As European Union lawmakers in the Commission, Parliament and Council debate a new data protection law, the EU’s data protection watchdog has chimed in, expressing some concerns and saying individuals’ privacy rights should be at the core of the legislation.Although he is perhaps best placed to offer an opinion on the matter, legislators have no obligation to listen to European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) Giovanni Buttarelli, who released his own proposed draft of the law on Monday.A lot is at stake, said Buttarelli. “This reform will shape data processing for a generation which has no memory of living without the internet. The EU must therefore fully understand the implications of this act for individuals, and its sustainability in the face of technological development.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google is now requiring that publishers that carry its ads comply with a European Union directive and ask their site visitors’ for permission before setting cookies on their computers.Google spelled out the requirement in its new EU User Consent Policy for publishers that participate in services including AdSense, DoubleClick Ad Exchange and DoubleClick for Publishers.“If your websites are getting visitors from any of the countries in the European Union, you must comply with the EU user consent policy. We recommend you start working on a policy-compliant user consent mechanism today,” said Jason Woloz, Google’s security and privacy program manager for display and video ads, in a blog postTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
An IT security drill went off the tracks in Belgium, prompting a regional government office to apologize to European high-speed train operator Thalys for involving it without warning.Belgium’s Flemish regional government sent a mock phishing email to about 20,000 of its employees to see how they would react.The email purported to be a booking confirmation from Thalys for a trip from Brussels to Paris, including a stay in a fancy hotel. The cost—almost €20,000 (about US$22,000)—would be charged to the recipient’s credit card unless the person cancelled within three days, the email said. To cancel the trip, the email instructed recipients to send their credit card information to Thalys, Belgian media reported.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
An IT security drill went off the tracks in Belgium, prompting a regional government office to apologize to European high-speed train operator Thalys for involving it without warning.Belgium’s Flemish regional government sent a mock phishing email to about 20,000 of its employees to see how they would react.SLAPPED! Tech industry's biggest FINE$ of 2015The email purported to be a booking confirmation from Thalys for a trip from Brussels to Paris, including a stay in a fancy hotel. The cost—almost €20,000 (about US$22,000)—would be charged to the recipient’s credit card unless the person cancelled within three days, the email said. To cancel the trip, the email instructed recipients to send their credit card information to Thalys, Belgian media reported.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Air passengers entering or leaving the European Union could soon have their personal details stored and shared among EU countries, after lawmakers voted Wednesday to move forward with the proposal.The creation of the passenger name record (PNR) system, recording such details as who flew where, when, and how they booked, is intended to help law enforcers fight terrorism and serious crime, but civil rights groups say it is disproportionate and undermines fundamental privacy rights.The European Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE) quickly dealt with almost 900 amendments filed on the proposal, including two calling for its outright rejection, before agreeing to enter negotiations on a final text with the European Commission and the Council of the EU, composed of representatives of national governments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Chinese networking giant Huawei has bought the software-defined networking (SDN) division of Irish telecom software maker Amartus.Amartus’ senior team and product staff in Ireland will join Huawei, which sees the acquisition as a way to expand its investment in research and development in Ireland and Europe, it said in a news release.The part of privately held Amartus that remains unsold will continue serving current customers and will focus on providing telecom software development, integration expertise and services to vendors and service providers.Amartus’s main product is Chameleon SDS, which it describes as a “service orchestration platform” for cloud and network services. It allows telecom operators to control networks virtually and automate the delivery of network services.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google must respect the European Union’s ‘right to be forgotten’ court ruling on all its sites, not just those it says target EU countries, the French data protection authority has ruled, giving the company 15 days to comply.The French National Commission on Computing and Liberty (CNIL) ordered Google to remove the affected search results on all its domains, including google.com, or face a fine of up to €300,000 (about $337,000). So far, Google has only removed such results from those of its sites it says target EU users, including google.fr or google.de. French residents need only click the “Use Google.com” link on the google.fr homepage to have access to unfiltered search results.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
All software and hardware in the German parliamentary network might need to be replaced. More than four weeks after a cyberattack, the government hasn’t managed to erase spyware from the system, according to a news report.Trojans introduced to the Bundestag network are still working and are still sending data from the internal network to an unknown destination, several anonymous parliament sources told German publication Der Spiegel.In May, parliament IT specialists discovered hackers were trying to infiltrate the network. So far, they have been unable to mitigate the attack.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Anticipating the approval of stricter data protection rules in the European Union, cloud storage startup Zettabox bets it will be able to compete against bigger rivals by guaranteeing customers that their data will be housed in Europe.Zettabox, whose service came out of beta on Wednesday, is entering a market dominated by U.S. cloud providers. To differentiate itself, Zettabox is setting up storage space in data centers across the continent so companies and governments can store data in their home countries if they want to.Zettabox has offices in London and Prague and was founded by James Kinsella and Robert McNeal, U.S. executives who have been working on the service for over two years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In an effort to put an end to the bulk data collection of phone records and other large datasets from millions of people, campaign group Privacy International has filed a complaint with a U.K. court.The complaint was filed with the U.K. Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which deals with claims against U.K. intelligence agencies, including the country’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). It is meant to put an end to bulk data collection that was already banned in the U.S.Last Tuesday, the U.S. Senate passed the USA Freedom Actwhich put a stop to the old U.S. National Security Agency’s (NSA) bulk collection of domestic telephone records, restoring a limited telephone records program.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
European governments will be able to review the source code of Microsoft products to confirm they don’t contain security backdoors, at a transparency center the company opened in Brussels on Wednesday.The center will give governments the chance to review and assess the source code of Microsoft enterprise products and to access important security information about threats and vulnerabilities in a secure environment, said Matt Thomlinson, Vice President of Microsoft Security in a blog post. By opening the center, Microsoft wants to continue building trust with governments around the world, he added.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
After years of thorny negotiations, top EU and U.S. officials say they are close to agreement on two privacy accords that would regulate the transfer of personal data of European citizens to the U.S.At stake is the ability of U.S. and European companies and governments to share data about private citizens for commercial and law enforcement purposes.A version of one of the two privacy deals being discussed, the Safe Harbor accord, has been in force for years but is being renegotiated. Failure to reach agreement on how to change the accord would spell serious trouble for companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter, which have relied on it to transmit data on EU citizens to the U.S. for processing and storage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Disconnect.me, maker of an Android privacy app banned from the Play store, has filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commssion accusing Google of abusing its dominant market position.The complaint could add fuel to an ongoing European Union antitrust investigation of Google’s business practices.Google banned the Disconnect Mobile app last year, saying it violated its developer distribution agreement.Disconnect Mobile routes traffic through an encrypted Virtual Private Network (VPN) tunnel, which makes it harder to track users. By installing a special network profile, the app also blocks ads, tracking services and suspected malware sites, both inside apps and in Android’s browser.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google has launched a centralized hub that lets users manage the privacy and security controls of all its services, and introduced a site with information about these topics.The hub, called My Account, is not the first effort from Google to centralize settings: in 2009, it introduced a dashboard to let users control settings on most services on one page.On My Account, people can control settings for Search, Maps, YouTube, Gmail and other products in one place, Google said in a blog post on Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Social network Path will soon be under new ownership.The privacy-focused service found few friends in its native San Francisco, notching up just 10 million regular users in five years of existence, most of them in Southeast Asia.That geographical focus, though, has caught the attention of Daum Kakao Communications, the South Korean company behind the popular instant messaging platform KakaoTalk, which sees Path as the perfect way for it to expand internationally.Social networking services need to reach a critical mass of users to survive in a community. Some become global successes, but others succeed only regionally. Google’s Orkut found that mass only in Brazil before closing last September, while Path found success in Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia, where it is one of the top three social networking services, according to Daum Kakao.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
German telecom and Internet operators could once again be forced to store customer traffic and location metadata for police investigation purposes, five years after a previous data retention law was declared unconstitutional.The draft data retention law unveiled on Wednesday would oblige providers to store call and Internet traffic metadata for a maximum of 10 weeks while location data would have to be stored for four weeks, the German government said.The measure is meant to help law enforcement agencies in their fight against terrorism and serious crime. According to the government, it strikes the right balance between freedom and security in the digital world.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
German telecom and Internet operators could once again be forced to store customer traffic and location metadata for police investigation purposes, five years after a previous data retention law was declared unconstitutional.The draft data retention law unveiled on Wednesday would oblige providers to store call and Internet traffic metadata for a maximum of 10 weeks while location data would have to be stored for four weeks, the German government said.The measure is meant to help law enforcement agencies in their fight against terrorism and serious crime. According to the government, it strikes the right balance between freedom and security in the digital world.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Russian Internet company Yandex has released a beta version of its new browser that the company says is more privacy-friendly than an earlier build.Unlike an alpha version released last year, the Yandex.Browser beta doesn’t send usage statistics to the company by default. However, other information will still be shared, so it remains to be seen whether the privacy safeguards will be compelling enough to attract a substantial number of users, as the company hopes.Yandex, which runs Russia’s most popular search engine, decided to make this beta version more privacy friendly than the alpha in response to feedback from users in Germany, Canada and the U.S.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Uber, known for its no-hassle, no-cash payment system for rides, will start testing cash payments in India in the coming week.The experiment will take place in the city of Hyderabad and marks a change from the credit card payment strategy that it has favored so far. It is the first time Uber will accept cash payments, the company said on Tuesday.Hyderabad was chosen because Uber has many drivers and riders in the city, whose population was estimated at about 8.6 million people by the U.S. government in 2014. People can select the cash option up front in the Uber app and pay the amount shown at the end of the ride, it said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Three men accused of selling and exporting over $10 million worth of fake Cisco networking equipment into the U.S. have been arrested by U.K. police.The men are believed to have imported and exported counterfeit Cisco equipment through a company website and telesales. The arrests, made last week by the U.K. Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), were announced Thursday.“Last week’s action saw PIPCU dismantle a criminal gang suspected of cheating the computer industry out of millions of pounds,” said PIPCU Detective Inspector Mick Dodge, in a statement. Using counterfeit products could also seriously harm businesses that use them, since company network integrity could be compromised and significant network outages could occur, Dodge said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Loek Essers