In this week’s data privacy news summary…
Social media company suffered major security breach this month that saw hackers take control of public figures’ accounts.
Twitter suffered a major security breach on 15 July that saw hackers take control of the accounts of major public figures and corporations, including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Apple.
The hack unfolded over the course of several hours, and in the course of halting it, Twitter stopped all verified accounts from tweeting – an unprecedented measure.
Source & full story: The Guardian
Australia’s competition regulator on Monday accused Alphabet’s Google of misleading consumers to get permission for use of their personal data for targeted advertising, seeking a fine “in the millions” and aiming to establish a precedent.
In court documents, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) accused Google of not explicitly getting consent or properly informing consumers of a 2016 move to combine personal information in Google accounts with browsing activities on non-Google websites.
Commission chairman Rod Sims says:
This change … was worth a lot of money to Google, … We allege they’ve achieved it through misleading behaviour.
Source & full story: Reuters
A second Welsh university has confirmed it was one of more than 20 institutions across the world to have been affected by hackers attacking a cloud provider.
The University of South Wales said it understood “email addresses and names of a section of our alumni database” were attacked in the Blackbaud hack.
The education software giant was held to ransom by hackers in May and paid an undisclosed ransom to cyber-criminals.
Aberystwyth University had previously admitted some of its data had been hit.
Source & full story: BBC News
The UK’s National Trust is among a growing list of organisations to issue data breach alerts after an attack on cloud computing provider Blackbaud.
Others include homeless charities The Wallich and Crisis, the terminal illness charity Sue Ryder, and the mental health group Young Minds.
The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) told the BBC that 125 organisations had reported to it in relation to the incident “so far”. They include dozens of universities.
The organisation – which looks after historic buildings and gardens – added that an internal investigation was under way to assess if further action was needed.
Jon Townsend, the trust’s chief information officer, explained:
We are currently in the process of identifying and informing those affected
Source & full story: BBC News
Facebook on Monday said it is asking EU courts to review “exceptionally broad” requests by antitrust regulators there that would scoop up employees’ personal information.
The US-based internet colossus maintained it has been cooperating with a European Commission antitrust investigation and will continue to do so, but that the wording of commission requests casts a net so wide it will haul in Facebook employees’ private messages and more.
The leading social network expects to give the commission hundreds of thousands of documents, according to Facebook associate general counsel for competition Tim Lamb, who said:
The exceptionally broad nature of the commission’s requests means we would be required to turn over predominantly irrelevant documents that have nothing to do with the commission’s investigations,
Source & full story: Yahoo
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