For most American businesses, complying with US data privacy laws follows a somewhat linear, albeit lengthy, path. Set up a privacy policy, don’t lie to the consumer, and check the specific rules if you’re a health care provider, video streaming company, or kids’ app maker. For American businesses that want to expand to a new market, though, complying with global data privacy laws is more akin to … [Read more...]
April 2, 2019
March 13, 2019
Google’s Nest fiasco harms user trust and invades their privacy
Technology companies, lawmakers, privacy advocates, and everyday consumers likely disagree about exactly how a company should go about collecting user data. But, following a trust-shattering move by Google last month regarding its Nest Secure product, consensus on one issue has emerged: Companies shouldn’t ship products that can surreptitiously spy on users. Failing to disclose that a product can … [Read more...]
March 13, 2019
Explained: Payment Service Directive 2 (PSD2)
Payment Service Directive 2 (PSD2) is the implementation of a European guideline designed to further harmonize money transfers inside the EU. The ultimate goal of this directive is to simplify payments across borders so that it’s as easy as transferring money within the same country. Since the EU was set up to diminish the borders between its member states, this make sense. The … [Read more...]
March 8, 2019
Google Chrome zero-day: Now is the time to update and restart your browser
It’s not often that we hear about a critical vulnerability in Google Chrome, and perhaps it’s even more rare when Google’s own engineers are urging users to patch. There are several good reasons why you need to take this new Chrome zero-day (CVE-2019-5786) seriously. For starters, we are talking about a full exploitation that escapes the sandbox and leads to remote code … [Read more...]
March 7, 2019
The not-so-definitive guide to cybersecurity and data privacy laws
US cybersecurity and data privacy laws are, to put it lightly, a mess. Years of piecemeal legislation, Supreme Court decisions, and government surveillance crises, along with repeated corporate failures to protect user data, have created a legal landscape that is, for the American public and American businesses, confusing, complicated, and downright annoying. Businesses are expected to comply with … [Read more...]
March 1, 2019
Spectre, Google, and the Universal Read Gadget
Spectre, a seemingly never ending menace to processors, is back in the limelight once again thanks to the Universal Read Gadget. First seen at the start of 2018, Spectre emerged alongside Meltdown as a major potential threat to people’s system security. Meltdown and Spectre Meltdown targeted Intel processors and required a malicious process running on the system to interact with it. Spectre could … [Read more...]
February 27, 2019
Will pay-for-privacy be the new normal?
Privacy is a human right, and online privacy should be no exception. Yet, as the US considers new laws to protect individuals’ online data, at least two proposals—one statewide law that can still be amended and one federal draft bill that has yet to be introduced—include an unwelcome bargain: exchanging money for privacy. This framework, sometimes called “pay-for-privacy,” is plain wrong. It casts … [Read more...]
February 25, 2019
Max Schrems: lawyer, regulator, international man of privacy
Almost one decade ago, disparate efforts began in the European Union to change the way the world thinks about online privacy. One effort focused on legislation, pulling together lawmakers from 28 member-states to discuss, draft, and deploy a sweeping set of provisions that, today, has altered how almost every single international company handles users’ personal information. The finalized law of … [Read more...]
February 14, 2019
February 11, 2019
A week in security (February 4 – 8)
Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we took a closer look at the technical and reputational challenges for Facebook as it tries to integrate secure messaging across Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. We explored Google’s latest attempts to change how the public sees—literally—web browser URLs, gave some of our best tips on how to safely browse the Internet at work, and detailed a unique spam campaign … [Read more...]
