Most U.S. taxpayers owe less to the IRS this year under the new tax law, but the average refund is also smaller.
Most Americans have a smaller total federal income tax bill for 2018 than they did in previous years, thanks to the tax law passed by Congress in 2017. But thanks to changing instructions from the IRS on how to withhold tax, many people will see smaller refunds or may even owe money when they file their tax returns.
AnchorFree’s Hotspot Shield fends off malware and online surveillance.
AnchorFree’s Hotspot Shield VPN, software that encrypts users’ online activity, was downloaded 100 million times in 2018 (up from 70 million in 2017). “Amid every global security or censorship event, we have massive spikes in usage,” says cofounder and CEO David Gorodyansky, who saw a rise in internet users seeking anonymity during the July 2018 protests in Iraq. Last year, AnchorFree added malware and phishing protections, making it valuable for activists and average web surfers alike.
Jumio’s identity-verification services are used by Airbnb, WeWork, and major U.S. banks.
Jumio is the service that allows you to upload a photo ID and snap a selfie to verify your identity for a bank, WeWork, or Airbnb account instantly. In 2018, the company launched a new AI lab, where researchers train algorithms to identify the fraud risk of an ID and automatically direct those that warrant further scrutiny to human reviewers. This mix of AI and human eyeballs cuts processing time from days to minutes. “The fraudsters always get smarter, and we’re always ahead of them,” says CEO Stephen Stuut. The company reported a 50% increase in enterprise customers and a 56% revenue increase in 2018, verifying 60 million identities.
Russian President Vladimir Putin highlighted the new Zircon missile and threatened to aim new weapons at the West.
After the U.S., then Russia, suspended the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to deploy new weapons aimed at Western capitals if the U.S. puts new missiles in Europe.
The class action suit says inmates were promised they would keep purchased music forever, then lost access when the prison system switched media providers.
A Florida prison inmate filed a federal class action lawsuit saying he and other prisoners bought digital music on special players for $1.70 per song, then lost access when the Department of Corrections switched tech vendors.
IARPA is seeking proposals to keep AI from leaking sensitive training data and avoid hidden bad behavior.
The U.S. spy community’s R&D agency is looking into how to keep AI software from unwittingly divulging information about sensitive training data and from secretly being trained to be malicious.
The CEO declined to expose the kind of information exposed in the breach.
In a congressional hearing on Tuesday, Representative Katie Porter (D-CA) asked whether Equifax CEO Mark Begor would be willing to share his address, birth date, and Social Security number publicly at the hearing.
The president’s disgraced former lawyer warned Trump’s Republican defenders that they could face the “same consequences that I’m suffering.”
Testifying before Congress on Wednesday, President Donald Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen lamented the time he spent working for Trump, who he said paid him back for a payoff to Stormy Daniels and knew WikiLeaks planned to publish Democratic Party emails.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation called on big tech companies to fix security holes.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation launched a campaign and deliberately lo-fi website titled “Fix It Already,” calling on big tech companies to patch what the organization sees as security holes.
Privacy advocates have praised Vermont’s new data broker law, but acknowledge it does little to rein in a largely obscure and unregulated industry.
As of February, businesses collecting and selling data about Vermont residents are required to register under the country’s first law governing the murky “data broker” industry. So far, 121 companies have registered, according to data from the Vermont secretary of state’s office.
Research from IBM finds problems in tools that generate visitor badges and control who has access to office buildings.
Digital systems that let visitors check in and get access badges have become increasingly common in office buildings, but researchers from IBM say some of the devices have hidden flaws that could render facilities insecure.
The tool, called Backstory, aims to make it possible to store and analyze essentially anything that happens on a computer network.
Most modern computer networks are constantly generating massive amounts of logging data, including websites and other systems accessed from within the network.
A new study from Columbia University says rates of mass shootings are on average 11% higher in more permissive states.
States with more permissive laws around guns have more mass shootings on average, according to a new study from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
Some critics worry the new privacy push is also a way to dodge regulation and avoid moderating content: “The devil is in the details.”
It’s probably no surprise to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that his Wednesday blog post calling for “a privacy-focused vision for social networking” was quickly met with skepticism.
President Trump has proposed severe cuts to the budgets of several federal agencies.
President Trump’s proposed budget for 2020 includes spending increases for the military, Homeland Security, and the proposed border wall, but it also would drastically cut spending at many other federal agencies.
The new tool, launched by Alphabet’s Jigsaw unit, lets users specify how toxic a comment they’re willing to read online.
If you’re tired of seeing unpleasant comments when you surf the web (and who isn’t?), a new experimental Chrome extension from Alphabet’s Jigsaw unit might be able to help.
Facebook acknowledged the outage but was tight-lipped about the cause.
Users across the globe reported trouble accessing Facebook, Instagram, and Facebook’s Messenger app Wednesday.
Congress has voted to overturn President Trump’s border emergency declaration, likely forcing him into the first veto of his presidency.
The Senate voted Thursday to overturn President Trump’s declaration of an emergency at the Mexican border, joining the House of Representatives in what The New York Times reports is the first time Congress has voted to undo a presidential emergency declaration.
The hacker group is one of the oldest of its kind, first associating through dial-up bulletin board services.
During Beto O’Rourke’s U.S. Senate run last year, voters learned of his time in a punk band and that he enjoys skateboarding. But a new Reuters report reveals another aspect of his countercultural youth: He was a member of the famed hacking group Cult of the Dead Cow.
Lawsuits alleged its high-powered ad targeting system enabled illegal discrimination by age, race, disability, and other protected characteristics
Facebook said today it has settled lawsuits over potential discrimination in housing, employment, and credit ads on its platforms, agreeing to take steps to limit how the ads can be targeted.