The FTC Gears Up for a Data Privacy Crackdown
We’ve also looked at how new data rulings in Europe could stop Meta from sending data from the EU to the US, potentially prompting app blackouts across the continent. However, the decisions also have a wider impact: reforming US surveillance laws.
Also this week, a new phone carrier launched and it has a specific goal: protecting your privacy. The Pretty Good Phone Privacy or PGPP service, by Invisv, separates phone users from the identifiers linked to your device, meaning it can’t track your mobile browsing or link you to a location. The service helps to deal with a huge number of privacy problems. And if you want to enhance your security even more, here’s how to use Apple’s new Lockdown Mode in iOS 16.
But that’s not all. Each week, we highlight the news we didn’t cover in-depth ourselves. Click on the headlines below to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.
The Federal Trade Commission this week announced it has begun the process for writing new rules around data privacy in the United States. In a statement, FTC chair Lina Khan pressed the need for strong privacy rules that rein in the “surveillance economy” that she says is opaque, manipulative, and responsible for “exacerbating … inbalances of power.” Anyone can submit rules for the agency to consider between now and mid-October. And the FTC will hold a public “virtual event” on the issue on September 8.
Communications company Twilio said this week that “sophisticated” attackers successfully waged a phishing campaign that targeted its employees. The attackers sent text messages with malicious links and included words like “Okta,” the identity management platform that itself suffered a hack by the Lapsus$ hacker group earlier this year. Twilio later said that the scheme allowed the attackers to access the data of 125 customers. But the campaign didn’t stop there: Cloudflare later disclosed that it, too, was targeted by the attackers—although they were stopped by the company’s hardware-based multifactor authentication tools. As always, be careful what you click.
Elsewhere, enterprise technology giant Cisco disclosed that it became the victim of a ransomware attack. According to…