Education & Numérique

"If you’ve ever been the victim of a burglary, the chances are you were at least partially responsible. It might be hard to admit, but an open window, an unlocked door, or an expensive item left alluringly are the most frequent reasons for home break-ins. While you can never be 100 percent certain of preventing a robbery, some basic precautions can significantly reduce your chances, as would-be thieves move on to easier targets.

The same principles apply to home network security. Sadly, almost no systems are entirely “hack proof” – but browser security tests, server safety measures, and network safeguards can make your set-up much more robust.

Using some free tools, you can quickly and easily identify which areas are your “weak spots”, thus giving yourself a chance to remedy them before a serious breach occurs..."

A security researcher who was kicked off a United Airlines flight last month after tweeting a reference to its security vulnerabilities had previously taken control of an airplane mid-flight.

Veracode warns that many connected-home devices lack basic security features, leaving consumers wide open to sophisticated thieves.

"When you start to think about all the things that could go wrong when browsing the Internet, the web starts to look like a pretty scary place. Luckily, Internet users as a whole are getting far more savvy, and better at recognizing risky online behavior.

While pages with a dozen download buttons – or auto-checked boxes that tricked us into downloading things we didn’t want – are no longer quite as effective as they once were, that doesn’t mean there aren’t hackers out there right now trying to come up with new methods of deception. In order to protect ourselves from these threats it’s important to understand just what they are, and how they differ..."

"AMERICAN AND BRITISH spies hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe, according to top-secret documents provided to The Intercept by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The hack was perpetrated by a joint unit consisting of operatives from the NSA and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. The breach, detailed in a secret 2010 GCHQ document, gave the surveillance agencies the potential to secretly monitor a large portion of the world’s cellular communications, including both voice and data.

The company targeted by the intelligence agencies, Gemalto, is a multinational firm incorporated in the Netherlands that makes the chips used in mobile phones and next-generation credit cards.  (...)"

"Internet surveillance has been a hot topic in recent years—we’ve talked about it extensively here at MakeUseOf, it’s been brought up on major news outlets daily, and we’ve seen a slew of new apps, extensions, and products aimed at helping you retain your privacy online.

This article is meant to be as comprehensive a resource as possible on avoiding Internet surveillance. We’ll talk about why Internet surveillance is such a big deal, who’s behind it, whether or not you can completely avoid it, and a wide range of tools that will make you harder to track, identify, and spy on..."

"The problem with encrypting data is that sooner or later, you have to decrypt it. Keep your cloud files cryptographically scrambled using a secret key that only you possess, and it’s likely no hacker will have the codebreaking resources necessary to crack them. But as soon as you want to actually do something with those files—anything from editing a word document or querying a database of financial data—you have to unlock the data and leave it vulnerable. Homomorphic encryption, a still-mostly-theoretical advancement in the science of keeping secrets, could change that (...)"

Tips, Tools and How-tos for Safer Online Communications

EFF announce the relaunch of Surveillance Self-Defense, their guide to defending yourself and your friends from digital surveillance by using encryption tools and developing appropriate privacy and security practices. These resources are intended to inspire better-informed conversations and decision-making about digital security and privacy. The site is available today in English, Arabic, and Spanish, with more languages coming soon.

According to Edward Snowden, people who care about their privacy should stay away from popular consumer Internet services like Dropbox, Facebook, and Google...

EFF has released its newest report charting which companies promise to uphold best practices in privacy and transparency. The report analyzes the published policies of 24 major technology companies, including Facebook, Google, Twitter, and ISPs like AT&T and Comcast. While we've released this report for four years, this year we made the criteria more challenging to reflect the higher standards we've come to expect from technology companies.

In this year's Who Has Your Back, nine companies earned stars in every category available to them: Adobe, Apple, CREDO, Dropbox, Sonic, Wickr, Wikimedia, Wordpress.com, and Yahoo. Three companies scored especially poorly: AT&T, Verizon, and WhatsApp.

Librarians have long understood that to provide access to knowledge it is crucial to protect their patrons' privacy. Books can provide information that is deeply unpopular. As a result, local communities and governments sometimes try to ban the most objectionable ones. Librarians rightly see it as their duty to preserve access to books, especially banned ones. In the US this defense of expression is an integral part of our First Amendment rights.

Users are increasingly turning to services that claim to be secure from the prying eyes of the NSA and law enforcement. In this article, we take a look at some of the privacy-focused email and cloud storage services that have either sprung up or gained popularity in the wake of what's popularly been referred to as the Summer of Snowden. Secure Email and Cloud Alternatives to Gmail and Dropbox.

A security research reported the bug in iCloud's security to Apple back in March.