In China, the messaging platform blocked thousands of keywords related to the virus, a new report reveals. From a report: When the novel coronavirus was first discovered in China last winter, the country responded aggressively, placing tens of millions of people into strict lockdown. As Covid-19 spread from Wuhan to the rest of the world, the Chinese government was just as…
Tag: citizen lab
Obscure Indian Cyber Firm Spied On Politicians, Investors Worldwide
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A little-known Indian IT firm offered its hacking services to help clients spy on more than 10,000 email accounts over a period of seven years. New Delhi-based BellTroX InfoTech Services targeted government officials in Europe, gambling tycoons in the Bahamas, and well-known investors in the United States including private equity giant KKR and…
Will Cellphone Tracing Bring a Tolerance of Surveillance?
An anonymous reader quotes the Washington Post:
In a matter of months, tens of millions of people in dozens of countries have been placed under surveillance. Governments, private companies and researchers observe the health, habits and movements of citizens, often without their consent. It is a massive effort, aimed at enforcing quarantine rules or tracing the spread of the coronavirus, that has…
WhatsApp: Israeli Firm ‘Deeply Involved’ In Hacking Our Users
WhatsApp has alleged in new court filings that an Israeli spyware company used US-based servers and was “deeply involved” in carrying out mobile phone hacks of 1,400 WhatsApp users, including senior government officials, journalists, and human rights activists. The Guardian reports: The new claims about NSO Group allege that the Israeli company bears responsibility in serious human rights violations, including the…
Growth In Surveillance May Be Hard To Scale Back After Pandemic, Experts Say
Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo quotes the Guardian: The coronavirus pandemic has led to an unprecedented global surge in digital surveillance, researchers and privacy advocates around the world have said, with billions of people facing enhanced monitoring that may prove difficult to roll back. Governments in at least 25 countries are employing vast programmes for mobile data tracking, apps to record personal…
China Tech Groups Censored Information About Coronavirus
Chinese social media platforms, including Tencent’s WeChat, censored keywords related to coronavirus as early as December [Editor’s note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], potentially limiting the Chinese public’s ability to protect themselves from the virus. From a report: Beijing has strictly controlled access to information throughout the coronavirus outbreak, which has killed more than 3,000 people worldwide. Research by…
‘Police Tracked a Terror Suspect on WhatsApp — Until His Phone Went Dark After a Warning From Facebook’
“A team of European law-enforcement officials was hot on the trail of a potential terror plot in October, fearing an attack during Christmas season, when their keyhole into a suspect’s phone went dark,” reports the Wall Street Journal: WhatsApp, Facebook Inc.’s popular messaging tool, had just notified about 1,400 users — among them the suspected terrorist — that their phones had…