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For a short time, the Klarna app displayed other people's data. Klarna immediately took the app offline and speaks of a human error. Swedish payment service provider Klarna suffered a serious data leak on Thursday morning due to "technical problems". Users of the app report that they were able to view the data and transactions of various other people. Klarna has confirmed this and said it immediately took the app offline. In the meantime, at least the login via the website is available again. According to numerous tips on Twitter and from readers, the Klarna app displayed various accounts, just not their own. Readers report that they were always able to view other third-party accounts during a reload. Bank details, orders, open invoice amounts, names, addresses and telephone numbers were visible. Thousands of users affected Klarna confirmed the incident. For about half an hour on Thursday morning, users were shown random third-party user data, a spokeswoman told heise onl...

Clearview AI has scooped up billions of photos from the web and turned them into a biometrics database for authorities. European activists are calling for "a clear Europe-wide ban on such services". Clearview AI, a New York-based company specializing in facial recognition, has been in legal trouble in the US for some time. A whole series of complaints against the company is currently underway in several US states. Now they have been joined by European civil rights activists. An alliance of organizations including Privacy International and noyb ("none of your business") has filed complaints with the data protection authorities of the UK, France, Austria, Italy and Greece. "What we want to achieve is a clear decision that services like Clearview are illegal in their current form in the EU," says Alan Dahi, privacy lawyer at noyb. That applies even if the providers are based abroad and have no paying customers in the EU, he adds. Thousands of government cust...

Encrypted communication poses major problems for security authorities. According to research by WDR and BR, however, the BKA has long been able to read chats via WhatsApp - using a regular function. Only with a very great effort, such as the use of state spy software, the so-called "state Trojan", can encrypted chats be monitored by criminals - or so it has been said so far by the security authorities. Monitoring communications via messenger services such as WhatsApp is one of the biggest challenges for law enforcement, it said. Since the providers of the programs do not allow the authorities to secretly read what is going on, they are in fact forced to use spyware.  According to research by BR and WDR, however, the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has been able to monitor communications via WhatsApp for several years now - even without having to install surveillance software on the target's cell phone. Regular WhatsApp function used According to the report, th...

After various hardware modifications, an expert has now also been able to manipulate the software of the trackers. Moreover, stalking via the item trackers is "frighteningly easy". Ten days after the official launch, security researcher Stack Smashing has managed to hack the accessory. He tweeted that he was able to break into the micro-controller and manipulate its software. The controller controls the device. For example, the German was able to change the NFC URL and make the item tracker open a different domain instead of the "find-my" website. A phishing page or similar could then be hidden behind it. Other specialists wonder about the fact that the firmware of the Airtags (test) is not encrypted. The hack is also called a jailbreak. Airtag stalking too easy thanks to security weaknesses Another report in recent days also criticized Apple's anti-stalking measures as inadequate. After testing them, Washington Post editor Geoffrey Fowler wrote, for example, ...

A horror scenario has occurred in the US: Cyber criminals have shut down one of the country's largest pipelines. The White House is alarmed, gasoline prices are rising. And criminals with a Robin Hood image are behind the attack. But this matter is now getting too hot for them. Nothing works anymore. After one of the most devastating cyberattacks known to date, the operation of one of the largest gasoline pipelines in the United States has been suspended until further notice. At the end of last week, the operator Colonial Pipeline was attacked with ransomware. In such attacks, hackers smuggle ransomware into the IT systems of their victims, encrypt their data - and then demand a ransom for its release. For four days now, neither the company nor the experts and U.S. authorities involved have managed to get the system up and running again. The government of Joe Biden (78) has now classified the case as a top priority, several ministries have been called in via a task force, and a reg...

The Signal team wanted to run ads showing how personalized Facebook ads work. The advertising account was deactivated. The team of the messenger Signal tried to place ads on Facebook platforms such as Instagram and wanted to disclose the personalization of the ads. As those involved now write in the Signal blog , however, they were excluded from Facebook's advertising network for this. The announcement says: "Companies like Facebook don't build technology for you, they build technology for your data. They collect everything they can from Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp to sell insights into people and their lives." And while that's no secret, exactly how it works remains unclear to many, he said. So now Signal wanted to showcase how ad personalization works based on the data it collects, even through ads. "Facebook's own tools have the potential to reveal what otherwise remains unseen. (...) We wanted to use those same tools to directly show how most of ...