By Chris Soghoian, Principal Technologist and Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 9:55am
Yesterday, we filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asking the agency to investigate the major wireless carriers for failing to warn their customers about unpatched security flaws in the software running on their phones. These companies—AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile—have sold millions of smartphones to consumers running versions of Google’s Android operating system. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these phones never receive critical software security updates, exposing consumers and their private data to significant cybersecurity-related risks.
By Chris Soghoian, Principal Technologist and Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 7:16pm
Today, the FTC announced a settlement with Epic Marketplace, an online advertising company that had abused a security flaw in popular web browsers in order to covertly “sniff” other websites visited by consumers.
According to the FTC complaint, for a period including between March 2010 and August 2011, the online advertising company Epic Marketplace probed the browsing history of visitors to popular websites including CNN, the Red Cross, and Orbitz in order to determine which other web sites those consumers had previously visited. The pages revealed by this snooping included those relating to fertility issues, impotence, menopause, incontinence, disability insurance, credit repair, debt relief, and personal bankruptcy.
By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:39pm
Yesterday the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) took an important step towards protecting children’s privacy online when it formally published new rules interpreting the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The FTC updated existing definitions to recognize that “personal information” can include elements like Internet Protocol (IP) information and location information. These changes will help ensure that the personal information of kids isn’t collected without parental permission. Perhaps more significantly, it establishes an important precedent for how information on all of us should be treated going forward.
