Joel Wallenstrom Contributor Joel Wallenstrom is president and chief executive of Wickr, a secure communications company. Before Wickr, Joel co-founded iSEC Partners, one of the world’s leading information security research teams, later acquired by NCC Group, and served as Director for Strategic Alliances at @stake, one of the very first computer security companies in the […]
View More What business leaders can learn from Jeff Bezos’ leaked textsCategory: General Data Protection Regulation
Europe agrees platform rules to tackle unfair business practices
The European Union’s political institutions have reached agreement over new rules designed to boost transparency around online platform businesses and curb unfair practices to support traders and other businesses that rely on digital intermediaries for discovery and sales. The European Commission proposed a regulation for fairness and transparency in online platform trading last April. And late yesterday […]
View More Europe agrees platform rules to tackle unfair business practicesIs Europe closing in on an antitrust fix for surveillance technologists?
The German Federal Cartel Office’s decision to order Facebook to change how it processes users’ personal data this week is a sign the antitrust tide could at last be turning against platform power. One European Commission source we spoke to, who was commenting in a personal capacity, described it as “clearly pioneering” and “a big deal”, […]
View More Is Europe closing in on an antitrust fix for surveillance technologists?German antitrust office limits Facebook’s data-gathering
A lengthy antitrust probe into how Facebook gathers data on users has resulted in Germany’s competition watchdog banning the social network giant from combining data on users across its own suite of social platforms without their consent. The investigation of Facebook data-gathering practices began in March 2016. The decision by Germany’s Federal Cartel Office, announced […]
View More German antitrust office limits Facebook’s data-gatheringFacebook warned over privacy risks of merging messaging platforms
Facebook’s lead data protection regulator in Europe has asked the company for an “urgent briefing” regarding plans to integrate the underlying infrastructure of its three social messaging platforms. In a statement posted to its website late last week the Irish Data Protection Commission writes: “Previous proposals to share data between Facebook companies have given rise […]
View More Facebook warned over privacy risks of merging messaging platformsEverything you need to know about Facebook, Google’s app scandal
Facebook and Google landed in hot water with Apple this week after two investigations by TechCrunch revealed the misuse of internal-only certificates — leading to their revocation, which led to a day of downtime at the two tech giants. Confused about what happened? Here’s everything you need to know. How did all this start, and […]
View More Everything you need to know about Facebook, Google’s app scandalFacebook’s VPN app puts spotlight on kids’ consent
Facebook could face fresh scrutiny in Europe following a TechCrunch report on its use of a VPN app to monitor people’s smartphone activity — including teenagers as young as 13. The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) told us it’s asked Facebook to provide more information on what data is collected via the market research program, codenamed ‘Project […]
View More Facebook’s VPN app puts spotlight on kids’ consentGoogle and IAB ad category lists show “massive leakage of highly intimate data”, GDPR complaint claims
Male impotence, substance abuse, right-wing politics, left-wing politics, sexually transmitted diseases, cancer, mental health. Those are just a few of the advertising labels that Google’s adtech infrastructure routinely sticks to Internet users as it watches and tracks what they do online in order to target them with behavioral ads. Intimate and highly sensitive inferences such […]
View More Google and IAB ad category lists show “massive leakage of highly intimate data”, GDPR complaint claimsYouth-run agency AIESEC exposed over 4 million intern applications
AIESEC, a non-profit that bills itself as the “world’s largest youth-run organization,” exposed more than four million intern applications with personal and sensitive information on a server without a password. Bob Diachenko, an independent security researcher, found an unprotected Elasticsearch database containing the applications on January 11, a little under a month after the database […]
View More Youth-run agency AIESEC exposed over 4 million intern applicationsPrivacy campaigner Schrems slaps Amazon, Apple, Netflix, others with GDPR data access complaints
European privacy campaigner Max Schrems has filed a fresh batch of strategic complaints at tech giants, including Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Spotify and YouTube. The complaints, filed via his non-profit privacy and digital rights organization, noyb, relate to how the services respond to data access requests, per regional data protection rules. Article 15 of Europe’s General […]
View More Privacy campaigner Schrems slaps Amazon, Apple, Netflix, others with GDPR data access complaintsEurope issues a deadline for US’ Privacy Shield compliance
The European Commission has finally given the U.S. a deadline related to the much criticized data transfer mechanism known as the EU-US Privacy Shield . But it’s only asking for the U.S. to nominate a permanent ombudsperson — to handle any EU citizens’ complaints — by February 28, 2019. If a permanent ombudsperson is not […]
View More Europe issues a deadline for US’ Privacy Shield complianceThis early GDPR adtech strike puts the spotlight on consent
What does consent as a valid legal basis for processing personal data look like under Europe’s updated privacy rules? It may sound like an abstract concern but for online services that rely on things being done with user data in order to monetize free-to-access content this is a key question now the region’s General Data Protection […]
View More This early GDPR adtech strike puts the spotlight on consent