According to its security blog, Google prevented 2.28 million — yes, million — Android apps from being published on its Play Store in 2023. The company says it also removed 333,000 accounts for attempting to deliver malware through the Play Store, as well as for “repeated severe policy violations.” These numbers have grown substantially since 2022, when the company disclosed it prevented 1.43 million apps from being published on the Play Store.
Last week, Congress reauthorized a controversial surveillance authority, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. While legislators considered reforms to FISA that would restrain the federal intelligence and law enforcement community’s abilities to spy on American communications without a warrant, they in fact expanded these surveillance powers to subject more electronic communications service providers, such as U.S. cloud computing data centers, to data collection.
On April 10, Apple sent users in 92 countries warning of mercenary malware attacks targeting the iPhone. The notification did not provide details about the identities of the attackers. According to TechCrunch, Apple warned, “This attack is likely targeting you specifically because of who you are or what you do. Although it’s never possible to achieve absolute certainty when detecting such attacks, Apple has high confidence in this warning — please take it seriously.”
Throughout this year, our digital security training team will share our thoughts on navigating security issues during the 2024 election season. Elections around the world experience distinct security issues that may change from year to year, but in the U.S. we look to 2020 for lessons on how to get ahead of likely issues, from surveillance of our sensitive communications to perennial phishing attacks and harassment for political reporting.
Following a class-action lawsuit over Google’s handling of user data in its Chrome browser’s “Incognito” private browsing mode, the search company will expunge “billions of event-level data records that reflect class members’ private browsing activities” improperly collected before January 2024. It also updated its Incognito landing page to highlight that even Google can discern your activities in private browsing mode. Additionally, the company will be required to delete data that makes users’ private browsing data personally identifiable, such as IP addresses.
The U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple, claiming the company engages in monopolistic practices over the smartphone market, preventing competitors by degrading the experience of communicating with non-Apple users in its products. iMessage features prominently in the suit, with the DOJ alleging consumers are disincentivized to leave its “walled garden” and so miss out on unique features built into the iMessage protocol, including end-to-end encryption between Apple users.
We recently shared news of Mozilla’s partnership with data removal service Onerep. Through a service it calls Mozilla Monitor Plus, Onerep is designed to automatically scan for personal information on data broker websites. But journalist Brian Krebs has found evidence that the founder of Onerep, purveyor of anti-data broker services, himself created dozens of data broker services. Read more.
Under the new European Union law, the Digital Markets Act, Meta is required to allow interoperability between third-party chat software and its WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger apps. These tools offer end-to-end encryption using the Signal protocol, the strong encryption specifications pioneered by the Signal encrypted messaging app.
Both in the U.S. and abroad, governments are capturing encrypted connections that pass over the public internet and saving them for later use. Within years or decades, post-quantum computers could meaningfully shorten the amount of time required to unscramble encryption, allowing attackers to read previously private messages. So a growing number of organizations, including Apple, are preparing for attacks like these with post-quantum encryption. Read more in our newsletter.
Aye hearties, gangway — the Avast cor-pirates are walking the plank. That’s because the company sold user data without consumers’ knowledge, according to the Federal Trade Commission, which ordered U.K.-based Avast Limited to pay $16.5 million and will also bar the antivirus company from selling or licensing browser data for advertisements. Read more in our newsletter.
Sign up to stay up to date and take action to protect journalists and sources everywhere.
