CDP Institute

Zimbabwe’s president has signed the controversial Cyber Security and Data Protection Bill into law. It seeks to provide data protection and will establish a new Data Protection Authority, but human rights activists fear it will stifle dissent by spying on what citizens send and receive on social media platforms.

An internal FBI document obtained by Rolling Stone indicates that WhatsApp and iMessage, while billing themselves as secure messaging apps, are in fact very vulnerable to law-enforcement searches when the FBI has a warrant or subpoena. According to the document, WhatsApp will also provide more practically-real-time information about a user and their activities than nearly every other major messaging tool.

Looking for new ways to provide connectivity for its audience of 800 million customers amid new and evolving privacy regulations, LinkedIn is categorizing segments using Group Identity B2B. The tool, which is being tested by an initial group of users, will use data from LinkedIn profiles, including seniority and industry, to group individuals and enable marketers to reach relevant audiences without a need for tracking.

Research on smartwatches that popular with parents for monitoring their kids found vulnerabilities that make them easy targets for hackers looking to steal private data. Cyber security company, Dr. Web, found that smartwatch brands, including Elari Kidphone and Wokka Lokka, often use third-party firmware and often don’t check for security allowing the products to be insecure.

This is part of a UK antitrust investigation into Google’s Privacy Sandbox.

The trojan apps which bypassed detection on Google Play, were for document scanners, QR code readers, fitness monitors and cryptocurrency apps.

The app can anonymize thousands of records per second.

Files accessed by hackers contained personal information, including credit card, pin, and social security numbers, though DDC said genetic testing data was kept in a separate system that was not accessed.

In the first case, the Italian Competition Authority concluded that the companies were colluding to block other resellers of Apple-owned Beats products sold on the Amazon's Italy marketplace.  In the second, Apple and Google were fined for violating EU competition rules, using aggressive methods in the way they utilize consumer data, and failing to provide enough information to customers on how their data would be used.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) ordered a halt to updates of existing Tencent apps pending review. The government has focused on Tencent because nine of its products were found to violate data protection rules.

Belarus has enacted a new personal data protection law which adds liabilities to companies, including a requirement to develop an algorithm for processing data for individuals, clients, or when representing a legal entity. It also applies to relationships with employees.

Attacks on mid-sized companies are up between 50-125% since 2020, with healthcare and transportation among the highest targets, according to the Coro Security Report. Their research, looking at companies that employ up to 2,500 people in retail, manufacturing, professional services, healthcare, transportation and education, found a major increase in attacks particularly in the last quarter of both 2020 and 2021. The survey concludes the urgency will increase.