Security News Update for November 15, 2024

Can Vendors Enforce License Agreements for Kids on Parents?

Ed Tech vendors (those companies that sell tech to schools for use by their students) apparently sell your kid’s data and think that because the school agreed to some terms that implicitly binds the parents. In one case, the court said no. I didn’t know that these vendors sell your kid’s data. That by itself is interesting. Since kids don’t have a choice regarding the use of the software and kids can’t agree to contracts anyway, the court said nice try. If you are a parent, you might want to ask your school whether your kid’s data is being sold and give you that answer in writing. Credit: Prof. Eric Goldman, Santa Clara University School of Law

iPhone’s Cold Restart Feature Foils Cops

Cops tend to try to keep phones they seize on to make it easier to suck data out of them but a new iPhone feature reboots the phone automatically if it has not been unlocked after a couple of days. In that mode, called Before First Unlock, the phone is much more locked down than after that first unlock, making it much harder for cops to slurp data. Users can configure it to reboot in as little as 10 minutes of idle time. Credit: Bleeping Computer

Former Air National Guardsman Gets 15 Years for Disclosing Secrets

The feds were asking for 17 years, the 22 year old was asking for 11. The judge went more to what the feds wanted. The last few years the legal system has been hammering people who disclose secrets. Whether that is deterring anyone or not is unclear. Credit: The Register

Founders of NSO Hacking Software Sued in Spain

Israeli-based spyware company NSO group is being sued in many countries but this one is different. NSO sold their spyware to anyone whose check cleared. In some cases, they sold it to governments, but in this case that does not appear to be the case. This case is about a lawyer who was spied on to get information on his clients. Also different is the NSO’s founders are being sued personally. We need more of this. If the company is fined that really hurt the employees who allowed the bad conduct to occur. If you sue them personally, that gets a lot more real. Credit: Tech Crunch

Google Tests “No News” in Europe in Light of Law Requiring Them to Compensate

Call it a test or call it a threat. Google has long said that they don’t make money from news because there are no ads on the news results pages. They also say that they drive traffic to news web sites. Now they are going to test that theory. The result could be that, if Google doesn’t lose any traffic as a result, that they just stop offering news, which may be very harmful to those sites that depend on Google. Credit: Cybernews

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