data

A German court has ruled that Facebook accounts can be inherited. It's the latest attempt to solve the problem of what happens to online data after somebody dies. The ruling came from the Federal Court of Justice, Germany's highest court, and ended ... a six-year legal process. It began with the death of a 15-year-old who died when she was hit by a train. Her parents asked Facebook to give them access to her account, meaning they could see the contents of private message exchanges. They said they wanted to find any clues as to whether the death was suicide or an accident. As well as giving the ... (view more)

iPhones will now automatically share precise location details with 911 operators during emergency calls. It's part of an overhaul of the emergency phone system for the mobile age. The change will come in iOS12, the next edition of the Apple ... operating system, which will be released this fall. It means that by default the location is transmitted when the phone makes an emergency call. Apple says the data collected and shared in this process will only ever be used for emergencies. (Source: theverge.com ) Precise Location Uses Multiple Sources It builds on a 2015 Apple feature called Hybridized ... (view more)

Both Microsoft and Google are warning of another bug in computer processors. It's similar to previous bugs known as 'Spectre' and 'Meltdown'. For now the new issue has the less dramatic codenames 'Speculative Store Bypass Variant 4' and ... 'CVE-2018-3639'. As with Spectre and Meltdown , it involves a processor function known as speculative execution that's meant to improve computation processes. Unlike some bugs, it's classed as a low risk to users but is significant because of the sheer number of computers that could be affected. The processor is the part of the computer that physically carries ... (view more)

Facebook has fired an engineer accused of misusing private data to 'stalk' women online. He is thought to be a security engineer who abused his 'privileged access' level to data. One of the engineer's alleged victims was the founder of a cyber ... security company. She's made public the conversation she had with the Facebook engineer, in which the man talks about being a security analyst. He wrote: "... I also try to figure out who hackers are in real life... [so, I'm a] professional stalker." It appears the pair were conversing after being connected through the dating app Tinder. To make ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Sam G. writes: " Dear Dennis, I work from home and also own an Android smartphone, which I use to communicate (via text messages) with friends and family. Because I am home all the time, I use WiFi on my phone instead of data. ... Therefore, I purchased a very cheap 'pay as you go' data plan for when I'm away from the office. The problem is that my data is being eaten away by apps on my phone whenever I'm on the go. I have tried disabling 'background data' on my Android phone to limit which apps can use data, but this is incredibly time consuming because each data permission is ... (view more)

Consumer groups say YouTube is breaking the law by collecting data about pre-teens without parental permission. They've asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate. The alleged breach is of the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act ... (COPPA), a federal law that significantly restricts the way sites can handle data about users aged under 13. That's why many major websites that have user accounts officially ban pre-teens from signing up with their services. That's not quite the case with YouTube. Users do have to be 13 or older to get a Google account, which is necessary for some ... (view more)

A murder suspect's alibi has been thrown into doubt by data on the victim's Apple Watch. The smartwatch appears to show the victim died much earlier than the suspect claims. Caroline Nilsson is accused of killing her mother-in-law Myrna Nilsson in ... 2016. Police were called to the house just after 10 pm when a neighbor saw Caroline come out of the house wearing a gag. Myrna was found dead inside the home. In her defense, Caroline claims that her mother-in-law was followed home by a group of men in a utility vehicle and argued with them outside for 20 minutes. Caroline claims she was in her ... (view more)

Facebook users have been shocked to discover it stores the phone numbers of people who've never signed up to the site, along with the SMS and voice call histories of some users. But Facebook insists that users have explicitly given permission for ... such data storage. The site's data storage and sharing policies came back under the spotlight with the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal, when a journalist revealed that information gathered about users and their friends for a psychological study was shared without permission for use in political ad targeting. Since then, many users have been taking ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'Cindy' writes: " Dear Dennis, I have Windows 8.1 on my laptop which has been very, very slow. I decided to upgrade to Windows 10 hoping this would fix my problems, however I keep getting a message that ' The installation failed ... in the First_Boot phase with an error during Sysprep Operation ' (pic). I have been researching this problem for 2 days using Google, and have yet to find a fix that makes sense! Absolutely nothing I do seems to work! Can you PLEASE help? " Update 20200116 : I'm getting a lot of emails from folks asking for help on this. If you want this problem ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Marjie H. writes: " Dear Dennis, I just received an email offer from Norton Security asking if I would like to enroll in the Norton Identity Protection. In order to do so, the form says I need to provide my social insurance ... number. The protection being offered is free, so long as I renew my Norton Antivirus subscription. From what I understand, this service includes protection against personal credit, credit cards, bank, social insurance number (SSI), etc. My question is - with all this information they are asking for, what is the possibility they could be hacked and all my ... (view more)