Alex Hern

Tim Berners-Lee says too many young people are excluded from web

Too many young people around the world are excluded from accessing the web, and getting them online should be a priority for the post-Covid era, Tim Berners-Lee has said. In a letter published to mark the 32nd birthday of the web, its founder says the opportunity “to reimagine our world and create something better” in the aftermath of Covid-19 must be channeled to getting internet access to the third of people aged between 15 and 24 who are offline. “The influence of young people is felt across their communities and online networks,” Berners-Lee writes.

Ofcom to be put in charge of regulating internet content in UK

The UK's Ofcom will be put in charge of regulating the internet, the government has announced, with a new range of powers intended to protect users from “harmful and illegal content” online. The regulations are broadly focused on two new sets of requirements. One, around illegal content, will see platforms hit with new targets to ensure that such content is removed quickly, ideally prevented from being posted in the first place, with a particular focus on terrorist and child sexual abuse content.

Facebook tightens up rules for political advertisers

Advertisers will be required to provide verifiable public contact details before they can run political campaigns on Facebook, in the latest attempt by the social network to increase accountability for so-called dark adverts. The move is part of a raft of changes in the buildup to the European elections in May, when citizens from across the European Union will vote in new Members of the European Parliament. Facebook’s political advertising restrictions will launch in the EU27 on March 29, following partial rollouts in six countries including the UK, US and India.

Facebook faces backlash over users' safety phone numbers

Facebook has been accused of abusing a security feature in order to weaken user privacy, after the social network was found using phone numbers initially handed over for account safety for other purposes. The company now faces criticism that it will be harder to convince users to take other necessary security measures if users view this as an abuse of trust. Since 2011, Facebook has asked users for their phone numbers in order to enable “two-factor authentication”, a common account security feature that sends a text message whenever a login is attempted.

Facebook suspends US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones

Alex Jones, the American conspiracy theorist who runs the InfoWars website, has been suspended from Facebook for bullying and hate speech. The suspension will last for 30 days, and affects only Jones’s personal account on the social network, not the main InfoWars account. His profile will continue to be published, but he will not be able to post content until the suspension elapses. A Facebook spokesperson said Jones was found to have violated its community standards.

Privacy policies of tech giants 'still not GDPR-compliant'

Privacy policies from companies including Facebook, Google and Amazon don’t fully meet the requirements of th European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), according to the pan-European consumer group BEUC. An analysis of policies from 14 of the largest internet companies shows they use unclear language, claim “potentially problematic” rights, and provide insufficient information for users to judge what they are agreeing to.

Edward Snowden Interview: "The people are still powerless, but now they're aware"

Edward Snowden has no regrets five years on from leaking the biggest cache of top-secret documents in history. He is wanted by the US. He is in exile in Russia. But he is satisfied with the way his revelations of mass surveillance have rocked governments, intelligence agencies and major internet companies.

LA Times among US-based news sites blocking EU users due to GDPR

The general data protection regulation, which has come into effect, has prompted a number of prestigious US-based websites including the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune to shut off access to internet users in the EU.

Facebook lets advertisers target users based on sensitive interests

Facebook allows advertisers to target users it thinks are interested in subjects such as homosexuality, Islam or liberalism, despite religion, sexuality and political beliefs explicitly being marked out as sensitive information under new data protection laws. The social network gathers information about users based on their actions on Facebook and on the wider web, and uses that data to predict on their interests.

Cambridge Analytica kept Facebook data models through US election

Facebook’s failure to compel Cambridge Analytica to delete all traces of data from its servers – including any “derivatives” – enabled the company to retain predictive models derived from millions of social media profiles throughout the US presidential election, the Guardian can reveal. Leaked emails reveal that when Cambridge Analytica told Facebook almost a year before the election that it had deleted data harvested from tens of millions of Facebook users, it stopped short of agreeing to also erase derivatives of the data.

Facebook moves 1.5 billion users out of reach of new European privacy law

Facebook has moved more than 1.5 billion users out of reach of European privacy law, despite a promise from Mark Zuckerberg to apply the “spirit” of the legislation globally. In a tweak to its terms and conditions, Facebook is shifting the responsibility for all users outside the US, Canada and the European Union from its international HQ in Ireland to its main offices in California. It means that those users will now be on a site governed by US law rather than Irish law.

Facebook personal data use and privacy settings ruled illegal by German court

Facebook’s default privacy settings and use of personal data are against German consumer law, according to a judgement handed down by a Berlin regional court. The court found that Facebook collects and uses personal data without providing enough information to its members for them to render meaningful consent. The federation of German consumer organisations (VZBV), which brought the suit, argued that Facebook opted users in to features which it should not have.

Fake news sharing in US is a rightwing thing, says study

Low-quality, extremist, sensationalist and conspiratorial news published in the US was overwhelmingly consumed and shared by rightwing social network users, according to new study from the University of Oxford.

No tracking, no revenue: Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions

Internet advertising firms are losing hundreds of millions of dollars following the introduction of a new privacy feature from Apple that prevents users from being tracked around the web. Advertising technology firm Criteo, one of the largest in the industry, says that the Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) feature for Safari, which holds 15% of the global browser market, is likely to cut its 2018 revenue by more than a fifth compared to projections made before ITP was announced.

How social media filter bubbles and algorithms influence the election

One of the most powerful players in the British election is also one of the most opaque. With just over two weeks to go until voters go to the polls, there are two things every election expert agrees on: what happens on social media, and Facebook in particular, will have an enormous effect on how the country votes; and no one has any clue how to measure what’s actually happening there.

“Many of us wish we could study Facebook,” said Prof Philip Howard, of the University of Oxford’s Internet Institute, “but we can’t, because they really don’t share anything.” Howard is leading a team of researchers studying “computational propaganda” at the university, attempting to shine a light on the ways automated accounts are used to alter debate online.

Facebook 'pauses' WhatsApp data sharing after ICO intervention

Facebook has agreed to “pause” its plan to use data from UK users of messaging service WhatsApp for advertising and product improvement purposes across the rest of its business, after an intervention from the UK information commissioner.

Elizabeth Denham wrote to Facebook in September to express her concerns over a new plan to share more data between the social network and Whatsapp. When it announced its plans back in August, Whatsapp said it wanted to explore ways for users to “communicate with businesses that matter to you too, while still giving you an experience without third-party banner ads and spam”. The plans involved using the phone number associated with a WhatsApp account to aid Facebook in targeting adverts on the user’s main Facebook profile. But, Denham wrote, she had concerns that consumers weren’t being properly protected, and that “it’s fair to say the enquiries my team have made haven’t changed that view.

US government increases funding for Tor, giving $1.8m in 2013

Tor, the Internet anonymizer, received more than $1.8 million in funding from the US government in 2013, even while the National Security Agency was reportedly trying to destroy the network.

The bulk of the US funding came in the form of "pass-through" grants, money which ultimately comes from the US government distributed through some independent third-party. Formerly known as "the onion router", Tor is software which allows its users to browse the Internet anonymously.

The Tor Project also received direct funding from the National Science Foundation and the US Department of State, totaling $100,325 and $256,900 respectively.

Reddit, Imgur and Boing Boing launch anti-NSA-surveillance campaign

Some of the world's largest websites are planning a coordinated day of action to oppose mass surveillance online. The sites, which include Reddit, Imgur and BoingBoing, will be taking part in the campaign, called "Reset the Net", in a number of ways.

Some will showing a splash screen to all users, reminiscent of the one used in the successful protests against Stop Online Privacy Act, or SOPA, the US copyright bill which many feared would damage the backbone of the Internet.

But rather than telling users to write to their electoral representatives, this protest will push more direct action, encouraging visitors to install privacy and encryption tools. Other sites have committed to improving their own privacy as part of the campaign, by enabling standards such as HTTPS, which prevents attackers from eavesdropping on visitors.

Such security standards are common in the world of ecommerce, but rarer for sites which don't think of themselves as holding sensitive information.

The campaign is being co-ordinated by Fight for the Future, whose co-founder Tiffiniy Cheng said "Now that we know how mass surveillance works, we know how to stop it. That’s why people all over the world are going to work together to use encryption everywhere and make it too hard for any government to conduct mass surveillance.

Yahoo, Google and Apple also claim right to read user emails

Microsoft is not unique in claiming the right to read users' emails -- Apple, Yahoo and Google all reserve that right as well.

The broad rights e-mail providers claim for themselves has come to light following Microsoft's admission that it read a journalist's Hotmail account in an attempt to track down the source of an internal leak. But most webmail services claim the right to read users' email if they believe that such access is necessary to protect their property. But other major email providers reserve exactly the same rights.

Yahoo requires users to "acknowledge, consent and agree that Yahoo may access… your account information and Content… in a good faith belief that such access… is reasonably necessary to… protect the rights… of Yahoo." Google's terms require the user to "acknowledge and agree that Google may access… your account information and any Content associated with that account… in a good faith belief that such access… is reasonably necessary to… protect against imminent harm to the… property… of Google". Apple "may, without liability to you, access… your Account information and Content… if we have a good faith belief that such access… is reasonably necessary to… protect the… property… of Apple".

Phone call metadata does betray sensitive details about your life -- study

Warnings that phone call “metadata” can betray detailed information about your life has been confirmed by research at Stanford University.

Researchers there successfully identified a cannabis cultivator, multiple sclerosis sufferer and a visitor to an abortion clinic using nothing more than the timing and destination of their phone calls. Jonathan Mayer and Patrick Mutchler, the researchers behind the finding, used data gleaned from 546 volunteers to assess the extent to which information about who they had called and when revealed personally sensitive information.

The research aimed to answer questions raised by the NSA wiretapping revelations, where it was revealed that the US intelligence agency collects metadata -- but not content -- of millions of phone calls on mobile networks.