Privacy and data protection

In an effort to cover a trail of messages between him and his mistress, former CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus reportedly used a tactic favored by terrorists and teenagers -- communicating via draft e-mail.

Petraeus and Paula Broadwell, the co-author of Petraeus' biography and the woman he was having an affair with, set up private Gmail accounts in order to communicate, the Associated Press reported today. In addition to creating the e-mails under false identities, Petraeus and Broadwell decided to exchange some messages using the draft function, as an added precaution.

Instead of actually e-mailing each other, they would compose … Read more

Social media management company Hootsuite has managed a social faux pas by sending e-mails to users that included the names and e-mail addresses of other users.

The personal information was included in thousands of e-mails sent yesterday warning users that the free 60-day Hootsuite Pro trial was about to expire. Many of the e-mails contained the e-mail addresses of other users in the "To" field.

Affected Hootsuite users took to Twitter to voice their displeasure:

Thank you @hootsuite for sending me 1624 emails and sharing my email address in the clear with 971+ people I don't know.… Read more

Staffers in the SEC's Trading and Markets Division left their computers totally unprotected from possible security attacks, forcing the organization to scramble to determine if any sensitive data was stolen, Reuters reported, citing unidentified sources with knowledge of the situation.

As it turns out, the trading and markets division is charged with ensuring that markets don't fall victim to cyberattacks.

Reuters also reports that the staffers attended the annual Black Hat Conference for hackers and brought the unprotected computers with them.

Soon after the security issues were identified, the SEC hired a third-party company and paid it "… Read more

Windows 8 and Windows RT will receive their first security fixes when next week's Patch Tuesday rolls around from Microsoft.

The patches are designed to prevent "remote code execution," which means they'll plug holes in the OS that could let someone remotely run malicious code on a PC.

Beyond securing Windows 8, the fixes cover just about every other version of Windows, including XP, Vista, and Windows 7 as well as Server 2003, 2008, and 2012.

The rollout includes six security patches, four of which are considered critical, one important, and one moderate. Most of the … Read more

Research in Motion has won key government security certification for its BlackBerry 10 operating system months ahead of its launch, allowing the smartphone to be used in secure government workplaces.

The FIPS 140-2 certification signals that U.S. and Canadian government agencies, along with private firms, can deploy BlackBerry 10 smartphones as soon as they launch, with a guarantee that data stored on the devices is appropriately secured and encrypted.

FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) certification is issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and it's a must for mobile platforms before the U.S. government can … Read more

China poses the largest threat in cyberspace, with its hackers increasingly targeting U.S military computers and defense contractors, according to a draft of a Congressional report obtained by Bloomberg.

The report, produced by the U.S.- China Economic and Security Review Commission, found that China's persistence and its advances in hacking activities over the past year poses an increasing threat to information systems and users.

The risks include attempts to blind or disrupt U.S. intelligence and communications satellites, weapons targeting systems, and navigation computers, Bloomberg reported, citing an anonymous U.S. intelligence official.

While the attacks … Read more

Facebook this weekend disabled a loophole that might have allowed some accounts to be accessed without a password.

The vulnerability, which was posted to Hacker News on Friday, could potentially have allowed an unauthorized user to access another person's Facebook account.

The flaw centered on e-mails sent out by the social network which contained links that, once clicked, would log a user straight into a Facebook account without the need for any secondary authentication, such as entering a password. The e-mails could be discovered through a simple Google search query, with 1.3 million accounts potentially open to the … Read more

If you're an average online American, you're worth about $22 to the U.S. presidential campaigns, at least in terms of ad cost per vote. That's according to a new vote calculator produced by online privacy startup Abine, which asks seven multiple choice questions to gauge what you cost per ad. … Read more

Making good on her promise, California Attorney General Kamala Harris has continued her crackdown on mobile-app developers and companies for not doing more to ensure users' privacy. She announced today that she'll be sending letters to 100 app developers and companies to formally notify them that they're violating California's privacy laws.

"Protecting the privacy of online consumers is a serious law enforcement matter," Harris said in a statement today. "We have worked hard to ensure that app developers are aware of their legal obligations to respect the privacy of Californians, but it is critical … Read more