Tag: Privacy

Stop the war between privacy and security – EU data watchdog

Security and privacy are not mutually exclusive says Europe’s privacy watchdog – and people should stop saying they are.

The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), Giovanni Buttarelli, told a Brussels conference he was concerned that “the objective of cyber-security may be misused to justify measures which weaken protection of [data protection] rights.”

“Cyber-security must not become an excuse for disproportionate processing of personal data. Let’s not forget that when the European Court of Justice (ECJ) last year found the Data Retention Directive to be invalid, one of the reasons was concern about the inadequacy of the data security provisions in the directive,” he continued.

Although some commentators interpreted the ECJ ruling to mean that data must be stored within national borders, Buttarelli disagreed.

“Physical location is not the determining factor in security. Rather, it is degree of control, accountability and responsibility which data controllers demonstrate when processing personal information. They must take full responsibility for all the measures they implement, regardless of the technology they use. Responsibility must not vanish in the clouds,” said the newly appointed EDPS.

Negotiations on a new Data Protection Regulation are currently underway and Buttarelli says that accountability should not be sacrificed in the inevitable compromise.

“One tool for reinforcing accountability is the introduction of a general data breach notification obligation, which will force controllers take the necessary organisational and procedural measures,” he said, pinning his colours to at least one legislative mast.

Link (The Register)

Report: Facebook tracks all visitors, even if you’re not a user and opted out

Facebook tracks the Web-browsing activities of all visitors to the facebook.com domain even if they are not a Facebook user, according to new research from Europe. The report updates work from earlier this year, which found that Facebook’s updated privacy policy breached EU law.

The research has been commissioned by the Belgian data protection agency, which is investigating Facebook. It was a collaboration between the Interdisciplinary Centre for Law and ICT/Centre for Intellectual Property Rights (ICRI/CIR) at the University of Leuven and the Department of Studies on Media, Information, and Telecommunication (SMIT) of the Vrije Universiteit Brussels.

This newly found tracking, used to provide targeted advertising, is carried out through Facebook’s social widget, the Like Button. A cookie is placed in the browser when someone visits any page in the facebook.com domain, including sections that do not require an account. For visitors that are not Facebook users, the cookie contains a unique identifier, and it has an expiration date of two years. Facebook users receive additional cookies that identify them uniquely. Once those cookies have been set, Facebook will receive them for every subsequent visit to a website that uses Facebook’s social widget. That applies whether or not the Facebook user is logged in to his or her account and whether or not the visitor to the third-party site actually uses the social widget.

Which VPN Services Take Your Anonymity Seriously? 2015 Edition

VPN services have become an important tool to counter the growing threat of Internet surveillance, but unfortunately not all VPNs are as anonymous as one might hope. In fact, some VPN services log users’ IP-addresses and other private info for months. To find out how anonymous VPNs really are, TF asked the leading providers about their logging practices and other privacy sensitive policies.

spyBy now most Internet users are well aware of the fact that pretty much every step they take on the Internet is logged or monitored.

To prevent their IP-addresses from being visible to the rest of the Internet, millions of people have signed up to a VPN service. Using a VPN allows users to use the Internet anonymously and prevent snooping.

Unfortunately, not all VPN services are as anonymous as they claim, as several incidents have shown in the past.

By popular demand we now present the fourth iteration of our VPN services “logging” review. In addition to questions about logging practices, we also asked VPN providers about other privacy sensitive policies, so prospective users can make an informed decision.

Link (TorrentFreak)