Thursday, July 29, 2021

Pegasus: 11 Essential Apps for Protecting Your Privacy Online

SA Premier Steven Marshall said authorities did not want to see people turn into "Gladys Kravitz from Bewitched", the nosy neighbour portrayed by Alice Pearce in the 1960s television sitcom.

Don't be a Gladys Kravitz' and snitch, says SA Premier, as mask-wearing goes wide


The Insecurity Industry Edward Snowden


This is no ordinary spying. Our most intimate selves are now exposed Guardian. Whoa, look at what Pegasus cost!


Pegasus, Pandemics, and the Normalization of Surveillance Plebity


From Data Cold Rivers and Lakes to Data Fabrics: 36% of organizations suffered a serious cloud security data leak or a breach in the past year


How to prevent corporate credentials ending up on the dark web

A little over $3,000 — that’s how much stolen corporate network credentials tend to go for on the dark web. Although the exact asking price for an individual’s credentials may depend on several factors, like how much revenue their enterprise makes, particularly valuable organizations may even see their login details auctioned off for as much as $120,000. While a successful ransomware attack is capable of fetching cybercriminals almost 10 times as much in ransom, even expensive credentials can be money well spent


Why is it fine to consume some consciousness-altering plants, like coffee, but not others, like opium?     opium v coffee 


UNESCO Strips Liverpool of World Heritage Status

Liverpool now seeks to have UNESCO’s decision deferred or overturned at a meeting scheduled to occur in July.


China, US draw lines in sand at top-level meeting but agree to keep talking South China Morning Post


China’s hammer blow to private education shows it will do whatever it takes to meet its goals RT 


International journalists face intense harassment, threats of violence while covering flooding in China Committee to Protect Journalists



COVID authoritarianism sweeps across Europe – but the economy is saved

DuckDuckGo’s new email privacy service forwards tracker-free messages

Bleeping Computer: “DuckDuckGo is rolling out an email privacy feature that strips incoming messages of trackers that can help profile you for better profiling and ad targeting. Users of the service get a free “@duck.com” email address that cleans messages of trackers and forwards them to your normal inbox. Currently in private beta, DuckDuckGo’s Email Protection service aims at shielding you from hidden trackers that are often embedded in emails from various companies. Trackers can let email senders know when you open their messages and help ad companies create a profile for you based on collected metadata such as the device you used to read the email when you opened the message, and your general location. This sort of information can also end up in the hands of third parties. Email Protection works by using a “@duck.com” address that filters out the hidden trackers in your messages and then sends them to your normal inbox. “This means if you use an email service like Gmail or Yahoo, it’s no problem! Emails sent to your Personal Duck Address will arrive there as usual so you can read your email like normal, in any app or on the web, worry-free.” Another benefit of this is that you can protect your real address from data breach incidents. Furthermore, once the level of spam increases to unacceptable levels, there is the possibility to deactivate the email address and use another one…”


11 Essential Apps for Protecting Your Privacy Online PC Magazine: “Walking down the street, you have options for privacy. You can pull up the hood of your jacket, hide behind dark glasses, even wear a mask. Once you go online, though, you don’t have the same choices. Clawing back personal data is impossible once it’s loose on the internet, and revealing more than you should is painfully easy. You may think that there’s no problem, that you have nothing to hide. But you risk abuse of your private data by advertisers, hackers, identity thieves, and others. Just as there are various ways to ensure your privacy on the street, there are many different approaches to online privacy, from VPNs to email encryptors to monitors that warn if dark web denizens are selling…you! We’ve rounded up a collection of utilities that cover a broad spectrum of privacy protection techniques so that you can choose one or more to enhance your own privacy…”


PC World: “Web browsers used to be a place where folks could only play flash games, check emails, hang out in chat rooms, and torrent music (and malware) from LimeWire. Those days are long gone. Thanks to the sophisticated development of web technologies such as HTML5, web browsers have grown to such a level that you can do almost all of your personal- and work-related tasks using a powerful web app. This, for the most part, successfully eliminates the need to download desktop software, saving you hard drive space and the headache of dealing with complicated installation and set-up processes. The rise of web apps also gave birth to a new breed of Internet-centric devices like Chromebooks. While not a definitive list, as many tasks have a plethora of web apps that can do the job quite well, here’s what we think are some of the best, from video editors to music players to project management tools and yes, even games…”