The White House has reportedly selected Twitter’s legal director, Nicole Wong, to be the administration’s first chief privacy officer.

Prior to joining Twitter in 2012, Wong spent eight years at Google in the capacity of vice president and deputy general counsel to the Internet search giant.

She received her law degree from the University of California at Berkeley before becoming a partner at the Perkins Coie law firm.

Continue Reading

While the investment community turns it attention to Facebook’s Q1 earnings Wednesday, regular users of the world’s largest social network are turning their attention to an interesting new infographic highlighting critical information about privacy settings and their under-utilization by many.

With Facebook’s Graph Search looming large on the horizon, this new infographic from Marketo is shedding light on critical information that every Facebook user should review.

Check it out after the break below.

Continue Reading

Reports surfaced this week that Path – the photo-powered social network of 10 million users – stands accused of resorting to “spammy tactics” for the presumable purpose of recruiting more members.

Adrianne Jeffries of The Verge says that digital marketer Stephen Kenwright “downloaded the app earlier this week, tried it out, uninstalled it, and went to bed.”

But that seeming conclusion to Kenwright’s relationship with Path wasn’t the end at all.

Continue Reading

Every day in America, millions of consumers fill up their cups of coffee while getting their fill of free WiFi at America’s top coffee shops.

But is that really a safe move given the rise in identity theft and cyber crimes?

Recently, the team at ThreatMetrix – makers of well known and respect cybercrime prevention solutions – published a new infographic that puts the potential dangers of coffee shop WiFi access into focus.

Continue Reading

Following this week’s embarrassing hack attack on AP’s Twitter account, security analysts are calling for Twitter to get serious on user accounts that serve exceptionally serious purposes.

On Tuesday, AP’s twitter account erroneously tweeted that an explosion occurred at the White House, injuring the President of the United States. The false tweet sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeting and sparked panic and scattering in newsrooms across the world.

In response to these all-too-common hack jobs in social media, Twitter is now believed to be working on a “two-step security solution” that is “undergoing internal testing” before launching publicly, Daily Deal Media reported Wednesday after knowledgeable sources confirmed the plans to Wired.

Continue Reading

When it comes to mobile malware, Android is a magnet of epic proportions. More examples of this unfortunate reality surfaced this week.

Android malware deceptively disguised as a mobile ad network is on the loose and infecting millions of mobile devices.

According to Lookout Mobile Security, the new threat is called BadNews, a recent entry into the malware family. So far, it’s been found in 32 apps across four different developer accounts in Google Play.

Continue Reading

In response to questions and criticisms from mobile privacy advocates, Apple has finally capitulated and revealed how long it stores SirI-related user data.

From searches to commands, everything that users put into Siri remains with Apple for quite a while.

Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller tells Wired that anonymized user data is retained for approximately 24 months.

Continue Reading