For the first time in four years and since being acquired by Facebook, WhatsApp is updating its terms and conditions, as well as its privacy policy.
Part of this update includes WhatsApp sharing your account information with Facebook to, among other things, provide better targeted ads. What information is being shared with Facebook? The updated WhatsApp FAQ page says that the phone number you used to sign up for WhatsApp with will be shared, as well as the last time you used the service. Facebook will not be able to see your messages, photos or other media you share. And any information will not be publicly visible to anyone using Facebook.
Read moreSay you’re scrolling through your Facebook Newsfeed and you encounter an ad so eerily well-suited, it seems someone has possibly read your brain. Maybe your mother’s birthday is coming up, and Facebook’s showing ads for her local florist.
Or maybe you just made a joke aloud about wanting a Jeep, and Instagram’s promoting Chrysler dealerships. Whatever the subject, you’ve seen ads like this. You’ve wondered how they found their way to you. Facebook, in its omniscience, knows that you’re wondering — and it would like to reassure you. The social network just revamped its ad preference settings to make them significantly easier for users to understand.
Read moreFacebook, Instagram, Twitter, VK, Google's Picasa and Youtube were handing over user data access to a Chicago-based Startup which then sold this data to law enforcement agencies for surveillance purposes.
Government records obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union revealed that the big technology corporations gave "special access" to Geofeedia. Geofeedia is a controversial social media monitoring tool that pulls social media feeds via APIs and other means of access and then makes it searchable and accessible to its clients, who can search by location or keyword to quickly find recently posted and publicly available contents.
Read moreThe German data protection agency has ordered Facebook to stop collecting user data from its WhatsApp messenger app and delete any data it has already received.
The social network announced in August that it would begin sharing data from its 1 billion-plus user base, including phone numbers, from WhatsApp users with Facebook for the purpose of targeted ads. It gave users the option of opting out of the data being used for advertising purposes, but did not allow them to opt out of the data sharing between WhatsApp and Facebook.
Read moreThe Facebook-owned WhatsApp will give its users’ personal information to its parent company and plans to make it easier for businesses to contact subscribers. WhatsApp claims the changes won’t endanger privacy.
WhatsApp published a statement as part of a revision of its terms and privacy policy. “By coordinating more with Facebook, we'll be able to do things like track basic metrics about how often people use our services and better fight spam on WhatsApp. And by connecting your phone number with Facebook's systems, Facebook can offer better friend suggestions and show you more relevant ads if you have an account with them,” said the California-based company.
Read moreFacebook is going to start forcing ads to appear for all users of its desktop website, even if they use ad-blocking software. The social network will change the way advertising is loaded into its desktop website to make its ad units considerably more difficult for ad blockers to detect. User adoption of ad-blocking software has grown rapidly in recent years, particularly outside of the US.
According to estimates by online advertising trade body the Interactive Advertising Bureau, 26% of US internet users now use ad blockers on their desktop devices. Facebook declined to comment when asked on what portion of its desktop users have ad-blocking software installed.
Read moreFacebook users in the Czech Republic and Slovakia faced a wave of fake news reports on a “deadly attack in Prague”. When a user clicks on this hoax, they are redirected to a phishing webpage which tries to trick him/her into sharing their Facebook credentials.
“From what we have learned about this campaign, the attack may have been designed to continue in other countries,” warns ESET Malware Researcher. The fake news on the alleged terrorist attack in Prague was easy to debunk as the location in the image clearly didn’t resemble Prague, nor any other major city in Europe. Despite this, the scam spread quickly.
Read moreLast week Facebook posted a video of its solar-powered Aquila drone’s inaugural flight. The aircraft’s design is of flying wing type, with a wingspan close to that of Boeing 737, covered with solar panels.
Besides solar panels, the drone is equipped with batteries which serve as a source of energy during nighttime. Pillars hold four electric engines which rotate propellers. There is also an on-board computer that navigates the aircraft through the predefined trajectory and is also responsible for communication with the ground. To contribute to the drone’s lightweight construction, it lacks wheels and take off using a special wheeled platform pushed by a vehicle.
Read moreFor around 48 hours, crooks used Facebook spam messages to distribute malware that hijacked user accounts to carry out operations such as giving likes and sharing unwanted content.
A security researcher discovered the campaign, which was spreading among Facebook accounts in the form of a spam message received from a friend that informed users about being mentioned in a comment. Accessing the link would start the first phase of the two-stage attack, which would secretly download a trojan on the user's computer. During the second stage, this trojan would download and secretly install an extension in the user's Chrome browser, if found on the infected system.
Read moreDon’t worry, Mark Zuckerberg: Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you. And as the richest millennial in the world, you can probably be confident that someone, somewhere, is after you.
Which is why it makes perfect sense that you’ve joined the growing number of people doing a little DIY hardware hacking, and disabling their computer’s webcam and microphone. Even if a hacker manage to penetrate your security, they’re not going to be seeing you in your tighty whities. Zuckerberg tapes over his webcam. The billionaire made the revelation in a post intended to promote Instagram reaching its latest milestone of half a billion monthly active users.
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