devices

Is Your Smart Phone Spying on You?

Security0

Is your smart phone spying on you? In short, yes. Follow the simple guide below to find out how to protect yourself.

Apple

smart phone spyingFrequent Locations

iPhones track your location data down to the minute.

Who uses this information:

  • Third party advertisement: If you visit a shoe store, you might receive shoe advertisements.
  • Apps: Apps may request permission to access your frequent locations. This may be useful for some things such as viewing local weather or calculating ETAs from your location.

smart phone spyingHow to stop it:

  • Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Frequent Locations
  • There is a toggle for turning on and off frequent Locations and Improve Maps
smart phone spyingIdentifier for Advertising (IDFA)

This allows developers and marketers to track your activity. They use this data for targeted advertising on apps and web pages.

smart phone spyingHow to stop it:

  • General > About > Advertising
  • There is a toggle to turn on Limit Ad Tracking

Microsoft

smart phone spyingWindows 10

The new updated Windows 10 tracks just about everything you do.

Here is a section of the Windows 10 terms:

Finally, we will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to: 1.comply with applicable law or respond to valid legal process, including from law enforcement or other government agencies; 2.protect our customers, for example to prevent spam or attempts to defraud users of the services, or to help prevent the loss of life or serious injury of anyone; 3.operate and maintain the security of our services, including to prevent or stop an attack on our computer systems or networks; or 4.protect the rights or property of Microsoft, including enforcing the terms governing the use of the services – however, if we receive information indicating that someone is using our services to traffic in stolen intellectual or physical property of Microsoft, we will not inspect a customer’s private content ourselves, but we may refer the matter to law enforcement.

smart phone spyingHow to stop it:

Many methods are available, with varying effectiveness:

  • InPrivate Mode – Setting you browser to InPrivate mode does not completely cover your tracks
  • Unchecking all tracking pages upon opening – This has been tested (even with a DisableWinTracking tool) and found it still tracked some information.

Google/Android

smart phone spyingVoice Commands

Every voice command you make on your android phone is logged.  These recordings should only be available to you but the idea of possibly having any personal information stored may be unnerving to some. Every Google device records and stores voice commands.

smart phone spyingHow to stop it:

  • Settings > Account > Google > Sign In > Personal Info & privacy > Activity Controls > Voice & Audio Activity
  • There is a toggle to turn this off. You can also delete all saved recordings.

smart phone spyingLocation Tracking

Just Like Apple, Android tracks your location. Google doesn’t limit their tracking to cell phones. They continue tracking you from your desktop computer, if you leave your Google account logged in.

Who uses this information:

  • Third party advertisement: If you visit a shoe store, you might receive shoe advertisements.
  • Apps: Apps may request permission to access your frequent locations. This may be useful for some things such as viewing local weather or calculating ETAs from your location.

smart phone spyingHow to stop it:

  • Settings > Account > Google > Sign In > Personal Info & privacy >Google Location History
  • The you can toggle this off and you can delete location history
smart phone spyingAndroid Advertising ID

Similar to Apple’s Identifier for Advertising, Google takes information from your search activity to use for targeted advertising. You see these within apps downloaded from Google Play.

smart phone spyingHow to stop it:

  • Settings > Account > Google > Sign In > Personal Info & privacy > Ads Services
  • This will take you to a web page to manage the ad settings. Then you can toggle it off.
  • You can also reset the ID which clears past data. This can be helpful if you still want to see ads tailored to you but not about something you recently searched about. You can even delete and add interests to better tailor the ads.

This will not stop the ads but will stop the targeted ads based on your search history.

 

 

 

American and Europe agreement

Safe Harbor Rule Invalidated, How it Affects You

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The Data Safe Harbor Rule

safe harbor ruleThe Safe Harbor Rule was established in 2000 between the European Union (EU) and the United States (US). This agreement allowed businesses to legally funnel information across the Atlantic. Such data is normally transferred during global commerce, email correspondence, and even social media communication. Europe has stricter privacy guidelines to protect its citizens than the US does. Under the Safe Harbor agreement, US companies could “self-certify” that they met Europe’s stricter privacy standards in order to gain access to European markets.

In early October, the European Court of Justice ruled that the US approach to domestic surveillance was not up to European standards. Basically, this happened because the court was concerned that the US would compromise the data of European citizens swept up in our country’s growing mass surveillance machine. Consequently, this ruling made the Safe Harbor pact invalid virtually overnight.

The Safe Harbor Agreement 2.0

The European Union and the Unites States will be meeting on December 17th to create a new agreement for the Safe Harbor. They plan to conclude this agreement in January of 2016. The EU would like to see some changes in the new agreement such as:

  • Privacy watchdogs to challenge US companies’ handling of EU data
  • European citizens should be able to complain directly to national authorities about data protection

What Does an Invalid Ruling of Safe Harbor Mean?

This affects businesses and consumers from both the European Union and United States. Over 4,000 companies rely on the Safe Harbor for their data transfers, including:

  • Facebooksafe harbor rule
  • Google
  • Microsoft
  • Adobe
  • WeightWatchers

Effects on Companies:

This affects any US-based company doing online business in the EU.

safe harbor ruleMany companies that relied on the Safe Harbor “Self Certification” will now have to obtain independent certification.

In Europe, EU standards from 1995 are now being used to determine whether a company’s data sharing is permissible. As of now, the EU operates under the Data Protection Directive. This requires that companies only transfer data to countries that offer adequate privacy protection.

For More Information: With Safe Harbor now “Invalid,” Companies Must Change Data Practices

Effects on Consumers:

Consumers in the US might not notice a substantial difference. European consumers may be cut off from US companies for a time, depending on how stringent the new rules become. It may take some time before US based companies have made the necessary adjustments to do business with the EU again.

Microsoft’s Solution

safe harbor ruleMicrosoft has stated they will be storing data in a German company, Deutsche Telekom, for their European cloud computing customers. Microsoft will not be able to access the data without permission of either the customer or the company.

This solution may be too expensive for many companies. As a result, the US has started offering customers and partners the opportunity to enter into ‘data processing addendums’. However, these are only a temporary solution. Consequently, many companies are awaiting to hear what’s in the new Safe Harbor Rule.