Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a civil lawsuit accusing the privacy-minded company of deploying its virtual assistant Siri to eavesdrop on people using its iPhone and other trendy devices.
The proposed settlement filed Tuesday in an Oakland, California, federal court would resolve a 5-year-old lawsuit revolving around allegations that Apple surreptitiously activated Siri to record conversations through iPhones and other devices equipped with the virtual assistant for more than a decade. The alleged recordings occurred even when people didn’t seek to activate the virtual assistant with the trigger words, “Hey, Siri.”
Read more…
Source: CBS News
Related:
- Medicare data leaks, but who was breached?
July 4, 2017
Medicare numbers in Australia became a lot less useful as a proof-of-identity, with the Australian Federal Police investigating how an unknown number of records ended up for sale on a Tor site. The report first surfaced via The Guardian’s Australian site, with journalist Paul Farrell reporting he purchased his own record for around AU$30 on the ...
- Researchers Crack 1024-bit RSA Encryption in GnuPG Crypto Library
July 3, 2017
Security boffins have discovered a critical vulnerability in a GnuPG cryptographic library that allowed the researchers to completely break RSA-1024 and successfully extract the secret RSA key to decrypt data. Gnu Privacy Guard (GnuPG or GPG) is popular open source encryption software used by many operating systems from Linux and FreeBSD to Windows and macOS X. It’s ...
- Civil rights warriors get green light to challenge UK mass surveillance
June 30, 2017
The High Court in London, England, has given Liberty permission to challenge parts of the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act. The act, which was passed into law last year, offers the state unprecedented powers to monitor the population en masse, and to collect and retain bulk personal and communications data. It has been roundly condemned by privacy and ...
- Virgin Media tells 800,000 users to change passwords over hub hacking risk
June 23, 2017
Virgin Media is advising more than 800,000 customers with a specific router to change their password immediately after an investigation found hackers could gain access to it. Virgin Media said the risk to customers with a Super Hub 2 router was small, but advised them to change both their network and router passwords if they were ...
- Breach at UK.gov’s Cyber Essentials scheme exposes users to phishing attacks
June 21, 2017
The operation behind the UK government’s Cyber Essentials scheme has suffered a breach exposing the email addresses of registered consultancies, it told them today. The scheme’s badges are required by all suppliers bidding for “certain sensitive and personal information-handling contracts”. Companies were notified of the problem, which leaves them at greater risk of phishing attack, through ...
- FIN10 Extorting Canadian Mining Companies, Casinos
June 20, 2017
Cybercriminals targeting casinos and mining firms in North America have extorted as much as $620,000 per theft during a four-year run in which they threaten victims with the destruction or public release of stolen data. Between 2013 and 2016, mostly Canadian firms were hit with nearly a dozen seemingly unrelated hacks, but after an analysis of the ...