[ad_1] Google has confirmed the issue to Engadget and offered a workaround. “We’ve been working on an option for users to require their eyes to be open to unlock the phone, which will be delivered in a software update in the coming months,” the company wrote in a statement. “In the meantime, if any Pixel […]
Category: Security
Mercedes app was leaking car owners’ data to other users
[ad_1] Features like real-time location tracking and remote unlocks thankfully didn’t work, but it was still serious — you effectively had a window into the lives of other Mercedes owners. The firm hasn’t commented on the report as of this writing. Mercedes took the app offline for “site maintenance” a few hours after the problem […]
California’s Earthquake Early Warning system rolls out statewide
[ad_1] This system doesn’t predict earthquakes, and after quake’s early this year failed to produce a notification on phones in Los Angeles, the threshold for a warning has been lowered to at least a magnitude 4.5 and Modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI) of 3, which is similar to a truck driving by outside your house. According […]
Senator Wyden pushes his ‘Mind Your Own Business’ privacy act forward
[ad_1] As The Verge reports, the bill would allow the FTC to set minimum privacy and cybersecurity standards for tech companies, issue fines up to four percent of a company’s annual revenue and make it a crime for senior execs to lie to the agency regarding privacy issues. It would empower state attorneys general to […]
Samsung will fix bug that lets any fingerprint unlock a Galaxy S10
[ad_1] “Samsung Electronics is aware of the case of the S10’s malfunctioning fingerprint recognition and will soon issue a software patch,” the company told Reuters in a statement. The problem has been deemed serious enough that an online bank in South Korea, KaKaobank, has advised owners to switch off fingerprint recognition until it’s resolved. It’s […]
Wizards Unite’ gathered location data while users slept
[ad_1] Kotaku looked at 25,000 location records shared with it by 10 players of Niantic games. It found that Niantic kept about three location records per minute of Wizards Unite gameplay. That was nearly twice as many records as it kept for Pokémon Go. In one case, Niantic had at least one location record taken […]
UK finally abandons its unworkable ‘porn block’ plan
[ad_1] Part 3 of the 2017 Digital Economy Act laid out a plan for a system where people could not access adult content unless they proved they were over 18. Rather than administer the system itself, the government farmed out responsibility to a third-party, the British Board of Film Classification. The BBFC is, itself, a […]
Facebook expands its reward program for data abuse reports
[ad_1] This might not go as far as some would like, since the permission requirement leaves researchers in a tough spot. While this increases the chances that a third party will be aware of and fix a data flaw, it also creates problems if the app or site creator doesn’t consent to testing. This doesn’t […]
One of Linux’s most important commands had a glaring security flaw
[ad_1] The quirk revolved around sudo’s treatment of user IDs. If you typed the command with a user ID of -1 or its unsigned equivalent 4294967295, it would treat you as if you had root access (user ID 0) even as it recorded the actual user ID in the log. The user IDs in question […]
Apple removes Hong Kong protest app following Chinese pressure
[ad_1] The app, which shares information on the location of pro-democracy protests and police activity in Hong Kong, was slammed by China Daily — owned by the Communist Party of China — for enabling “rioters in Hong Kong to go on violent acts,” adding that Apple has to “think about the consequences of its unwise […]