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The company formed data-sharing partnerships with Apple, Samsung and dozens of other device makers, raising new concerns about its privacy protections. As Facebook sought to become the world’s dominant social media service, it struck agreements allowing phone and other device makers access to vast amounts of its users’ personal information. Facebook has reached data-sharing partnerships with at least 60 device makers — including Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry, Microsoft and Samsung — over the last decade, starting before Facebook apps were widely available on smartphones, company officials said. The deals allowed Facebook to expand its reach and let device makers offer customers...

The Next Big Discovery in Astronomy? We Probably Found It Years Ago — But Don't Know It Yet By Eileen Meyer, University of Maryland, Baltimore County | June 3, 2018 08:44am ET MORE An artist's illustration of a black hole "eating" a star.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Earlier this year, astronomers stumbled upon a fascinating finding: Thousands of black holes likely exist near the center of our galaxy. The X-ray images that enabled this discovery weren't from some state-of-the-art new telescope. Nor were...

In a filing on Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission which was provided to congressional committees, the exact scope of the Equifax data breach was revealed. Just how much personal data was exposed in the Equifax breach of 2017? The sensitive, personally identifiable information of the Equifax breach contained: 146.6 million birthdays 145.5 million Social Security numbers were compromised 99 million addresses 27.3 million gender identifications 20.3 million phone numbers 17.6 million driver’s license numbers 1.8 million email addresses 200,000 credit card numbers and expiration dates

Sally and Kristen haven’t hung out in forever, so Sally suggests taking a selfie. After Sally uploads the photo to Facebook, the app suggests she tag Kristen based on its facial-recognition system, which Kristen has given permission to use. ````````````````````````` DATA PROVIDED FACEBOOK ..Uploaded photo ..Text submitted with photo ..Facial recognition ADDITIONAL DATA COLLECTED FACEBOOK ..Photo analysis ..Location of the photo (if included in metadata) ..Date ..Type of device (iPhone X) ..Device ID ..Device operating system ..Battery level ..Signal strength ..Bluetooth signal ..Connection speed ..Available storage ..App and file names and types ..Nearby Wi-Fi beacons and cell towers ..Nearby devices...

Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, has admitted more data breaches could come to light as the company investigates its practices following the privacy scandal. Sandberg conceded Facebook was guilty of a '10 out of 10' breach of their users' trust when it came to data privacy and that bosses should have acted 'two and a half years ago' when it first realised Cambridge Analytica was hoarding personal data. Speaking to NBC's Today programme, Sandberg also laid the ground for her boss Mark Zuckerberg's appearance before Congress, saying he had 'already apologized' and wanted to tell representatives what his firm...

Facebook was in talks with top hospitals and other medical groups as recently as last month about a proposal to share data about the social networks of their most vulnerable patients. The idea was to build profiles of people that included their medical conditions, information that health systems have, as well as social and economic factors gleaned from Facebook. Facebook said the project is on hiatus so it can focus on "other important work, including doing a better job of protecting people's data." CB FULL Christina Farr 180405 Facebook health partnership on hold on concerns of data privacy 4 Hours...

And why should we be so naive to believe Zuckerberg wouldn't dig into his treasure chest of big data? If murder is considered something as a potential accepted casualty from Facebook and it's 'de facto good', then political campaigning surely could be considered a moral reality, too. I'm not here to speak for or against a Mark Zuckerberg political campaign. Until he has a platform with positions and an announced candidacy, much of this is merely speculation. But from all the dots whose connections are slowly fading into focus, how can the average person not be concerned here? You have...

This brilliant article by technocracy expert Patrick Wood highlights the advances coming down the pike with so-called smart cities. The U.N. has made a push in recent years to bypass national governments and implement global governance through cities [Recall how when President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the U.N. Paris Climate pact the mayors of many major U.S. cities said they would ignore his decision and proceed to comply with U.N. regulations, not U.S. laws]. Also remember that the UN biosphere project seeks to drive ranchers and small farmers off their land and push more people into cities.

A leaked memo by a top Facebook executive justifying the firm's controversial data practices has caused outrage at the company's headquarters. More than 3,000 Facebook employees have reacted to an internal post about the memo by vice president of consumer hardware, Andrew Bosworth. In the memo, Bosworth gives a candid look into how far the technology giant is willing to go in order to become the world's most popular social media platform. He admits that the firm engages in 'questionable contact importing practices' but claims it is worth it even if it 'costs someone a life.'

Dylan Curran downloaded all of the data stored on him by Facebook and Google Google's data archive was almost ten times larger than scandal hit Facebook's It dated back to 2008 and revealed a level of detail that shocked the IT expert He laid out the extent of the private information held on him in a series of tweets Facebook has hit the headlines in recent weeks over its handling of your private data, and now the shocking extent of information held by Google has been revealed. In a series of tweets, one IT expert has laid out exactly what...

CEO criticizes monetization of customers’ personal information Cook says the time for self-regulation is past Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, issued a harsh rebuke of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s business model on Wednesday, saying that detailed profiles of individuals compiled by internet platforms should not exist. Are you ready? This is all the data Facebook and Google have on you Dylan Curran Read more “We could make a ton of money if we monetized our customers, if our customers were our product,” Cook said in an interview with Recode and MSNBC that will air on 6 April. “We’ve elected not...

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is reportedly launching an investigation into Facebook over whether it violated terms of consent in the wake of reports a data firm harvested information from millions of profiles. Bloomberg News reported Tuesday that the investigation relates to whether Facebook allowed Cambridge Analytica, the data firm used by the Trump campaign, to obtain some Facebook users’ personal data in violation of its policies.

RUSH: What has taken the place of McCabe now — and this is where you are really at the right place today — Facebook and Cambridge analytics, the Drive-Bys and the left are all over this. When you hear Cambridge analytics, you need to think Mercers. The Mercers own Cambridge analytics. What they’re trying to tell everybody is that Cambridge analytics hacked or cheated or gamed Facebook and ended up collecting very personal data on 50 million Americans who participated in a survey that Cambridge analytics conducted on Facebook. And so you are being told that Facebook has been victimized,...

"It was suspected that a harsh drought from about 2000 to 2010 that killed tens of thousands of livestock was unprecedented in the region’s history and primarily the result of human-caused climate change. But the tree ring data show that the dry spell, while rare in its severity, was not outside the realm of natural climate variability, researchers report online March 14 in Science Advances."

First, 2016 was the worst year for the Russian rocket industry in decades...Second, China has been aggressively ramping up its launch rate, and in 2016 moved clearly into the top tier of space-faring nations...Third, the United States is clearly transitioning away from a government owned and operated rocket industry to one owned and operated by the private sector. Since the retirement of the Space Shuttle, the federal government has not launched a single rocket that it designed, built, and owns. Instead, every payload put in space by the U.S. has been put there by a private sector rocket.

We have Exede satellite providing Internet service. For the last 2 months they say we have used up our 10GB data allowance in 3 days or less. This month we used it all up in less than 24 hours. We streamed a one hour serial show on low resolution on our LG smart tv, and used the Internet for email. I also spent an hour or two on FR. Exede claimed we had used the entire 10GB. We've had this service for 1.5 years and our online behavior has not changed. This location is a getaway home and we visit...

**SNIP** Harold Martin is scheduled to plead guilty to one count of willful retention of national defense information on January 22 in a federal court in Baltimore, according to court filings, Reuters reported. Prosecutors said that the ex-NSA contractor spent two decades taking classified government information from the U.S. intelligence community and hoarded the secrets at his home in Maryland. The Justice Department accused Martin in 2016 of a “breathtaking” theft of government secrets. During a raid of his home, authorities seized dozens of laptops and digital devices in addition to six full bankers’ boxes worth of documents.

Who were your ancestors? What is your ethnic background composed of? Sites like Ancestry.com and 23andme have always been some go to sources in answering all of your toughest questions. But how accurate are they? In a recent interview with Cracked, one of the major ancestry testing companies, (which specific company is unknown) spilled the beans on what really happens when you purchase an ancestry kit. While I can’t say I’m surprised, you may be shocked to learn that these ancestry sites aren’t always as accurate as they claim to be. Beyond this, they’ve also admitted to tampering with the...

Firefighters have been working nonstop to put out multiple wildfires ravaging land and homes from the hills to the beaches of Southern California. High above the flames and smoke, heavy duty materiel is helping them better battle those blazes. In a partnership between state fire protection agency CAL FIRE and the California Air National Guard, unmanned drones have been assisting firefighters by relaying information that those on the ground could not otherwise get. The MQ-9 Reapers that were deployed this week have sensors that can see through smoke and feed back live video to the fire command. “We can show [firefighters]...

For years Americans' right to privacy, as granted by the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, has come under threat as the country's surveillance systems have grown. After intelligence leaks by former National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden, however, the NSA's domestic dragnet is finally getting the attention that many people feel it deserves.