Avast will no longer collect or sell its users’ internet browsing data

...after getting caught.

Somewhat old, but deserves a spot in the archive of malfeasance.

source: cox

Last week, Jalopnik ran an article about a person who bought a used Tesla from a dealer—who in turn bought it at auction directly from Tesla under California’s lemon law buyback program—advertised as having Autopilot, the company’s Advanced Driver Assistance System. The entire Autopilot package, which the car had when the dealer bought it, costs an extra $8,000. Then, Tesla remotely removed the software because “Full-Self Driving was not a feature that you had paid for.” Tesla said if the customer wanted Autopilot back, he’d have to fork over the $8,000.

source: cox

War dial hotel WiFi login... Room number and last name login.

source: cox

A strange competition has popped up to create levels with audacious passcodes that you could spend a lifetime trying to guess.

source: cox

All over the world, in Dutch clubs like the one Kok frequented, or Australian biker hangouts and Mexican drug safe houses, there is an underground trade of custom-engineered phones. These phones typically run software for sending encrypted emails or messages, and use their own server infrastructure for routing communications.

For MPC, the process of setting up the devices was relatively simple: MPC would take a Google Nexus 5 or Nexus 5X Android phone, and then add its own security features and operating system, according to social media posts from MPC and a source with knowledge of the process. MPC then created the customer’s messaging accounts, added a data-only SIM card (which MPC paid about £20 a month for), and then sold the phone to the customer at £1,200. Six-month renewals cost £700, the source added. MPC only sold around 5,000 phones, the source said, but that still indicates the business netted the company some £6 million. At one point, a version of MPC’s phones also used code from an open-source, security-focused Android fork called CopperheadOS, three sources said.

More: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kz4yxa/encrypted-phone-company-mpc-helped-martin-kok-murder

source: cox

There’s a joke in the journalism industry: It’s not news until the New York Times says it is. This is because the Times often reports stories that other outlets already have without any acknowledgment that they’re doing so.

source: cox

Tractor-maker John Deere distributed USB drives that hijacked users’ keyboards and loaded its official website onto the browser. While the John Deere USB drive didn’t do anything to compromise the security of devices it was connected to, it used a method that’s similar to a malicious attack.

I think the real story here is that people still plug in strange devices.

source: cox

As it turns out, if you Googled “Facebook phone number” on your phone earlier this week, you would see my cellphone as the fourth result, and Google has created a “card” that pulled my number out of the article and displayed it directly on the search page in a box. The effect is that it seemed like my phone number was Facebook’s phone number, because that is how Google has trained people to think.

source: cox