Digital rights

Ring, Amazon’s home surveillance company, announced it would stop letting police departments request video from your doorstep in a blog post Wednesday. The company has historically shared tons of footage with law enforcement, and Amazon came under fire for reportedly handing a full day’s worth of Ring footage to local authorities in March, despite the homeowner’s wishes to not help in prosecuting his neighbor.Top 5 Shopping Tips for Amazon Prime Day“This week, we are also sunsetting the Request for Assistance (RFA) tool,”…

screenshot / DigitalTrends.com Google is now making efforts to ensure users understand the meaning of Incognito Mode on its Chrome browser following a class-action lawsuit that cost the company $5 billion. The publication MSPoweruser discovered Google tested a Canary build of Chrome with an updated definition of Incognito Mode that more clearly spells out the stipulations of what is hidden when you enter the browsing state. The new disclaimer includes an added line in the first paragraph that reads: “This won’t…

NordVPN Even though VPNs started out as a way to add a bit of anonymity and security when browsing the internet, they’ve blossomed into a full suite of features and added benefits, which is always a good thing for the consumer. One of the most well-known companies and best VPNs is probably NordVPN, and it offers a ton of features for some pretty great prices. For example, depending on the package, you can also get encrypted cloud storage or a password manager with its own additional functions. While these higher-end…

Comcast Comcast, alongside several other big corporations, has recently suffered a devastating data breach. According to reports, it’s possible that hackers got their hands on the data of up to 36 million Comcast Xfinity customers, meaning the company’s cable television and internet department. Although the company is pretty tight-lipped about it, the data breach occurred over two months ago. Here’s what we know and what you should do to protect yourself. The hackers were able to access those masses of customer…

Surfshark Protecting your data is important, whether you’re protecting it from nefarious hackers or nosy websites. The easiest way to prevent this is by buying a VPN. During Black Friday, Surfshark is offering a discount to its service. Our favorite deal right now is the offer on an annual plan: Commit to one year and you’ll pay just $4 per month. If you get the next tier up, it’s just $4.10, and the premium Surfshark One+ VPN service is $6.50. Read more about it below. Why you should get Surfshark VPN With so much…

Image used with permission by copyright holder VPNs can provide you with a lot of added benefits. For example, you can use them to get around geo-locked content, especially if you’re traveling, or you can use them to encrypt your connection so that snooping noses have less of a chance to see what you’re doing. Luckily, with the big sales going on in November, there are a lot of great early Black Friday deals on VPNs you can take advantage of. We’ve collected our favorite one below, as well as some alternatives, so be…

Pretty much all of us spend a lot of time online in some form these days. Whether you’re browsing online for fun, working from home, watching streaming services, or checking your finances through online banking, it’s important to be secure. That’s why it’s so vital that you have one of the best VPNs keeping you safe. For anyone new to understanding what a VPN is, it encrypts and reroutes your online activities through secure remote servers so that your data is protected as well as your identity. They’re simple to use…

As hackers come up with new ways to attack, not even trustworthy names can be taken at face value. This time, a ransom-as-a-service (RaaS) attack is being used to impersonate a cybersecurity vendor called Sophos. The RaaS, referred to as SophosEncrypt, can take hold of your files — or even your whole PC — and requires payment to have them decrypted. Initially reported by MalwareHunterTeam on Twitter, the ransomware has now been acknowledged by Sophos. The initial thought was that this may have been a red team…

There’s a widespread misconception about whether or not federal law protects your privacy. It doesn’t, at least not explicitly. Congress has managed to squander a decade’s worth of bipartisan agreement about the internet’s data problems. In the absence of legislation, one group of regulators recently stepped in to fill the void. It’s a ragtag group of government cowboys that calls itself the Federal Trade Commission.The FTC Just Prescribed a Can of Whoop Ass on Health DataOver the past year, the FTC picked up the few…

Amazon settled two different privacy cases with the Federal Trade Commission for just under $31 million Wednesday, agreeing to penalties for violating children’s privacy with its Alexa smart speakers and exposing Ring smart doorbell users videos to every employee at the company.Uh Oh, Amazon Bought Your Favorite Robot CompanyAccording to the FTC’s lawsuit against Ring, the company gave every single employee unrestricted access to users’ videos, including third-party contractors with no special training about handling the…