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Facebook is to use artificial intelligence to spot posts made by people who might be suicidal. However, it will continue using human moderators to decide how to act over such posts. The site already has a tool that moderators can activate to display ... special messages to people whose wellbeing may be in question. These messages include details of local professional support services and help lines. The messages also encourage the user to talk over their problems with a friend and even include suggested wordings for how to ask for help. Facebook says this tool was developed with the help of ... (view more)

Facebook has come up with a controversial way to help people whose compromising pictures are shared online without their permission. The term is dubbed "revenge porn" - and to solve the problem, Facebook wants users to upload naked pictures of ... themselves to Facebook servers. Yes, you read that correctly. The test program is known as the "Non-Consensual Intimate Image Pilot." It's designed to counter cases where somebody - often a former partner - tries to humiliate the victim by sharing images of them in revealing situations on the victim Facebook wall. Such behavior can be ... (view more)

T-Mobile has fixed a bug that let hackers get sensitive personal data just by using a phone number. In theory, it could have been possible to collect details on all the company's customers, though T-Mobile denies this. The problem was discovered by ... Karan Saini, a security researcher who discussed the problem with the Motherboard Vice website. The site then approached T-Mobile about the problem. It said "we were alerted to an issue that we investigated and fully resolved in less than 24 hours. There is no indication that it was shared more broadly." (Source: vice.com ) The bug had to do with T ... (view more)

A newly discovered Internet Explorer bug means rogue websites can track the next site a user visits, or even the next search the user makes. While it's not necessarily devastating in itself, the researcher who found the bug says it is a sign ... Microsoft isn't paying enough attention to its old browser. The bug means that a 'rogue' web page could access the content of whatever the user types in to the Internet Explorer address bar as soon as they press the Enter key. This would normally be another website address, but the way Internet Explorer works means it could also be a search term. Security ... (view more)

The content of video ads you see on YouTube could be personalized based on your online history, thanks to new advertiser tools. The video clips could automatically adjust based on sites you've visited, apps you've downloaded and even the places ... you've been. It's all possible thanks to Google offering a series of new tools for advertisers. One is known as "Custom Affinity Audiences," which means ads aren't simply placed next to (or before) relevant videos. Instead they are specifically targeted at users who are likely to find the content relevant. While the tool has already been ... (view more)

Researchers suggest that anonymized browsing data can be used to track users. The flaw can make it easy to reveal exactly what sites individuals have visited. Security experts Svea Eckert and Andreas Dewes told the Def Con security conference that ... they'd been able to identify adult websites a particular judge had visited, as well as a politician's online interest in drugs. The data came from so-called "clickstreams," which are simply a list of the sites an individual has visited and the order in which they visited them. They are commonly used by advertising firms to produce ... (view more)

A judge has thrown out a lawsuit which accused Facebook of tracking web users after they logged out of the site. Judge Edward Davila said the people bringing the case hadn't proven any financial loss or a breach of reasonable privacy expectations. ... The case involves website cookies, which are small text files created by a browser and stored on a user's computer. The cookies are readable by websites and can be used to identify the user and customize the content they see when visiting a page. In this case, the cookies were being read by third party websites that included a "Facebook ... (view more)

Tens of millions of Android devices may have been infected by rogue apps that found a way past Google's security checks. The 'Judy' malware came through apps in the official Google Play store. Google makes a big deal about its Play Store being a ... safe place to get apps. If an app is obtained from another source other that the Play Store, users must specifically confirm any associated risk during app installation. That makes it particularly embarrassing for Google, considering that the Judy malware was able to slip through its security checks. The malware in question has been dubbed ... (view more)

Motion sensors in smartphones could give away your lock code to hackers according to new research. But practical limitations mean related attacks might have to be specifically targeted. Researchers at Newcastle University explored the idea that ... tools such as accelerometers, gyroscopes, compasses and GPS chips in phones could reveal more detail than users realize. The tools are used for a variety of functions such as location tracking, fitness tracking and gesture control such as a user turning a phone face down to instantly switch it to "do not disturb" mode. Their theory was that ... (view more)

Researchers have found a way to track web users even if they switch web browsers. It could improve security but also weaken online privacy. The researchers at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania were trying to find ways of improving fingerprinting. ... That's a way to attempt to identify an individual user (or at least their computer) without relying on single identifiers such as login details, browser cookies, or an IP address. Instead, fingerprinting involves taking multiple pieces of information provided by a user's browser such as the browser name, it's version, whether they have an ad blocker ... (view more)