The issuing of an £80,000 fine by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to London-based estate agency Parliament View Ltd (LPVL) highlights the importance of due diligence when keeping customer data safe. What Happened? Prior to the introduction of GDPR, between March 2015 and February 2017, LPVL left their customer data exposed online after transferring the data via FTP from its server to a partner organisation which also offered a property letting transaction service. LPVL was using Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (IIS) but didn’t switch off an Anonymous Authentication Function, thereby giving anyone access to the server and the data without [...]

Following criticism of the Police use of facial recognition technology in terms of privacy, accuracy, bias, and management of the image database, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee has called for a temporary halt in the use of the facial recognition system. Database Concerns Some of the key concerns of the committee were that the Police database of custody images is not being correctly edited to remove pictures of unconvicted individuals and that innocent peoples' pictures may be illegally included in facial recognition "watch lists" that are used by police to stop and even arrest suspects. While the [...]

The free online Data Discovery Portal from F-Secure shows you what personal information you have given to tech-giant free services Facebook, Google, Amazon, Snapchat, Twitter and Apple over the years. If you visit https://data-discovery-portal.f-secure.com/en/ and click on the logo of each of those companies you will be taken straight to the page where you can download a copy of the information that they have collected about you (Apple requires a login).  With Amazon, for example, you can even discover the way to review, listen to, and delete any voice recordings associated with your account. The F-Secure Data Discovery Portal is, therefore, one [...]

Alan Turing, head of the Enigma code-breaking team at Bletchley Park in World War 2, mathematician and father of computer science who was driven to suicide over the treatment of his sexuality is finally being honoured by the featuring his image on the new £50 note. Chosen By Committee The UK Bank of England’s Banknote Character Advisory Committee advises the Governor on the characters that appear on new banknotes. In December, members of the committee were given summary biographies of 989 dead scientists, put forward by more than 225,000 members of the public, from which one would need to be [...]

Scientists from Brown University are reported to have discovered how to store data on metabolic molecules, which are pieces of matter that are even smaller than DNA. Storage In Artificial Metabolomes   The results of the recent research announced on the Brown University website and published in the PLOS ONE journal describe how researchers have discovered a way to store/encode and retrieve kilobyte-scale image files from artificial metabolomes which are arrays of liquid mixtures containing sugars, amino acids and other types of small molecules.  Some of these small molecules are smaller and have greater information density than DNA. According to [...]

Cybersecurity firm CyberMDX has reported the discovery of a security flaw in some Internet-connected GE Healthcare anaesthetic machines which could leave them vulnerable to hacks. Security Flaw The security flaw has been described as the exposure of the configuration of certain terminal server implementations that extend GE Healthcare anaesthesia device serial ports to TCP/IP networks. This could potentially mean that when the devices are connected to the Internet, they could be remotely targeted by hackers who could modify the parameters of the anaesthesia devices. According to CyberMDX, this could mean that hackers could silence device alarms and even adjust anaesthetic [...]

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has complained that it has been unable to compile meaningful statistics and draw meaningful conclusions about email security in its latest report because Microsoft stopped sending Dmarc reports two years ago. What Is Dmarc? Domain-based message authentication, reporting and conformance (Dmarc) is a protocol, developed by the Trusted Domain Project, to help provide greater assurance on the identity of the sender of a message, and it builds upon the email authentication technologies SPF and DKIM developed over a decade ago and the work on a collaborative system pioneered by PayPal Yahoo! Mail and later Gmail. Dmarc [...]

Facebook has launched a new anti-scam service using the £3m that it agreed to donate to the development of the programme in return for TV consumer money champion Martin Lewis dropping his legal action over scam ads. What Legal Action? Back in September 2018, MoneySavingExpert’s (MSE) founder Martin Lewis (OBE) took Facebook to the UK High Court to sue the tech giant for defamation over a series of fake adverts bearing his name.  Many of the approximately 1000 fake ads, bearing Mr Lewis’ name appeared on the Facebook social media platform over the space of a year, could and did [...]

If you’re out and about on business in a city at home or abroad, the Citymapper app provides trip planning, real-time information about departures, offline maps, alerts about delays and disruptions, and much more. The app covers many cities around the world, and the European cities of London, Manchester, Birmingham, Paris, Lyon, Berlin, Cologne, Düsseldorf, and Hamburg. To find the app go to the Google Play Store.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has imposed a £183 million fine on British Airways, the biggest fine to date under GDPR, for a data breach where the personal details of 500,000 customers were accessed by hackers. The Breach The breach, which involved criminals using what is known as a ‘supply chain hack’ took place between 21st August and 5th September 2018.  The attackers were able to insert a digital skimming file, made up of only 22 lines of JavaScript code, into the online payment forms of BA’s website and app. The malicious page in the app (identified by a RiskIQ [...]