E-mail privacy

E-mail bill raises privacy concerns

Tuesday's CNET Update is checking privacy settings:

There's an update to today's top story. Hours after CNET reported on a bill rewrite that would give warrantless access to American's e-mail, the senator behind the legislation has abandoned his controversial proposal.

Other stories in today's tech roundup:

- Facebook is testing Photo Syncing for some iOS users. It automatically uploads images on a phone or tablet to Facebook, saving them in a private folder. Google+ has a similar feature called Instant Upload.

- YouTube users with anonymous nicknames can link with a Google+ account. Back in … Read more

Hootsuite flub reveals users' e-mail addresses to other users

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

Senator introduces bill requiring warrant for e-mail history

After more than 25 years since the passage of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), Sen. Patrick Leahy is hoping to get the out-of-date privacy law up to speed by introducing a new bill in the Senate Judiciary Committee today, according to Ars Technica.

The key component of this new bill is that law enforcement officials would no longer have the ease of freely being able to read people's personal e-mail and online communication -- they'd need a warrant first. As the law now stands, police are allowed to get individual's private correspondence by simply asking e-mail … Read more

Password-protect e-mail on your iPhone and iPad

After last week's post describing two apps that keep your iPhone and iPad data private, a reader posed this question:

Is there any app that allows you to use it like the 'mail' app on an iPhone etc., but has a password lock facility? Else children will be reading all my mail.

I'm sure Apple had a reason for not allowing iPhone and iPad users to require a passcode to access the device's mail app, but I don't know what that reason was.

I came up with a free workaround that requires creation of a send-only … Read more

Keep contacts, e-mails, SMS private with BlackBook

Do you ever wish you had a way to hide certain contacts in your address book? Maybe you want the ability to completely hide entire SMS or e-mail conversations from prying eyes? BlackBook, a popular BlackBerry application, allows you to do just that. This simple-to-use app keeps your most valued information hidden and secure.

… Read more

Want really secure Gmail? Try GPG encryption

Perhaps Google's announcement that Chinese cyber attackers went after human rights activists' Gmail accounts has made you skittish about just how private your own messages are on the Google e-mail service.

Well, if you want to take a significant step in keeping prying eyes away from your electronic correspondence, one good encryption technology that predates Google altogether is worth looking at. It's called public key encryption, and I'm sharing some instructions on how to get it working if you want try it.

Unfortunately, better security typically goes hand in hand with increased inconvenience. But some human rights … Read more

Yahoo's Zimbra e-mail program exposes passwords

Passwords used to access Yahoo mail through the Zimbra client are sent over the Internet in clear text, a Canadian programmer says.

Holden Karau stumbled upon this problem while participating in the Yahoo University Hack Day at the University of Waterloo last week.

"The Yahoo imap server's used by the Yahoo Desktop don't support SSL and the password was being transmitted in plain text," Karau wrote in a blog post on Friday.

"What does this mean for you? If you use Zimbra to access your Yahoo mail, you almost certainly need to change your password … Read more

Obama sex video? Hardly. It's spyware spreading via e-mail

Don't believe everything you read on the Internet: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama isn't a terrorist...or a porn star.

A malicious spam e-mail is spreading that claims to have a link to a sex video of Obama but is instead spyware that steals sensitive data from the computer, security firm Sophos warned on Wednesday.

The subject line says "Obama sex video!!!" and the e-mail appears to come from "infonews@obama.com, Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, says on his blog.

Clicking on the link downloads an executable file that plays an amateur … Read more

The 404 124: Where Fox News is giving us something good to talk about

In a follow-up to our newest "It came from Fox News" segment, actual Fox news anchor Clayton Morris drops by the studio today and dishes out his views on digital privacy in the workplace, making the switch, the perpetual woes of iPhone ineptitude, and the ancient practice of group shaving. If that isn't enough, we also conclusively prove that living well is the best revenge. EPISODE 124 Download today's podcast