Robert Anderson Contributor Robert Anderson served for 21 years in the FBI, retiring as executive assistant director of the Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch. He is currently an advisor at The Chertoff Group and the chief executive of Cyber Defense Labs. Over the past several years, the law enforcement community has grown increasingly concerned […]
View More Law enforcement needs to protect citizens and their dataCategory: General Data Protection Regulation
EU gov’t and public health sites lousy with adtech, study finds
A study of tracking cookies running on government and public sector health websites in the European Union has found commercial adtech to be operating pervasively even in what should be core not-for-profit corners of the Internet. The researchers used searches including queries related to HIV, mental health, pregnancy, alcoholism and cancer to examine how frequently […]
View More EU gov’t and public health sites lousy with adtech, study findsPassbase is building a full stack identity engine with privacy baked in
Digital identity startup Passbase has bagged $600k in pre-seed funding led by a group of business angel investors from Alphabet, Stanford, Kleiner Perkins, EY; as well as seed fund investment from Chicago-based Upheaval Investments and Seedcamp. The 2018-founded Silicon Valley-based startup — whose co-founder we chatted to briefly on camera at Disrupt Berlin — is […]
View More Passbase is building a full stack identity engine with privacy baked inGearbest security lapse exposed millions of shopping orders
Gearbest, a Chinese online shopping giant, has exposed millions of user profiles and shopping orders, security researchers have found. Security researcher Noam Rotem found an Elasticsearch server leaking millions of records each week, including customer data, orders, and payment records. The server wasn’t protected with a password, allowing anyone to search the data. Gearbest ranks […]
View More Gearbest security lapse exposed millions of shopping ordersOnline platforms need a super regulator and public interest tests for mergers, says UK parliament report
The latest policy recommendations for regulating powerful Internet platforms comes from a U.K. House of Lord committee that’s calling for an overarching digital regulator to be set up to plug gaps in domestic legislation and work through any overlaps of rules. “The digital world does not merely require more regulation but a different approach to […]
View More Online platforms need a super regulator and public interest tests for mergers, says UK parliament reportDon’t break up big tech — regulate data access, says EU antitrust chief
Breaking up tech giants should be a measure of last resort, the European Union’s competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, has suggested. “To break up a company, to break up private property would be very far reaching and you would need to have a very strong case that it would produce better results for consumers in the […]
View More Don’t break up big tech — regulate data access, says EU antitrust chiefThe other smartphone business
With the smartphone operating system market sewn up by Google’s Android platform, which has a close to 90% share globally, leaving Apple’s iOS a slender (but lucrative) premium top-slice, a little company called Jolla and its Linux-based Sailfish OS is a rare sight indeed: A self-styled ‘independent alternative’ that’s still somehow in business. The Finnish […]
View More The other smartphone businessCookie walls don’t comply with GDPR, says Dutch DPA
Cookie walls that demand a website visitor agrees to their Internet browsing being tracked for ad-targeting as the ‘price’ of entry to the site are not compliant with European data protection law, the Dutch data protection agency clarified yesterday. The DPA said it has received dozens of complaints from Internet users who had had their […]
View More Cookie walls don’t comply with GDPR, says Dutch DPAHuawei opens a cybersecurity transparency center in the heart of Europe
5G kit maker Huawei opened a Cyber Security Transparency center in Brussels yesterday as the Chinese tech giant continues to try to neutralize suspicion in Western markets that its networking gear could be used for espionage by the Chinese state. Huawei announced its plan to open a European transparency center last year but giving a […]
View More Huawei opens a cybersecurity transparency center in the heart of EuropePrivacy complaints received by tech giants’ favorite EU watchdog up more than 2x since GDPR
A report by the lead data watchdog for a large number of tech giants operating in Europe shows a significant increase in privacy complaints and data breach notifications since the region’s updated privacy framework came into force last May. The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC)’s annual report, published today, covers the period May 25, aka […]
View More Privacy complaints received by tech giants’ favorite EU watchdog up more than 2x since GDPRLinkedIn forced to ‘pause’ mentioned in the news feature in Europe after complaints about ID mix-ups
LinkedIn has been forced to ‘pause’ a feature in Europe in which the platform emails members’ connections when they’ve been ‘mentioned in the news’. The regulatory action follows a number of data protection complaints after LinkedIn’s algorithms incorrect matched members to news articles — triggering a review of the feature and subsequent suspension order. The […]
View More LinkedIn forced to ‘pause’ mentioned in the news feature in Europe after complaints about ID mix-upsEven the IAB warned adtech risks EU privacy rules
A privacy complaint targeting the behavioral advertising industry has a new piece of evidence that shows the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) shedding doubt on whether it’s possible to obtain informed consent from web users for the programmatic ad industry’s real-time bidding (RTB) system to broadcast their personal data. The adtech industry functions by harvesting web users’ data, […]
View More Even the IAB warned adtech risks EU privacy rules