Facebook spies on phone users' text messages, report says

Facebook admits reading text messages of app users
Did as part of a trial to launch its own messaging service
Some apps even allow companies to intercept phone calls

INTERNET giant Facebook is accessing smartphone users' personal text messages, an investigation has revealed.

Facebook admitted reading text messages belonging to smartphone users who downloaded the social-networking app and said that it was accessing the data as part of a trial to launch its own messaging service, The (London) Sunday Times reported.

Other well-known companies accessing smartphone users' personal data - such as text messages - include photo-sharing site Flickr, dating site Badoo and Yahoo Messenger, the paper said.

It claimed that some apps even allow companies to intercept phone calls - while others, such as YouTube, are capable of remotely accessing and operating users' smartphone cameras to take photographs or videos at any time.

Security app My Remote Lock and the app Tennis Juggling Game were among smaller companies' apps that may intercept users' calls, the paper said.

Emma Draper, of the Privacy International campaign group, said, "Your personal information is a precious commodity, and companies will go to great lengths to get their hands on as much of it as possible."

More than 400,000 apps can be downloaded to Android phones, and more than 500,000 are available for iPhones - with all apps downloaded from Apple's App Store covered by the same terms and conditions policy.

According to a YouGov poll for the newspaper, 70 per cent of smartphone users rarely or never read the terms and conditions policy when they download an app.

Source: Herald Sun

The iPhone app that reads minds: What’s next?

It’s a device that looks like Professor Xavier’s Cerebro helmet, the weird twist? The iPhone application that it was designed for can read minds much like the fictionalized supercomputer from comic book legend.

According to the Daily Mail, an iPhone application has been developed capable of reading minds. It’s named the XWave and allows users to control objects on-screen with their minds. It also can be used to train the brain to control attention spans and levels of relaxation.

This device is apparently the latest entry in the growing market for mind-controlled games and machines. It operates via a headset attached with straps to the user’s forehead and plugs into the iPhone jack.

The XWave headsetA state-of-the-art sensor in the device can read the user’s brainwaves through the skull, changing them into digital signals before showing them in different colors on the iPhone screen.

And when the user’s mind focuses on a specific task the graphics change, signaling the user’s level of concentration or relaxation.

PLX Devices CEO Paul Lowchareonkul claims it is only a matter of time before the brainwave centers technology entered the mainstream.

"The human brain is the most powerful, complex thing in the universe, and for the first time, we're able to harness its amazing power and connect it to everyday technology. With the development of 3rd party apps, the potential for innovation is limitless.”

And that’s not all PLX has in store to for consumer’s brainwaves.

Amazingly, another app, called XWave Tunes gives users the opportunity to connect with each other linking them based on the type of music that most stimulates their brainwaves.

Read more: TG Daily

Mind-reading skateboard gets cues from neuroheadset

(PhysOrg.com) -- Austin, Texas-based Chaotic Moon Labs made a splash earlier this year with a high-tech Kinect-controlled skateboard moving by the rider's hand signals. Now they are showcasing another skateboard that moves beyond Kinect power and hand signals, over to a board that moves by just reading your mind. Think where you want to go and your board takes you there. From their Board of Awesomeness, their newest Board of Imagination is designed to show another twist to skateboard inventiveness and also to what travel might involve with enough technical ingenuity and creativity at play.

Rather than just calling the new skateboard Board of Awesomeness V2, the creatives decided their new invention was no mere revision, but instead a skateboard worthy of its own name.

How to delete your Google browsing history in three simple steps . . . before it's too late to hide your secrets

There is just a week to go until Google controversially changes its privacy policy to allow it to gather, store and use personal information about its users.

But there is one way to stymie the web giant's attempts to build a permanent profile of you that could include personal information including age, gender and locality.

The new policy, which has been criticised by privacy campaigners who have filed a complaint to U.S. regulators, comes into affect on March 1.

But before that date you can delete your browsing history and, which will limit the extent to which Google records your every move - including your embarrassing secrets. Here's how:

1. Go to the Google homepage and sign into your account. Use the dropdown menu under your name in the upper right-hand corner to access your settings. Click on 'account settings', like below. Google

2. Next, find the section called 'Services' and you'll see a link to 'View, enable, or disable web history', shown in the red box below. Click on it. Google

3. Finally, you can remove all of your search details by clicking on 'Remove Web History', shown in the red box below. Once you have done this your history will remain disabled until you turn it back on. Google

Although disabling web history will not prevent Google from gathering and storing this information and using it for internal purposes, it does mean the Web giant will anonymise the data in 18 months.

It will also prevent it from certain kinds of uses, including sending you customised search results.

Read more: Daily Mail

Digital devices and the question of privacy

As we become more and more dependent upon digital devices (Blackberry, Ipad, Android, computer) to store personal information, most of us take for granted that the information is private. But is it?

On January 24, 2012, Google announced it was changing its privacy policies. Instead of a policy for each individual product (YouTube, Gmail, Google search, Picasa), all 60 Google services will now be covered by a blanket policy, one that is a lot shorter and easier to read.

And for the first time, information across all platforms will be combined to create a fuller portrait of users. Ostensibly, the move will help Google better tailor ads to people’s tastes. Google says they’ll never sell your personal information, or share it, without permission.

Simple enough …but the fact that users cannot “opt out,” and given Google’s checkered past regarding privacy issues, serious concerns are being expressed by privacy experts, federal agencies and congressional lawmakers.

Read more: Fox News

Obama Quiet as UN & Dictators Push to Control Internet

A new effort to hand control over the Internet to the United Nations is underway as oppressive regimes such as the communist dictatorship ruling mainland China clamor for more censorship and regulation of the World Wide Web.

The Obama administration has remained silent so far, having failed to even select a leader to defend U.S. interests at upcoming talks on the subject. But critics of the global move are already striking back, warning that transferring Internet governance to the UN would be a massive blow to freedom and prosperity for the whole planet.

Today, the online world is largely governed and regulated by a decentralized network of non-profit groups, most of which are based in America where the Internet was born. And private-sector interests — companies such as Google, Facebook, and others — still dominate the web at present.

The “multi-stakeholder” approach, as it is known, has kept the Internet free in most of the world for over a decade while revolutionizing business, information, communications, and even civilization itself. But all of that could change soon, at least if despots of various varieties — from communists in Beijing to Islamists in Tehran — get their way.

Later this month in Geneva, Switzerland, governments will gather to begin negotiations on a potential treaty that could crush the free flow of information online, according to experts. The diplomatic process will help lay the foundation for the upcoming “World Conference on International Telecommunications” in Dubai at the end of the year.

Under the auspices of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a UN body, a collection of mostly dictatorial regimes is expected to push for a complete overhaul of existing Internet governance. Everything from pay structures and rates to cyber security and data protection could end up under an international regime, according to experts.

Source: The New American

New Tools For Rewriting The Code Of Life, Enables Creating Artificial Life Forms

MIT and Harvard researchers have developed technologies that could be used to rewrite the genetic code of a living cell, allowing them to make large-scale edits to the cell’s genome. Such technology could enable scientists to design cells that build proteins not found in nature, or engineer bacteria that are resistant to any type of viral infection.

The technology, described in the July 15 issue ofScience, can overwrite specific DNA sequences throughout the genome, similar to the find-and-replace function in word-processing programs. Using this approach, the researchers can make hundreds of targeted edits to the genome of E. coli, apparently without disrupting the cells’ function.

Source: Nano Patents and Innovations