Your devices may be revealing a lot more about your life than you realize. During the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last month, we set out to find just how much data is floating around in the digital ether all around us. Armed with a fanny pack filled with radios—including …
Read More »Therapy Sessions Exposed by Mental Health Care Firm’s Unsecured Database
Thousands of people’s highly sensitive health details, including audio and video of therapy sessions, were openly accessible on the internet, new research has revealed. The cache of information, associated with a US health care firm, included more than 120,000 files and more than 1.7 million activity logs. At the end …
Read More »We Hunted Hidden Police Signals at the DNC
As thousands took to the streets during August’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago to protest Israel’s deadly assault on Gaza, a massive security operation was already underway. US Capitol Police, Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations, sheriff’s deputies from nearby counties, and local officers from across …
Read More »Scammers are using pictures of your home to amplify sextortion threats
As the tech landscape evolves, and the public’s awareness of digital attacks grows, scammers are harnessing every tool at their disposal — including Google Maps. A new sextortion scam (a form of financial coercion in which bad actors threaten to release personal, explicit images to the public) leverages publicly accessible …
Read More »Germany’s Far Right Is in a Panic Over Telegram
Soon after the arrest of Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov, a warning that was viewed more than 85,000 times started circulating among Germany’s far right: “Back up your Telegram data as quickly as you can and clean your account.” The message came from Kim Dotcom, the embattled German founder …
Read More »Telegram Faces a Reckoning. Other Founders Should Beware
Among the leaders of the world’s biggest social media sites, Telegram founder Pavel Durov has always been an outsider. Unlike Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, he has never appeared on Capitol Hill to apologize for past mistakes. Unlike TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew, he’s never signed up for a five-hour grilling by Congress …
Read More »Harmful 'Nudify' Websites Used Google, Apple, and Discord Sign-On Systems
Major technology companies, including Google, Apple, and Discord, have been enabling people to quickly sign up to harmful “undress” websites, which use AI to remove clothes from real photos to make victims appear to be “nude” without their consent. More than a dozen of these deepfake websites have been using …
Read More »Under Meredith Whittaker, Signal Is Out to Prove Surveillance Capitalism Wrong
ten years ago, WIRED published a news story about how two little-known, slightly ramshackle encryption apps called RedPhone and TextSecure were merging to form something called Signal. Since that July in 2014, Signal has transformed from a cypherpunk curiosity—created by an anarchist coder, run by a scrappy team working in …
Read More »Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s Arrest Linked to Sweeping Criminal Investigation
French prosecutors gave preliminary information in a press release on Monday about the investigation into Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, who was arrested suddenly on Saturday at Paris’ Le Bourget airport. Durov has not yet been charged with any crime, but officials said that he is being held as part of …
Read More »Pavel Durov’s Arrest Leaves Telegram Hanging in the Balance
At around 8 pm on Saturday evening in France, Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested as he exited his private jet at Le Bourget Airport, outside Paris. He was flying in from Azerbaijan. According to TF1Info, the French outlet that first broke the news of his arrest, Durov …
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