Low Profile Fail

from here and here

Learning that a bunch of drugs were seized with Nazi flags on them really only brings to mind one question: Who the fuck is putting Nazi flags on things in 2023? You've got to be living under a really big rock to think people in the outside world are just going to let that slide. You could put the Nazi flag on peanut butter and it's still going to draw suspicion.

You can't just pay lip service to data protection

from here and here

Clearview AI, the biometric surveillance company everyone loves to hate because they add you to their system without your consent, is apparently ignoring French regulators trying to call it to heel over violations of the European Union's GDPR. While they haven't paid the fines yet, they're now going to be growing by the day, and the EU has already thrown out existing data transfer arrangements with the US over GDPR violations (like the Cambridge Analytica scandal) in the past. 

Hey guys, look at my top secret clearance

from here and here

There's a pretty surprising detail about the alleged leaker of classified documents on discord. I'm not sure how such a character trait slips through the vetting process. There IS a vetting process, right? I'm sure they don't just give every Tom, Dick, and Harry top secret clearance. Right?!

Timmies rustling your privacy jimmies

from here and here

I wonder how much of peoples data plans got used up by this app sending location data to the server every few minutes. If you want to get away with something you're gonna have to be more discreet than that.

The last place you should go

from here and here

I can't imagine what this person was thinking when they broke into a police station, but at least the cops didn't have to look too hard to find them.

Taking the "s" out of sFTP

from here

How is it possible that a major service provider like GoDaddy is still using plaintext in 2021? This is not their first data breach. There is no excuse for this at thisi point.

Don't ask for money if you know they won't play ball

from here

I suppose this criminal might have gotten caught eventually anyways, but drawing attention to himself in order to get a 1 time payout? That was not a smart move

Everybody logs... sometimes

from here

This should be a lesson for everyone - promises about not logging IP addresses cannot be relied on. Every legitimate service has authorities it has to answer to, and sometimes those authorities demand that the service start collecting logs. If you want to be private, you need more than just a promises.

"I'm telling your mom" used to mean something

from here

When you're a parent you are your child's first experience with authority. You make the rules. You hand out the punishments. As your child gets older they may end up breaking not just your rules but society's rules and there's an expectation that you will exercise your authority in those cases as well, because the alternative is to be an accessory and then more formal authorities get involved. 

Such is the case of the parents of two UK kids who stole bitcoins from people while they were still minors.

Their willingness to pay should be your first clue

from here

Amazon is willing to pay for our palm prints? Yeah, that's a nope for me, dawg. I'm not interested in giving them a hand at building another biometric surveillance system. Biometrics are forever, you can't get new palm prints, and once you give that info out you can't put the genie back in the bottle.

In theory, Amazon won't track you for the rest of your life because they'll delete the data if you ask them to. And if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you. Internet giants don't get to be as big as they are by throwing away valuable data, and data they're actually willing to pay you for? You better believe it's valuable.

"Put your phones away and go to sleep"

from here

It wouldn't be much of a creepy Orwellian tool if it wasn't used for creepy Orwellian things

Who knew you could be identified by your identifying marks?

from here

You'd think a member of the mafia would know enough opsec to keep his tattoos covered when broadcasting his likeness across the globe. I guess not all of them do.

The fox is offering to guard the hen house

from here

I never thought I'd see the day when people fought back against tech companies' data grabbing ways in significant numbers. It's just a shame that they picked this time to do it. I'm not saying that they should trust big tech companies, but there are going to be serious (possibly life and death) consequences from choosing now as the moment.

I spy with your Internet-connected eye

from here

Why has our culture become so enamored with surveillance that we not only accept it when others do it to us but we even do it to ourselves? That such surveillance devices then get taken over by attackers seems like an entirely predictable conclusion. Why do we do this to ourselves?

I think I see the problem

from here

Literally, if the government had simply watched with their eyes instead of their interrogation techniques, no one would have had any idea they were on a list much less sued about it and gotten it declared unconstitutional.

How not to implement the "Forgot Password" feature

from here

This Japanese 7-Eleven security incident is a great example of why idiot-proof systems aren't good enough anymore. You need to make them asshole-proof too.

Privacy overruled

from here

In case you were naive enough to believe Zuckerberg had actually changed his tune, apparently disregarding privacy is still how Facebook operates.

Just think of the database as ReadReady

from here

Collecting the BreedReady status of millions of women seems pretty darn creepy, but who knows, maybe there is a legitimate reason for it (and the programmer just picked a really creepy column name - seems difficult to escape some level of creepiness).

Smart devices will rat you out

from here

Apparently some crooks are more health conscious than they are OpSec conscious. Fitness gadgets are notorious for being glorified tracking devices. I don't want to tell criminals how to do their jobs (I don't want to make it harder for the cops to catch them) but this hitman with a GPS watch should be an object lesson.

The objectionable object lesson

from here

I've never done this (to a phone*), but I ... know a guy tries to teach people a lesson about mobile security.

(*I can't say I've never changed the wallpaper on an unlocked desktop computer)