Getting hacked seems to be a rite of passage for social media companies. It’s sign that they’ve grown big enough to attract…
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US lawmaker pushes back against FBI backdoor calls
U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has introduced a bill that would stymie almost any attempt by a government agency to force device…
Read MoreNSA spies on carriers to break call encryption, report suggests
The NSA spies on the internal emails and documents of major mobile carriers and their industry body, the GSM Association, according to…
Read MoreRuling gives irked Bitcasa users more time to move their data
If you want to hold onto your Bitcasa infinite-drive data long enough to move it somewhere else, you'll need to pay Bitcasa $99 for an additional month, according to an order from U.S. District Judge William Alsup at a hearing in San Francisco on Wednesday.…
Read MoreWhatsApp adds end-to-end encryption to its Android app
Whatsapp just got a whole lot more secure for Android users. On Tuesday, the company announced that it's added a strong encryption protocol to its Android app, which means that Whatsapp can no longer read your messages, even if compelled by law enforcement.…
Read MoreVeradocs lands $14 million to secure files in the cloud
Stealth-security startup Veradocs plans to announce Tuesday that it took in $14 million in two funding rounds, which includes a seed round when the company formed in January 2014. The startup wants to build out sales and marketing and expand its engineering team, said Veradocs co-founder and CEO Ajay Arora.…
Read MoreAmazon unveils key-management security tool that works on-premise and in the cloud
Amazon detailed on Wednesday a new security tool called Amazon Web Services Key Management Service (KMS) that lets folks manage their encryption keys for both applications and services on-premise and in the Amazon cloud. The new key management feature should be available in all of the AWS regions.…
Read MoreUS tech firms help terrorists, says new UK spy chief. Maybe, but they also help the rest of us.
Like the FBI across the Atlantic, the British spy agency GCHQ is annoyed at the increasing security of tech products and services. But really, it's the people who should decide whether this is a good or bad thing.…
Read MoreHow Facebook protects your account and passwords from hackers
By cross-checking stolen account information on websites that hackers post to, Facebook can update its users on whether or not their data has been compromised.…
Read MorePretty Easy Privacy project aims to make encryption easier for regular people to use
pEp is a user interface scheme that's designed to help users judge how secure their conversations are, and make them more secure with as little knowledge as possible.…
Read MoreCloudFlare activates free Universal SSL encryption for its customers’ websites
The firm is rolling out what it said it would roll out a couple months back, in a move that should provide better protection even for websites using CloudFlare's free services.…
Read MoreLike iOS 8, Android L will reportedly make it harder for cops to access what’s on your phone
Google has told the Washington Post that the upcoming Android L will include encryption by default, in a way that won't let Google itself access what's on users' devices.…
Read MoreBitTorrent opens up Bleep alpha, releases Android and Mac apps for private text and voice chat
Want to call or message people in a secure fashion, without producing centrally logged metadata? BitTorrent wants to help with its new messaging client Bleep.…
Read MoreOpen-Xchange launches open-source OX Guard encryption tool for its mail and storage apps
The tool doesn't solve certain fundamental problems around current encryption technology, but it is easy to use and probably a lot better than nothing.…
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Google strengthens web encryption drive by making HTTPS a ranking issue
Gently at first but perhaps more strongly in the future, Google is now ranking up websites that use secure connections for their customers' communications and activities.…
Read MoreEdward Snowden thinks cloud providers still have a chance to win users’ trust
The former NSA sysadmin said in a Guardian interview that cloud providers can earn users' trust by building their services around encryption and being clear about "where they draw the lines."…
Read MoreUsing strong crypto, TunnelX offers a conversation tool that no one can snoop on
TunnelX is a service that uses really strong encryption to let ordinary people have a truly private conversation online. But what will happen if the government comes calling?…
Read MoreSilent Circle squares up to Skype with semi-secure calls to normal phones
Encrypted communications outfit Silent Circle, which has telco distribution deals for its secure voice app and $30 million funding in the bank,…
Read MoreEncryption race continues as Microsoft bulks up protection for email and file storage
Microsoft one-ups its encryption gameplan, adding Transport Layer Security to Outlook.com and enabling Perfect Forward Secrecy on Outlook.com and OneDrive.…
Read MoreUpdated: PayPal froze account of secure email startup ProtonMail due to “technical problem”
The Switzerland-based startup, established by MIT, Harvard and CERN researchers, couldn't access money that crowdfunding backers have given it, because PayPal had frozen its account. A PayPal rep apparently asked if ProtonMail had asked the government for permission to offer encryption.…
Read MoreBlackBerry continues to refocus on enterprise, launching an encrypted version of BBM
BlackBerry is using its secure enterprise communications network to launch a secure version of BBM, targeting it at corporate and government customer. It's the second example in two weeks of BlackBerry looking beyond the phone.…
Read MoreAmazon S3 users can now bring their own encryption keys
If you want to manage your own server-side encryption keys for Amazon S3 you can do so, or you can let Amazon keep doing it.…
Read MoreCloudera acquires big data encryption specialist Gazzang
Hadoop vendor Cloudera has acquired Gazzang, a startup specializing in encryption for Hadoop environments, as well as others next-generation data stores such as Cassandra and MongoDB.…
Read MoreHere’s what you need to know about the sudden and mysterious death of TrueCrypt
It's a mystery that has the information security industry scratching its collective head: why did the anonymous developers of TrueCrypt, a tool recommended by the likes of Edward Snowden, suddenly kill the project and recommend a Microsoft encryption tool instead?…
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