Category: News

Facebook violates its users' privacy rights through the use of its facial recognition software, according to consumer groups led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Their complaint to the federal government focuses on the use of Facebook software that identifies people in photographs that are uploaded to its site. A complaint filed Friday by a coalition of consumer organizations with Federal Trade Commission said the social media giant "routinely scans photos for biometric facial matches without the consent of the image subject." The complaint says the company tries to improve its facial recognition prowess by deceptively encouraging users the participate in the process of identifying people in photographs. "This unwanted, unnecessary, and dangerous identification of individuals undermines user privacy, ignores the explicit preferences of Facebook users, and is contrary to…

The European Union said Friday Facebook has told it that up to 2.7 million people in the 28-nation bloc may have been victim of improper data sharing involving political data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica. EU spokesman Christian Wigand said EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova will have a telephone call with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg early next week to address the massive data leaks. The EU and Facebook will be looking at what changes the social media giant needs to make to better protect users and how the U.S. company must adapt to new EU data protection rules. Wigand said that EU data protection authorities will discuss over the coming days ``a strong coordinated approach'' on how to deal with the Facebook investigation. Separately, Italy's competition authority opened an investigation Friday into…

Amazon is spending millions of dollars on lobbying as the global online retailer seeks to expand its reach into a swath of industries that President Donald Trump’s broadsides haven’t come close to hitting. Trump’s attacks over the last week targeted what Amazon is best known for: rapidly shipping just about any product you can imagine to your door. But the company CEO Jeff Bezos founded more than two decades ago is now a sprawling empire that sells groceries in brick-and-mortar stores, hosts the online services of other companies and federal offices in a network of data centers, and even recently branched into health care. Amazon relies on a nearly 30-member in-house lobbying team that’s four times as large as it was three years ago as well as outside firms to…

About 1 percent of the world's population lives with the mental condition called bipolar disorder, characterized by swings between elevated and depressed moods. In most cases, timely interaction with psychotherapists, family and friends can alleviate the symptoms. Researchers in Denmark say modern technology can help by keeping track of a patient's symptoms and summoning help quickly when needed. VOA's George Putic reports. ...

Facebook's acknowledgement that the personal data of most of its 2.2 billion members has probably been scraped by "malicious actors" is the latest example of the social network's failure to protect its users' data. Not to mention its seeming inability to even identify the problem until the company was embroiled in scandal. CEO Mark Zuckerberg told reporters Wednesday that Facebook is shutting down a feature that let people search for Facebook users by phone number or email address. Although that was useful for people who wanted to find others on Facebook, it turns out that unscrupulous types also figured out years ago that they could use it identify individuals and collect data off their profiles. The scrapers were at it long enough, Zuckerberg said, that "at some point during the…

A Brazilian judge has ordered that Facebook Inc pay 111.7 million reais ($33.4 million) for failing to cooperate with a corruption investigation, federal prosecutors said on Thursday, prompting Facebook to say it was exploring “all legal options.” The judge fined Facebook for failing to give access in 2016 to WhatsApp messages exchanged by individuals under investigation for defrauding the healthcare system of Brazil’s Amazonas state, the prosecutors said in a statement. In an emailed comment sent to Reuters, Facebook called the fine groundless. “Facebook cooperates with law enforcement. In this particular case we have disclosed the data required by applicable law,” the statement said. “We understand this fine lacks grounds, and are exploring all legal options at our disposal.” According to federal police, a Brazilian judge ordered in April 2016…

Australia's Privacy Commissioner said on Thursday she had opened a formal investigation into social media giant Facebook Inc after the company confirmed data from 300,000 Australian users may have been used without authorization. The investigation will consider whether Facebook has breached Australia's privacy laws, Privacy Commissioner Angelene Falk said in a statement. Facebook said on Wednesday that the personal information of up to 87 million users, mostly in the United States, may have been improperly shared with political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, up from a previous news media estimate of more than 50 million. ...

Police say a woman shooter entered YouTube headquarters in California Tuesday and wounded at least three people before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Mike O’Sullivan reports, the shooter’s motive is unknown. ...

A woman who believed she was being suppressed by YouTube and told her family members she "hated" the company opened fire at YouTube's headquarters in California, wounding three people before taking her own life, police said. Investigators do not believe Nasim Aghdam specifically targeted the three victims when she pulled out a handgun and fired off several rounds in a courtyard at the company's headquarters south of San Francisco on Tuesday, police said. But a law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation told The Associated Press that Aghdam had a longstanding dispute with the company. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case, said Aghdam used the name "Nasime Sabz" online. A website in that name decried YouTube's policies and…

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify before a congressional committee about the privacy scandal that has rocked the social media company. The House and Energy and Commerce Committee announced Wednesday Zuckerberg will testify on April 11 about the British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, which obtained data on tens of millions of Facebook users that could be used to influence voters in U.S. elections. The firm was hired by U.S. President Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, which paid the firm nearly $6 million. Committee chairman Greg Walden and ranking Democrat Frank Pallone said the hearing hopes to "shed light on critical consumer data privacy issues and help all Americans better understand what happens to their personal information online." The panel is the first of three congressional committees that have asked Zuckerberg…

Facebook, expanding its response to people using the platform improperly, said Tuesday that it had deleted hundreds of Russian accounts and pages associated with a "troll factory" indicted by U.S. prosecutors for fake activist and political posts in the 2016 U.S. election campaign. Facebook said many of the deleted articles and pages came from Russia-based Federal News Agency, known as FAN, and that the social media company's security team had concluded that the agency was technologically and structurally intertwined with the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency. Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg told Reuters in an exclusive interview that the agency "has repeatedly acted to deceive people and manipulate people around the world, and we don't want them on Facebook anywhere." Massive data collection The world's largest social media company is under pressure to improve its handling of data after disclosing that information about…

Autonomous cars should be required to meet standards on their ability to detect potential hazards, and better ways are needed to keep their human drivers ready to assume control, U.S. auto safety and technology experts said after fatal crashes involving Uber Technologies and Tesla vehicles. Automakers and tech companies rely on human drivers to step in when necessary with self-driving technology. But in the two recent crashes, which involved vehicles using different kinds of technologies, neither of the human drivers took any action before the accidents. Driverless cars rely on lidar, which uses laser light pulses to detect road hazards, as well as sensors such as radar and cameras. There are not, however, any standards on the systems, nor do all companies use the same combination of sensors, and some…

Bread and chocolate are staples of the American diet. And a scientific team in California is working hard to make sure the plants they’re made from are as robust as possible. They’re using a recently discovered bacterial gene-editing tool called CRISPR to create more pest-resistant crops. CRISPR is a feature of the bacterial defense system. The microbes use it like a molecular pair of scissors, to precisely snip out viral infections in their DNA. Scientists at the Innovative Genomics Institute in Berkeley, California, are using CRISPR to manipulate plant DNA. Managing director, Susan Jenkins, says the technique is so much faster and precise than other plant transformation methods, it will likely increase the speed of creating new plant varieties by years, if not decades. “What CRISPR is going to allow,”…