Bytes: What’s new in tech
Home security cameras hijacked
A hacker accessed a Ring security camera in a child’s bedroom and used the speaker function to tell her he was Santa Claus, said Elizabeth Wolfe and Brian Ries in CNN.com. The horrifying intrusion happened last week just days after Ashley LeMay of Mississippi installed the camera in her daughters’ room so she could watch them while working overnight nursing shifts. When her 8-year-old daughter, Alyssa, went to investigate “noises coming from her bedroom,” a man’s voice said, “I’m your best friend. I’m Santa Claus” and “continued to harass the girl, taunting her and encouraging her to destroy her room.” The company says that in most such cases hackers get the log-in details by stealing names and passwords from the Ring owner’s other accounts.
Paying for slow internet access
There’s a good chance your internet service provider is inflating the speed of your connection, said Shalini Ramachandran in The Wall Street Journal. Federal regulators have given broadband providers high marks for their performance. But in some cases, the companies persuaded the Federal Communications Commission to exclude the results from slower tests. Major broadband providers have also been able to juice results, helped by the fact that they know “the FCC uses data from a specific time period, usually a month or two in the fall.” The FCC also sends them “lists of individual testers’ names,” making it possible for them “to make targeted upgrades that improve service for those households.” In the Journal’s own broadband tests, most users got only about half the speed they were promised.
Facebook won’t back down
Facebook rebuffed a request from Attorney General William Barr to stop its plan for encrypted messaging, said Tony Romm in
The Washington Post. The social network announced in March it intends “to expand the deployment” of end-to-end encryption “as part of a ‘privacy-focused’ retooling of its business.” Barr, along with officials from the U.K. and Australia, has argued that the effort “would hamstring law enforcement” and block “access to critical evidence, including millions of reports about child sexual exploitation.” In its response last week, Facebook said that providing the U.S. government with a “backdoor into secure communications” would serve as a “gift to criminals, hackers, and repressive regimes.” Facebook-owned WhatsApp already offers encryption, as does Apple’s iMessage.