It was recently reported that DNA testing company 23andMe had shared its DNA data with the world’s ninth-largest pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). In a four-year agreement pioneered by scientists Hal Barron and Richard Scheller, 23andMe sold a $300-million stake while and GSK gets exclusive access to...
HR and tax services firm ComplyRight was recently sued for a data breach that exposed the data of around 662,000 individuals. Data including names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and Social Security numbers, some of which came from tax and W-2 forms, were compromised. While ComplyRight...
In its first public report for Congress, the NSA Inspector General condemned the spy agency for numerous instances of non-compliance and insufficiency in protecting the data of US citizens. The IG criticized in particular the facets of the agency's "Emerging Open Source Activities Branch," which performs...
Facebook and Twitter recently said that Europe’s new data privacy rules had caused the drop in users on their platforms. Facebook’s Chief Financial Officer David Wehner said that they already anticipated the declines that would be caused by the GDPR, and the impact was solely because...
Security expert Brian Krebs recently explained that LifeLock, an identity theft protection service, may have actually exposed its customers to attacks from scammers and phishers due to a vulnerability on its website. The flaw was discovered by security researcher and former customer Nathan Reese, who found...
The Privacy Commissioner of Canada recently issued a new warning to Canadians crossing the US border, saying that their devices can be searched and authorities may ask for passwords. Spokesperson Tobi Cohen said that the new guidelines includes information on “preclearance” site searches which gives U.S....
A civil liberties group issued this week a legal challenge against the UK Metropolitan Police’s use of Automatic Facial Recognition which is currently being piloted in London, with three other forces - Humberside, South Wales, and Leicestershire. The AFR uses CCTV or surveillance cameras to record...
The Securities Investors Association of Singapore (Sias) admitted this week that it had suffered a security breach in 2013 in which the data, including the names, NRIC numbers and telephone numbers of about 70,000 members had been leaked and copied. Sias general manager Richard Dyason informed...
Facebook executives said this week that the costs of improving privacy safeguards are likely to cut into profits for several years. It is said that the announcement had caused the tech giant’s stock to tumble as much as a quarter of their value last Wednesday. Chief...
Security researchers have recently voiced their concerns on the the new a standards initiative by Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter, saying that the project’s privacy implications need to be better vetted. Called the Data Transfer Project (DTP), the framework seeks to provide tools that can convert...