Kaspersky researchers have uncovered clues that further illuminate the hackers’ activities, which appear to have begun far earlier than originally believed.

Russian security firm Kaspersky today released new research that adds another piece to the puzzle of a hacker group whose operations appear to stretch back further than researchers previously realized.

Research published last week from the security firm Malwarebytes shed new light on a hacking group, Red Stinger, that has been carrying out espionage operations against both pro-Ukraine victims in central Ukraine and pro-Russia victims in eastern Ukraine. The findings were intriguing because of the ideological mix of the targets and the lack of connections to other known hacking groups. A few weeks before Malwarebytes released its report, Kaspersky had also published research about the group, which it calls Bad Magic, and similarly concluded that the malware used in the attacks didn't have connections to any other known hacking tools. The research Kaspersky released today finally links the group to past activity and provides some preliminary context for understanding the attackers' possible motivations.

Adding the Malwarebytes research to what they had found independently, Kaspersky researchers reviewed historic telemetry data to look for connections. Eventually, they discovered that some of the cloud infrastructure and malware the group was using had similarities to espionage campaigns in Ukraine that the security company ESET identified in 2016, as well as campaigns the firm CyberX discovered in 2017.

“Malwarebytes found out more about the initial infection stage, and then they found more about the installer” used in some of the group's attacks since 2020, says Georgy Kucherin, a Kaspersky malware researcher. “After publishing our report about the malware, we decided to view historical data about similar campaigns that have similar targets and that have occurred in the past. That’s how we discovered the two similar campaigns from ESET and CyberX, and we concluded with medium to high confidence that the campaigns are tied together and they are all likely to be executed by the same actor.”

The different activity through time has similar victimology, meaning the group focused on the same types of targets, including both officials working for pro-Russia factions within Ukraine and Ukrainian government officials, politicians, and institutions. Kucherin also notes that he and his colleagues found similarities and multiple overlaps in the code of the plugins used by the group's malware. Some code even appeared to be copied and pasted from one campaign to the next. And the researchers saw similar use of cloud storage and characteristic file formats on the files the group exported to their servers.

The Malwarebytes research published last week documented five campaigns since 2020 by the hacking group, including one that targeted a member of Ukraine's military who works on Ukrainian critical infrastructure. Another campaign targeted pro-Russia election officials in eastern Ukraine, an adviser to Russia's Central Election Commission, and one who works on transportation in the region. 

Back in 2016, ESET wrote of the activity it called “Operation Groundbait”: “The main point that sets Operation Groundbait apart from the other attacks is that it has mostly been targeting anti-government separatists in the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. While the attackers seem to be more interested in separatists and the self-declared governments in eastern Ukrainian war zones, there have also been a large number of other targets, including, among others, Ukrainian government officials, politicians, and journalists.”

Meanwhile, Malwarebytes had found that one particularly invasive tactic the group used in a more recent campaign was to record audio directly from the microphones of victims' compromised devices in addition to collecting other data like documents and screenshots. In 2017, CyberX named the campaign it was tracking “Operation BugDrop” because the espionage campaign targeting numerous Ukrainian victims “eavesdrops on sensitive conversations by remotely controlling PC microphones—in order to surreptitiously ‘bug’ its targets.”

In its work last week, Malwarebytes could not come to a conclusion about the actors behind the group and whether they are aligned with Russian or Ukrainian interests. In 2016, ESET found evidence that Operation Groundbait's malware had been in use all the way back to 2008 and attributed the activity to Ukraine.

“Our research into these attack campaigns and the \[Groundbait\] malware itself suggests that this threat is the first publicly known Ukrainian malware that is being used in targeted attacks,” ESET wrote in 2016.

Kaspersky cites this conclusion in its new research but notes that the firm does not engage in state attribution and did not investigate or verify ESET's findings.

Kucherin says that the group has been able to remain largely hidden for so long because their attacks are typically highly targeted, focusing on at most dozens of individuals at a time rather than launching mass exploitation. The group also rewrites its malware implants, which makes them difficult to connect until you have the full picture of multiple attack chains. And he adds that Ukraine has been such an intense digital battleground for so many years that other actors and activities seem to have distracted researchers.

“The most interesting thing, even shocking perhaps, is that the group has been acting for 15 years. That is a lot, and it's quite rare when you are able to attribute one campaign to another campaign that happened years and years ago,” Kucherin says. “We’ll see more activity from them in the future. In my opinion, it is unlikely that they will stop what they’re doing. They are very, very persistent.”

A Mysterious Group Has Ties to 15 Years of Ukraine-Russia Hacks

Your inactive profiles, like Gmail or Docs, could turn into digital dust later this year. A few clicks can save them.

On May 16, Google announced new plans to delete accounts that have been inactive for two years, as well as accounts that were created and never used (or used only briefly). Got an ancient Gmail account gathering cobwebs or a Google Photos account storing vacation pics from years past? It’s time to start looking around for those login credentials. If you haven't signed in within the past two years, your account and everything it contains could be deleted starting as soon as December.

This change impacts Google Calendar, Drive, Docs, Gmail, Meet, and Photos. Accounts with YouTube videos are a noteworthy exception from the new deletion policy, as are any accounts with active subscriptions (paying your bill counts as “activity”). Also, this change applies only to personal Google accounts, not profiles tied to companies or classrooms. (Hear that? It’s the collective sound of a thousand bosses and principals sighing in relief.) 

Worried about your personal Google account getting vaporized? Here’s how to make sure that your account is active, and a few quick tips in case you forgot your password. 

How to Keep Your Account from Getting Deleted

Stopping Google from deleting your account is straightforward, if you can remember the password. Just log in. That’s it! No further steps need to be taken. According to the Google blog post from Ruth Kricheli, vice president of product management, “if you have signed into your Google Account or any of our services recently, your account is considered active and will not be deleted.” OK, simple enough.

There’s no need to log out and log back in to accounts you’re using just to be safe. This change is for accounts with no “activity.” What’s that mean to Google? Basically, anything you do with the account is considered activity, from doing a search with Google, to reading an email in Gmail, to accessing a document with Google Drive. The goal here is to improve Google’s overall security by removing abandoned accounts, which are less likely to have strong, unique passwords or have two-factor authentication set up, Kricheli writes.

Wait, What’s My Password?

Whoops! Don’t give up yet. Maybe you forgot your password, but can you remember the username or phone number? Go here to begin the account recovery process for most Google accounts and here for Gmail.

Still encountering issues accessing your inactive account? Check out this article for advice from Google’s account safety team about what could be going on with your profile and a few potential remedies. Before it’s deleted, Google says it will send messages to the account’s main email and the recovery address. Similarly, if you’re the caretaker of someone’s account who can’t access it, or who has passed away and you’d like it memorialized, Google suggests using Google Takeout to download the data for safekeeping, or setting up the Inactive Account Manager to provide access so the account can stay accessible.

The first wave of deletions will wipe out accounts that were registered but subsequently unused. When will the second wave of inactive account deletions start? The exact day remains unclear, so it’s a good idea to try to log in before December rolls around.

After the new policy goes into effect, want to keep old Google accounts around that you just use sparingly? Try setting a reminder on your calendar to log in and click around every so often. Better yet, consider storing the data on a physical drive.

Google May Delete Your Old Accounts. Here’s How to Stop It

The USPS carries out warrantless surveillance on thousands of parcels every year. Lawmakers want it to end—right now.

Each year, at the request of police and intelligence agents across the country, the United States Postal Service conducts surveillance on physical pieces of mail going to and from the homes and businesses of tens of thousands of Americans, a group of United States senators says. 

To initiate this surveillance, the department or agency has at least one hurdle to climb. First, they must submit the request _in writing_. Then … well, nothing. That is the entire hurdle. 

In practice, this serves less as an evidentiary threshold than an IT ticketing system. For more than a handful of senators, that’s unacceptable. And in a letter today to the nation’s chief postal inspector, Gary Barksdale, the group explains why: “There is a long history of documented abuses of postal surveillance.”

The letter, first obtained by WIRED, is signed by an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, including senators Ron Wyden, Rand Paul, Edward Markey, Cynthia Lummis, Elizabeth Warren, Mike Lee, Cory Booker, and Steve Daines. It opens with a warning about a request devised by the postal service known as a “mail cover,” which the lawmakers say “threatens both our privacy and First Amendment rights.” The lawmakers equate mail covers with the “unchecked government monitoring” of Americans’ mail. Here’s how the Postal Service describes them: 

> A mail cover is an investigative tool used to record data appearing on the outside of a mailpiece. Law enforcement agencies use this information to protect national security; locate fugitives; obtain evidence; or help identify property, proceeds, or assets forfeitable under criminal law. A mail cover is justified when it will further an investigation or provide evidence of a crime.

The phrase “further an investigation” likely means little to the person whose mail is being surveilled. It doesn’t indicate that they’re the target of an investigation nor even suspected of doing anything illegal. It doesn’t necessarily mean that anyone in a position to charge someone with a crime knows for certain that a crime has occurred. And as the Postal Service itself says, a law enforcement agency can also freely use the data recorded from the outside of a piece of mail—commonly known as metadata in the context of digital communications—to “identify property” it intends to seize. 

In contrast, the senators note, the government can usually only monitor metadata associated with electronic messages (e.g., email or text messages) “with a court order.” 

Admittedly, expectations of privacy when it comes to email and written letters likely differ: People don’t ordinarily expect what they print on the outside of their letters and packages to have the same level of privacy as what’s inside. It’s understood that whatever is printed on a piece of mail will, at some point, be viewed by a stranger before it reaches its destination. But those people are also generally understood to be mail carriers, not intelligence agents. 

The notion that only a mail carrier will view a piece of mail is based on a quainter understanding of the mail handling process; a Norman Rockwell view of what a modern postal delivery system entails. In the US, the exterior of every piece of mail is photographed. And the information obtained from these photos, such as religious and political affiliations, is more intimate than people may realize. This data has been described by one former FBI agent as “easily abused” and a “treasure trove.” In comparing mail covers to the National Security Agency surveillance exposed during the Edward Snowden scandal, the renowned security technologist Bruce Schneier once called them “basically … the same thing.”

The letter to Barksdale is not merely aimed at telling the chief inspector—an official who oversees dozens of field offices and labs and an army of law enforcement agents and other technical resources—things that he already likely knows. Instead, they’d like him to simply end the process. 

The USPS declined to comment.

There is no federal statute requiring the post office to allow mail covers. The Postal Service authorizes this through its own regulations, conforming to interpretations of what is most permissive under the Fourth Amendment. Those protections were strengthened in 1967 as a result of a US Supreme Court ruling that established a legal test—which is still used—known as an “expectation of privacy.” And while intercepting electronic metadata, as the senators note, generally requires a court order—because the courts have decided Americans do _reasonably_ expect that information to be private—judges haven’t exactly ruled the same way in cases involving physical pieces of mail. There are many intricacies involved, but in at least one major case, judges pointed to another legal test, known as the “plain view doctrine,” which applies to evidence investigators can clearly see. 

“The risk of abuse of mail covers is not theoretical,” the lawmakers write in the letter. 

The history of abuse of mail covers, as the lawmakers note, is a long one. A famous incident occurred in the 1970s, when a 15-year-old girl mistakenly wrote to the Socialist Workers Party—a communist organization strongly supportive of Cuba—while researching a school assignment involving the Socialist Labor Party. The teenager was thoroughly investigated by the FBI, which even sent an agent into her school. 

The senators note that Church Committee, which was formed in 1975 to investigate US intelligence abuses, uncovered that the Central Intelligence Agency had photographed “the exteriors of over 2 million pieces of mail,” while opening hundreds of thousands of others, that belonged to “prominent activists and authors.” 

Indeed, the senators say, modern fears of postal abuse hearken back to the Founding Fathers themselves, who decried what Thomas Jefferson called the “infidelities of the post office,” surveillance that broadly forced those at odds with the British occupation to resort to encrypting messages they wished to keep private. These messages include, the lawmakers note, “an early proposal for the Bill of Rights.”

The lawmakers ask that Barksdale cease allowing mail covers without the permission of a federal judge, “except in emergencies.” And to increase transparency, they say, the post office should begin publishing annual statistics on the mail covers it does allow. It has not done so since at least 2014 (in conjunction with an Inspector General report). 

“While mail covers do not reveal the contents of correspondence, they can reveal deeply personal information about Americans’ political leanings, religious beliefs, or causes they support,” the senators write. Consequently, any such abuses are a threat, they say, to not only Americans’ right to associate politically and religiously, but to assemble “without the government watching."

The US Post Office Is Spying on the Mail. Senators Want to Stop It

Telly TV tracks you and bombards you with ads on a dedicated second screen. It could help normalize smartphone-style surveillance in your living room.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Nor is there such a thing as a free TV.

But Telly TV is offering just that. Its 55-inch smart TV is free to the first 500,000 people who put their name on a reservation list. At a glance, it looks like any other TV worth hundreds of dollars. But below the screen, separated by a sound bar, sits a second, smaller screen. Here, people will see weather and stock market updates alongside ads—lots and lots of ads.

This is what Telly’s CEO and founder, Ilya Pozin, describes as the “biggest innovation in television since color.” That innovation? Rather than pay for the big screen you’re force-fed advertising through, Telly is giving you the TV free of charge. So instead of paying for a TV and a bunch of channels or streaming services while companies make money from advertising and selling personal data, people can at least get the TV for free, the logic goes. 

But this is no ordinary TV—and it comes with no ordinary set of terms and conditions. Telly’s data policy says that it may “collect information about the audio and video content you watch, the channels you view, and the duration of your viewing sessions.” Telly also has a built-in microphone camera that can track motion and be used for video calling, fitness, or video games—although the camera does come with a shutter that someone must open and can close, according to the company.

The TV also tracks a customer’s queries, settings, preferences, applications, purchases, and the buttons they click; the time, frequency, and duration of their viewing or activities, and the physical presence of people using the TV. The company even collects what it calls cultural and social identifiers, giving the example of whether someone is a fan of a specific sports team, a skateboarder, or an environmental activist. 

Viewing and activity data is anonymized and shared with third-party data partners and advertisers, according to Telly. And if people opt out of sharing their data, they lose Telly services and must return the free TV—or be charged for it.    

Telly’s business model assumes people are ultimately resigned to giving away their data and complacently trading it for convenience, or in this case, a new screen. But the full consequences of sharing personal data from the living room have yet to be realized. 

“What this product does is lean into the idea that all of this is going to happen anyway, so you might as well get free hardware out of it,” says Nathalie Maréchal, codirector of the Privacy and Data Project at the nonprofit Center for Technology and Democracy. “But for me, the point is that a different world is possible.” 

Telly doesn’t view its methods as novel. “Nearly all smart TVs today collect data on consumption and viewership,” says Dallas Lawrence, chief strategy officer at Telly. Lawrence explains that people complete a five minute survey when joining, where they disclose brand preferences, household demographics, and interests. The only difference between Telly and other TVs, Lawrence claims, is that the company asks people to share their data up front, and they get a free TV in return.

The True Cost of a Free Telly TV

An explosion of interest in OpenAI’s sophisticated chatbot means a proliferation of “fleeceware” apps that trick users with sneaky in-app subscriptions.

Any major trend or world event, from the coronavirus pandemic to the cryptocurrency frenzy, will quickly be used as fodder in digital phishing attacks and other online scams. In recent months, it has become clear that the same would happen for large language models and generative AI. Today, researchers from the security firm Sophos are warning that the latest incarnation of this is showing up in Google Play and Apple’s App Store, where scammy apps are pretending to offer access to OpenAI’s chatbot service ChatGPT through free trials that eventually start charging subscription fees.

There are paid versions of OpenAI’s GPT and ChatGPT for regular users and developers, but anyone can try the AI chatbot for free on the company’s website. The scam apps take advantage of people who have heard about this new technology—and perhaps the frenzy of people clamoring to use it—but don’t have much additional context for how to try it themselves. The researchers first learned about the scam apps after seeing ads for them in news apps and on social networks, but users may also encounter them by searching in Google Play and the App Store.

“I saw multiple ads for these types of apps on social media platforms where it’s cheap to advertise, and sometimes they use tactics like typos in the name—calling the app ‘Chat GBT’ or others—to screen out people who might be a bit more savvy,” says Sean Gallagher, a senior threat researcher at Sophos. “They’re trying to screen out people who would do the free trial and then cancel it because it’s crap. They want the people who are not focused enough to know how to unsubscribe.”

Such scams are known as fleeceware. And these apps, which hook victims into paying a regular weekly or monthly fee, are difficult to stamp out, because they typically don't exhibit the technically invasive and malicious behavior that would get more explicit malware booted. When scammers submit their apps to Apple and Google for review, the researchers note, they may not include all of the details on the subscription pricing and when users will have to pay to continue receiving functionality. Later, they can revise their demands without changing anything about how the app is engineered.

Google and Apple provide mechanisms for developers to offer in-app purchases, both one-time fees and recurring charges. And these companies get a cut every time apps in their app stores collect payments from users.

In the case of the Android app Open Chat GBT, users could download the app for free but were quickly confronted with huge quantities of ads and could try the chatbot only three times before losing access to its functionality and receiving a prompt to subscribe. By default, users could sign up for a three-day free trial to continue using the app, which would then become a monthly $10 subscription. Open Chat GBT also offered a $30 annual subscription. The researchers found a very similar app with a different name by the same developer for iOS in the App Store.

The Sophos researchers note that Apple and Google took down some of the fake AI chatbot apps they were looking at before disclosure. There were others, though, that remained available after the researchers flagged them to Google and Apple. Both companies acknowledged receipt of the submissions, and Google took down one more app. Google and Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the findings.

The researchers say they suspect that some of the apps use OpenAI’s ChatGPT 3 application programming interface to generate content for users while others use lower-quality chatbot functionalities. And instead of limiting the user to a small number of queries, some of the apps would truncate responses and give users only a snippet until they started a subscription.

Gallagher says that one of the biggest problems with fleeceware is that users don't always know how to manage their subscriptions and don't realize that even when they delete an app, their recurring payments will continue to be active with the service.

“We define fleeceware as something that charges an extraordinary amount of money for a feature that is available freely or at very low cost elsewhere,” he says. “And it’s effective, because even I sometimes wonder, why am I getting charged this much by Apple every month? And it's like, OK, there’s the shared family storage, there's AppleCare for my phone, there’s Duolingo. You have to be very careful—you have to actively manage subscriptions to apps.”

ChatGPT Scams Are Infiltrating Apple's App Store and Google Play

The Meta-owned app offers end-to-end encryption of texts, images, and more by default—but its settings aren't as private as they could be.

In the summer of 2016, WhatsApp made an unprecedented change. The Meta-owned company turned on end-to-end encryption by default for all of the billion-plus people using it—becoming, in the process, the world's largest encrypted messenger. Since then, that number has topped 2 billion.

Being end-to-end encrypted by default means nobody at Meta can read, or mine data from, the content of the messages you send. All texts, photos, videos, voice messages, documents, status updates, and calls are encrypted on WhatsApp, and only the people you send them to can access them. Devices decoding encrypted content must verify and exchange security codes as messages are transferred.

The encryption that WhatsApp uses was originally developed by Open Whisper Systems, the group behind the encrypted messaging app rival Signal. In recent years, WhatsApp has introduced additional privacy and security features you can turn on. But even though WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption does protect your communications, that doesn’t mean the service is as private as it could be by default. In fact, when it comes to WhatsApp versus Signal, we recommend the latter for people wanting the maximum security and privacy options.

However, with more than a third of the world using WhatsApp, its popularity is unrivaled, and you may not be able to drag all of your friends, family, and groups across to Signal. If that milestone is still some way off, here are some tips to make WhatsApp as private as possible.

_Updated May 2023: WhatsApp has introduced new privacy features since this story was first published in 2020. These changes are reflected below._

Understand What Data WhatsApp Collects

WhatsApp can collect a lot more information about you than you might think. Much of what it collects is similar to many other apps and can be found in its privacy policies. There are separate privacy policies for the US, Europe, and the UK. There are some differences in what WhatsApp collects, based on Europe’s privacy rules. But the app is also part of Meta’s machine, which also includes Facebook and Instagram, and some information is shared with the parent company. The association alone can put people off using WhatsApp.

The data WhatsApp has about you can come from multiple different sources: the information you provide (such as your phone number to sign up, or your location when you give it permission to share it with a friend), information that is collected automatically (for instance, when you’re online, or when you made a phone call), and information that others share about you (if a friend uploads your phone number, for example).

Automatically collected, WhatsApp says, is information about how you use its services, how often and for how long you are on WhatsApp, and the features you use—including “group name, group picture, group description,” your profile photo, “about information,” and when you were last online. (Some of this information is used for safety features.) On top of that, WhatsApp may also collect information about your phone’s battery level, signal strength, and mobile operator.

In the US, WhatsApp shares your phone number, phone information, IP address, and more with Meta’s other companies, although it says it does not “keep logs of who everyone’s messaging or calling” and doesn’t share contacts with Meta. In Europe, WhatsApp details how it works with Meta’s other companies and the information that is shared more explicitly. However, it’s worth stressing that the content of the messages you send isn’t shared, as Meta doesn’t have access to them due to WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption.

Location information, when you turn it on, is also collected, and there are cookies that track your activity within the desktop and web versions of the app.

Use Encrypted-to-End Encrypted Backups

WhatsApp allows you to back up your chats and data as a way to move all your information to a new phone. These backups work by storing your data in Google Drive or Apple’s iCloud, depending on which operating system you use. Backups can be handy if you’re moving to a new phone or lose your old device.

If you’re going to use WhatsApp’s backups, you should use the version that is end-to-end encrypted. The company introduced these in 2021 after years of the option being unavailable. In WhatsApp, go to **Settings, Chats, Chat Backup**, and then once you have turned backups on, tap on **End-to-end Encrypted Backup** and toggle the option on. This backup requires a separate password, which you should ideally create and store in a password manager. If you lose this password, you won’t be able to get into your encrypted backup.

Turn On Two-Factor Authentication

You should be using two-factor authentication as much as possible—it’s even more important on accounts that hold your sensitive personal information, such as photos and messages. The security method involves adding an extra step to the process when you log in to an account. In most cases, this involves using a security code generated by an app, a code sent via SMS, or a physical security key. (The last of these is the most secure way to protect your accounts with two-factor authentication—and SMS is arguably the least secure of the three options.)

Using WhatsApp is different from logging in to your email. It’s likely that you’ll access the app multiple times a day—on average, I open the app between 50 and 80 times per day. Entering a security code every time this happens would be impractical and frustrating. So instead, WhatsApp’s two-factor authentication, which can be turned on through the **Settings** menu and then by tapping on **Account**, uses a PIN.

WhatsApp will semi-regularly ask you to reenter the six-digit PIN you create to access the app. It doesn’t say how often these prompts happen, but they’re irregular enough not to be a barrier to using the app. The PIN will also be required anytime there is an attempt to add your number to a new phone or device. When you’re setting the PIN, there’s also the option to add an email address that can be used to reset the code if you forget it.

Use Disappearing Messages

Your messages don’t have to live forever. It’s possible to turn on disappearing messages for when you want additional privacy or just don’t need to keep what you’re sent for years. There are two ways within WhatsApp to use self-destructing messages: for every new chat you have, or on an individual conversation basis. 

To run on disappearing messages by default for new conversations, go to **Settings**, **Privacy**, **Default Message Timer**, and pick how long you want messages to last for. There are three options if you turn the setting on: 24 hours, 7 days, or 90 days. For an existing individual conversation or group chat, **open that chat**, **tap the person’s name** at the top of the screen, select **Disappearing Messages,** and then pick 24 hours, 7 days, 90 days, or Off. You may then have to tap to confirm this.

While turning on disappearing messages will give you some more privacy, it’s worth remembering that whoever you message could still screenshot or take a photograph of what’s on the screen.

In addition to disappearing messages, you can also set photos and views to View Once. This—rather unsurprisingly—behaves exactly how it is described: The message can only opened one time and you can't go back to it once it's closed. When sending a photo or video, tap the icon that is contained within a partial circle. If you send a one-time image or video, people cannot screenshot it.

Lock Down WhatsApp Messages

There are inevitably times when you need to hand your phone to someone else—so your children can play games, for instance, or to show a friend a photo. WhatsApp has two features that can help protect your message if your phone falls into someone else’s hands. First, you can turn on Screen Lock, which keeps the app locked unless you open it with Apple’s Face ID or other biometrics on Android devices. To turn it on, go to **Settings**, **Privacy**, and select **Screen Lock**. You’ll need to set up the biometric options before you turn the app lock on.

You can also lock down individual chats on your phone. This means that to send messages to locked chats, you’ll need to use your phone’s passcode, or your face or fingerprint to open up the chats and even see notifications from them. To turn it on, tap **on a chat** and the person’s name, go to **Chat lock**, and select the option to **lock the chat**. This will move the chat into a new folder that can be accessed by **swiping down on the Chats tab**.

If you’re going for the most private approach, it’s also worth considering that any message that pops up could reveal private information. New message notifications can include the entire message or just some of its content when they flash up on your screen. If these notifications also sit unread, anyone picking up your device may be able to read them without having to unlock the phone. These options can be tweaked in **Settings**, **Notifications**, and **Show Preview.**

Stop People From Seeing Your Personal Info

While WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption stops law enforcement, internet providers, and even Meta from seeing what you are sending, there are still some additional steps you can take to increase your privacy on your phone and reduce the chances of your number being targeted by spammers or scammers. Because WhatsApp is so popular, it’s regularly the target of social engineering attacks, devised to steal your personal information. 

The ways to limit the ways people can interact with your account are all found through **Settings**, followed by tapping on **Privacy**. At the most simple, you can tap to turn off read receipts, the two blue ticks that show when someone has seen your message. 

More effective are the steps that stop people from adding you to groups. Under the **Groups** setting, there is the option to limit who can add you to a group. By default, this is set as “everyone.” However, it can be changed to **My Contacts**, or **My Contacts Except…**, allowing some exceptions. Deciding to limit who can add you to groups doesn’t mean that you can’t join groups when people aren’t in your contacts. Instead, people wanting to add you to groups can request to do so via a separate message.

Within **Privacy,** you can also turn off who can see when you last looked at WhatsApp and when you were last online, who can see your profile photo, the About section, and WhatsApp Status. While in the privacy settings, you should also check whether you are sharing your live location with anyone.

Switch to Signal

If you’re looking for more privacy, switching messaging apps is a big upheaval but could be worth the time and effort. As mentioned earlier, our preference for combining end-to-end encryption with greater levels of privacy is Signal. A full rundown of its privacy options is here.

WhatsApp 2023: New Privacy Features, Settings, and More

The families of victims of a mass shooting in Buffalo are challenging the platforms they believe led the attacker to carry out a racist massacre.

Elmore says the goal is to force reform.

“We can’t bring the victims of this lawsuit back, but we can make sure that no other families have to file this kind of lawsuit,” he says. No families deserve to be members of this unenviable club, Elmore says.

The lawsuit essentially takes aim at the full journey that brought Gendron from being a regular American teen to becoming a violent white supremacist—one equipped with the means and intention of massacring as many Black people as possible. They point to platforms like Facebook and Snapchat as the first part of that process.

“Gendron’s radicalization on social media was neither a coincidence nor an accident,” the complaint alleges. “It was the foreseeable consequence of the defendant social media companies’ conscious decision to design, program, and operate platforms and tools that maximize user engagement (and corresponding advertising revenue) at the expense of public safety.”

The lawsuit claims that the white supremacist ideology that captured Gendron, particularly the “great replacement theory”—which imagines an international plot to weaken the political power of white people—is a “product of social media.” While it may have been conjured up by a French author and promoted by hardened neo-Nazis, the lawsuit claims that “replacement theory proponents rely heavily on social media—and the tools and features the Social Media Defendants utilize to increase their own engagement—to promote racist ideology to young and impressionable adherents.”

Exposure to this kind of hate propaganda as a teenager, mixed with the addictive nature of social media, fundamentally altered Grendron’s brain chemistry, Elmore argues in his filings.

Social media platforms maximized user engagement “not by showing them content they request or want to see, but rather, by showing them and otherwise recommending content from which they cannot look away,” the complaint continues. “Taking full advantage of the incomplete development of Gendron’s frontal lobe, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat maintained his product engagement by targeting him with increasingly extreme and violent content and connections which, upon information and belief, promoted racism, antisemitism, and gun violence.”

This is not a bug, Elmore argues. “These products were functioning as designed and intended.”

These platforms pointed Gendron to the next step in his radicalization: 4chan.

While there is no algorithm on the notorious image board, there was a waiting “community of fellow racists urging him to move forward,” the lawsuit alleges. What’s more, Gendron was a frequent user of /k/, the weapons board. That community, and similar ones on Discord, helped him prepare for the attack and increase his chances of succeeding.

The lawsuit singles out 4chan financial backer Good Smile, a major Japanese toy company that in 2015 invested $2.4 million for a 30 percent share in the site, according to documents WIRED obtained. Pointing to reporting from WIRED and a lawsuit filed by former employees of the company, the families allege that Good Smile’s role in 4chan “is not that of a passive investor but is actively involved in the management of the social media site.”

In a statement from April, Good Smile denied WIRED’s reporting, insisting, “We do not have a partnership with 4chan, never had influence over the management and/or control of 4chan.” In the same statement, however, Good Smile also says, “We severed any limited relationship we previously had with 4chan in June of 2022. Since then, we have not had any relationship with 4chan.” The company has cited “confidentiality obligations” preventing it from commenting on the matter and has ignored multiple requests for comment.

Buffalo Mass Shooting Victims' Families Sue Meta, Reddit, Amazon

A government effort to collect people’s internet records is moving beyond its test phase, but many details remain hidden from public view.

The UK government is quietly expanding and developing a controversial surveillance technology that could be capable of logging and storing the web histories of millions of people.

Official reports and spending documents show that in the past year, UK police have deemed the testing of a system that can collect people’s “internet connection records” a success, and have started work to potentially introduce the system nationally. If implemented, it could hand law enforcement a powerful surveillance tool.

Critics say the system is highly intrusive, and that officials have a history of not properly protecting people’s data. Much of the technology and its operation is shrouded in secrecy, with bodies refusing to answer questions about the systems.

At the end of 2016, the UK government passed the Investigatory Powers Act, which introduced sweeping reforms to the country’s surveillance and hacking powers. The law added rules around what law enforcement and intelligence agencies can do and access, but it was widely criticized for its impact on people’s privacy, earning it the name the “Snooper’s Charter.”

Particularly controversial was the creation of so-called internet connection records (ICRs). Under the law, internet providers and phone companies can be ordered—with a senior judge approving the decision—to store people’s browsing histories for 12 months.

An ICR isn’t a list of every page online you visit, but may nonetheless reveal a significant amount of information about your online activities. ICRs can include that you visited Wired.com but not that you read this individual article, for instance. An ICR can also be your IP address, a customer number, the date and time the information was accessed, and the amount of data being transferred. The UK government says an internet connection record could indicate when, for example, the travel app EasyJet is accessed on someone’s phone, but not how the app was used.

“ICRs are highly intrusive and should be protected from over-retention by telecommunications operators and intelligence agencies,” says Nour Haidar, a lawyer and legal officer at UK civil liberties group Privacy International, which has been challenging data collection and handling under the Investigatory Powers Act in court.

Little is known about the development and use of ICRs. When the Investigatory Powers Act was passed, internet companies said it would take them years to build the systems needed to collect and store ICRs. However, some of those pieces may now be falling into place. In February, the Home Office, a government department that oversees security and policing in the UK, published a mandatory review of the operation of the Investigatory Powers Act so far.

The review says the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) has tested the “operational, functional, and technical aspects” of ICRs and found a “significant operational benefit” of collecting the records. A small trial that “focused” on websites that provided illegal images of children found 120 people who had been accessing these websites. It found that “only four” of these people had been known to law enforcement based on an “intelligence check.”

WIRED first reported the existence of the ICR trial in March 2021, when there were even fewer details about the test. It is still unclear which telecom companies were involved. The Home Office’s February report is the first official indication that the trial was useful to law enforcement, and could help lay the groundwork for expanding the system across the UK. The Home Office review also states its trial found that “ICRs appear to be currently out of reach for some potentially key investigations,” raising the possibility that the law may be changed in the future.

In May 2022, the Home Office issued a procurement notice revealing that future trials “work is now underway” to create a “national ICR service.” The existence of the notice was initially reported by the public sector technology publication PublicTechnology. The notice says the government had a budget of up to £2 million to create a technical system that allowed law enforcement officials to access ICR data for investigations.

The contract for the technical system was awarded to defense firm Bae Systems in July 2022. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request from WIRED, the Home Office provided some pages of the contract with Bae but refused to give any technical details due to commercial interests. (A spokesperson for Bae said it could not discuss specific contracts for confidentiality and security reasons.)

The Home Office FOIA response also refused to provide details of an internal review into ICRs, citing national security and law enforcement grounds. A Home Office spokesperson said the UK has “one of the most robust and transparent oversight regimes for the protection of personal data and privacy anywhere in the world” and confirmed that trials of ICRs are ongoing.

When asked whether ICRs will be rolled out across the entire UK, the Home Office spokesperson pointed to the FOIA response, which says that providing additional information may jeopardize law enforcement activities. “Information on law enforcement capabilities and targeting is very sensitive, particularly in the field of digital communications, where it is often the case that criminal groups or individuals themselves display a high degree of technical sophistication and awareness,” the FOIA response says. Because of this, it continues, “it is vital that sensitive information on how they might conduct their investigations, or the nature of their technical abilities, are not publicly known.”

The Investigatory Powers Commissioner's Office (IPCO), which oversees intelligence agencies, police, and local authorities, says the collection of ICRs to date has been to support “small-scale trials” and that it is “unable” to provide any figures on the number of data retention notices issued. A separate independent review of the Investigatory Powers Act is due to be published this summer. The National Crime Agency says it is still participating in the ICR trials to evaluate the use of ICRs, and that “data exploitation is essential” to its work.

Despite the potentially limited use of ICRs so far, there has already been one documented failure. In its annual 2020 report, published in January 2022, IPCO highlighted that an unnamed telecoms company that was asked to provide internet connection requests “provided data in excess of that which had been authorized.” The reason? There was a technical error. No extra detail was provided.

WIRED contacted nine of the UK’s internet service providers and telecom companies asking about their abilities to create and store people’s internet connection records. Eight did not respond to the request for comment. TalkTalk, the only one that did, said it will “meet its obligations” under UK law but couldn’t “confirm or deny” whether ICRs existed.

The possible expansion of ICR collection in the UK comes as governments and law enforcement agencies globally try to gain access to increasing amounts of data, particularly as technology advances. Multiple nations are pushing to create encryption backdoors, potentially allowing access to people’s private messages and communications. In the US, a storm is brewing about the FBI’s use of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows it to intercept the communications of overseas targets.

Haidar of Privacy International says that creating powers to collect more of people’s data doesn’t result in “more security” for people. “Building the data retention capabilities of companies and a vast range of government agencies doesn't mean that intelligence operations will be enhanced,” Haidar says. “In fact, we argue that it makes us less secure as this data becomes vulnerable to being misused or abused.”

The UK’s Secretive Web Surveillance Program Is Ramping Up

The two-factor authentication tool got some serious upgrades that can help you bolster security for your online accounts.

Yes, two-factor authentication is a crucial layer of security to add to your online accounts, but you remain vulnerable to hacks if you receive the codes via text message. A better way to manage these quick codes is to use an authenticator app, like Google Authenticator or Twilio Authy. When you use an authenticator app, the multifactor codes are available in-app instead of through a text.

Want to make the switch from a 2FA process ruled by SMS messages to a more secure option? Here’s how you can get started with Google Authenticator, what’s recently changed about the app, and how to access your codes in-app.

How Do I Set It Up?

To start off, download the app to your smartphone or tablet. Google Authenticator is available for iOS and Android. Open the app and tap on the **Get Started** button. You will have the option to either log in with your Google account or use the app without logging in. If you do log in, Google Authenticator will save your 2FA data for you. More on this in a moment.

The next step is to pick which online account you want to set up with Google Authenticator. The websites you visit most often likely support multifactor authentication through the app. From Amazon and Gmail to TikTok and Dropbox, the steps vary a little, but the overall process is essentially the same.

Once you’ve selected an account, the rest of the setup can go one of two ways. You can either scan a QR code using the camera on your smartphone or manually enter the code.

Let’s use Amazon’s login process as an example. Your first option is to log in to your Amazon account on a laptop, go to the **Account** page, and choose **Login & security**. Then, click **Turn on** for two-factor authentication and **Get started** on the following page. The preselected choice you’ll see is to receive the codes via text message. Instead, choose the option for an **Authenticator App**.

When you see a QR code on the laptop screen, open the Google Authenticator app on your phone. Tap the plus sign in the bottom-right corner of the app and then **Scan a QR code**. Decide whether you want to allow the app access to your camera; otherwise you’ll need to enter the codes by hand. Scan the barcode with your smartphone and an expiring code will pop up in the app and keep regenerating. Next, type the six-digit code into the laptop. Acknowledge that older devices may require a special login process for 2FA codes and finish the setup process.

What’s New About It?

In the past, a common criticism of Google Authenticator was that all of your codes were locked into one phone. If you lost the device on a buzzy night out with friends or a thief snatched it from your grasp, it could be difficult or impossible to get into your connected accounts. Similarly, if you upgraded your phone, it could be a pain to scan all of the QR codes for your sites and services or to export and import them to the new device and set everything up again.

In addition to some design changes, Google recently added functionality that enables your codes to be synced across your Google account. When you’re in the authenticator app, you’ll see a green cloud with a check mark in the top-right corner next to your profile photo that indicates your codes are synced. Note that you have to be logged in to use this feature, so if you’ve been using Google Authenticator without logging in, you’ll have to either log in to store the info in your account or export and import your data on new devices the old way.

OK, Now Give Me Those Darn Codes

So, you’ve set it up and synced the codes with your Google account. What’s next? When logging in to any accounts you’ve connected to Google Authenticator, you’ll open the app, locate the impermanent code associated with that account, and use it to finish the process. 

Looking for more ways to protect your online accounts? An authenticator app is not your only option for beefed-up security. In fact, you can protect your most important logins even further with a physical security key.

How to Use Google Authenticator

The FBI disables notorious Russia-linked malware, the EU edges toward a facial recognition ban, and security firm Dragos has an intrusion of its own.

While the company says that they did not find any evidence of malicious use of the exposed data, the incident highlights an increasing threat as car manufacturers push into vehicle connectivity and AI-enabled features require the collection of massive quantities of data.

You can check the types of data a particular car manufacturer might be collecting and sharing using this free tool made by automotive privacy company Privacy4Cars.

The United States and its allies have successfully disabled Russian malware that one of the Kremlin’s most sophisticated hacker units had installed on hundreds of computers around the world. After spending years monitoring a malware network called Snake, the FBI developed and deployed a tool called Perseus—named after the Greek hero who slayed monsters—that caused the malware to overwrite and disable itself, the Department of Justice announced on Tuesday.

Snake is developed and operated by Turla, a notorious state-sponsored hacking group linked to Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB. Prosecutors said the Russian spies behind Turla have used versions of the Snake malware to steal sensitive documents from scores of governments, journalists, and “other targets of interest to the Russian Federation.” 

According to unsealed court documents, the Snake malware operated as a “peer-to-peer” network linking infected computers around the world, allowing Turla to install malware and exfiltrate data.

Europe this week got one step closer to banning facial recognition in public spaces with a lawmaker agreement to strengthen proposed legislation governing how artificial intelligence technology can be used in the European Union. 

In a vote on Thursday morning, members of the European Parliament agreed to include the ban in the text of the highly anticipated AI Act, the world's first comprehensive legislation governing the technology. "This vote is a milestone in regulating AI, and a clear signal from the Parliament that fundamental rights should be a cornerstone of that," MEP Kim van Sparrentak told Reuters. "AI should serve people, society, and the environment, not the other way around."

A ransomware group attempted to extort money from Dragos, a leading industrial cybersecurity firm, in an unsuccessful campaign targeting company executives, the firm said on Wednesday.

While the hackers gained access to a limited set of customer data, Dragos said it chose not to engage with the group. “The data that was lost and likely to be made public because we chose not to pay the extortion is regrettable,”  the company said. “However, it is our hope that highlighting the methods of the adversary will help others consider additional defenses against these approaches so that they do not become a victim to similar efforts.”

Source

Wired