt…
Twelve winters of grief for Hrothgar, for he had clicked ‘agree’ without reading to the end.
Helen Stratton
Have you ever tried reading Beowulf and decided it was a bit too hard to follow before giving up? How did you get on with War and Peace? If you struggled with either of these notoriously unwieldy classics…
Google plans on ditching cookies as a personal identifier and going with an in-house version.
Mark Poblete
The indelible digital footprint associated with your internet usage is worth gold to others. Around the world, online advertisers are expected to spend around $117 Billion this year alone. And it’s Google…
It turns out Australians really do care about online privacy – but is there a disconnect with lawmakers?
Robby Mueller
Two documents released this week highlight divergent views among the community and politicians. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) yesterday sought to reinforce its legitimacy…
You’re going to have to try a bit harder if you want to be really anonymous.
moirabot
The US National Security Agency and the UK’s GCHQ have upped the stakes in the battle for internet privacy by targeting users of Tor. Not only have the NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden up until this…
There are still places to hide online.
nataliej/Flickr
You may have seen reports over the weekend about yet another instalment of the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance system - this time a set of slides focused on cracking the Tor network, a…
It may be closed, but Silk Road was not the only online avenue to illegal goods and services.
lens-flare.de
You’ll have seen the owner of notorious online marketplace Silk Road, Ross William Ulbricht, was arrested in a San Francisco public library on Wednesday, California time. But how does the administrator…
The number of people in Britain who are using the internet has risen substantially, reaching 78% of the population aged 14 years and over as compared with 59% in 2003. But according to the latest survey…
Banking is global at every level. Get used to it and decide what’s important.
Hakan Dahlstrom
Another day brings yet another “revelation” based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden. This time, Der Spiegel revealed the details of an NSA programme known as “follow the money”, through which the agency…
Legally, you’ve agreed to have your emails scanned – but what about morally?
enggul
According to Nobel Laureate Gabriel García Márquez, “all human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret”. It is in our nature to want privacy, yet in the internet age, it has never been easier…
You might want to forget that picture, but the internet won’t.
Miia Ranta
Justice ministers from across Europe sat down in Brussels yesterday to discuss some tricky issues for internet privacy, one of the most controversial of which was the right to be forgotten. After the NSA…
What does your email metadata reveal about you?
Image from www.shutterstock.com
Researchers at MIT’s Media Lab have created an application called Immersion, which uses your email to display all of the people you communicate with in a highly visual way. Although it was designed primarily…