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""Anonymous Korea" claimed to take down several North Korean state websites Saturday, just hours after North Korea said it has entered into a "state of war" with South Korea. North Korea's main official state website was back up and running, as of 5 p.m. Eastern Time on Saturday. But Mashable was still unable to access three of the five listed websites that Anonymous Korea claimed to have attacked. "

"Yet the balance of experimental evidence over the past thirty years suggests that this is not the case. Not only would removing anonymity fail to consistently improve online community behavior - forcing real names in online communities could also increase discrimination and worsen harassment."

"Three months passed. Then, on Wednesday, anonymous government officials reportedly confirmed that a local company called Systems Engineering of Egypt (SEE or See Egypt) had won the bid to develop the system, which would allegedly allow the Egyptian government to sniff and analyze Internet and social media activity, as well as intercept Skype, WhatsApp and Viber conversations. "

"The survey found that more than half of Americans say they do not want to lose control over their information but also believe this loss of control has already happened. Turow argues that marketers misrepresent Americans' behaviors by categorizing their acceptance of company discounts in exchange for personal data as rational acceptance of "tradeoffs."

"Raji says her investigation into the data has made her gravely concerned about deep-learning-based facial recognition. "It's so much more dangerous," she says. "The data requirement forces you to collect incredibly sensitive information about, at minimum, tens of thousands of people. It forces you to violate their privacy. That in itself is a basis of harm. And then we're hoarding all this information that you can't control to build something that likely will function in ways you can't even predict. That's really the nature of where we're at.""

"In a collaboration between CyberNews Sr. Information Security Researcher Mantas Sasnauskas and researchers James Clee and Roni Carta, suspicious backdoors have been discovered in a Chinese-made Jetstream router, sold exclusively at Walmart as their new line of "affordable" wifi routers. This backdoor would allow an attacker the ability to remotely control not only the routers, but also any devices connected to that network. "

"One of the problems with The Social Dilemma is that it supposes that tech did what it claims it did - that these are actually such incredible geniuses that they figured out how to use machine learning to control minds. And that's the problem - the mind control thing they designed to sell you fidget spinners got hijacked to make your uncle racist. But there's another possibility, which is that their claims are rubbish. They just overpromised in their sales material, and that what actually happened with that growth of monopolies and corruption in the public sphere made people cynical, angry, bitter and violent. In which case the problem isn't that their tools were misused. The problem is that the structures in which those tools were developed are intrinsically corrupt and corrupting."

"As Zuckerberg surely knows, providing a greater sense of control over their personal data won't make Facebook users more cautious. It will instead encourage them to share more. This, of course, will produce more data for Facebook to mine to its own financial advantage."

"After spending hours studying FAQ pages, sending terse emails and making occasional phone calls in an earnest-if-naive attempt to take back some control of my personal information online, I had my first demoralizing moment."

"Some of the same social media analyses that have helped Google and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spot warning signs of a flu outbreak could be used to detect the rumblings of violent conflict before it begins, scholars said in a paper released this week. Kenyan officials used essentially this system to track hate speech on Facebook, blogs and Twitter in advance of that nation's 2013 presidential election, which brought Uhuru Kenyatta to power."

"Given the government's obsession with passing cybersecurity legislation, you would think they'd be happy that Apple and Google are making it harder for foreign governments and criminals to break into people's phones or company servers to steal your data. But you'd be forgetting that the head of the FBI and his fellow fear-mongerers are still much more concerned with making sure they retain control over your privacy, rather than protecting everyone's cybersecurity."

"Machine learning is what's taking place with our personal data while we're passive players in the process. "

"Selling data is as yet a small part of Twitter's overall income - $70m out of a total of $1.3bn last year, with the lion's share of cash coming from advertising, but the social network has big plans to increase that. Its acquisition of Chris Moody's analytics company Gnip for $130m last April is a sign of that intent. Google and Facebook have built their businesses around sharing data, but their control of our private and public information has become a source of huge controversy. "

"FROM THE BOING BOING SHOP   FOLLOW US Twitter / Facebook / RSS Singhealth, a Singaporean public health service, suffered the worst breach in Singaporean history, losing control of 1.5 million peoples' data; included in the breach was prescription data on 160,000 people, including Singapore's prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong."

""As we have made clear, we believe that data collected in public space must be overseen and closely controlled by an independent and publicly accountable Data Trust, not Sidewalk Labs, Google, or any private company," said spokesperson Keerthana Rang."

"This Digital Expiry Date offers companies the benefits of getting your data, personalizing results and still making profits, while putting some control in the user's hands. You will not have to worry about governments or companies in the future mishandling years' worth of information - which would limit the damage they could do. A Digital Expiry Date would maintain online innovation and profitability, while helping to prevent any future privacy disasters."

""The person on the other line said, 'unplug your Alexa devices right now,'" Danielle told KIRO. "'You're being hacked.'" The couple had reportedly placed Amazon devices in every room of their house to control the heat, lights, and security system. All of the gadgets were pulled out after their colleague proved they had received the unauthorized recording."