More Than 5 Million Card Numbers Stolen From Lord & Taylor & Saks Fifth Avenue

A well-known ring of cybercriminals has obtained more than five million credit and debit card numbers from customers of Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor, according to a cybersecurity research firm that specializes in tracking stolen financial data. The data, the firm said, appears to have been stolen using software that was implanted into the cash register systems at the stores and that siphoned card numbers until last month.

The Hudson’s Bay Company, the Canadian corporation that owns both retail chains, confirmed on Sunday that a breach had occurred.

“We have become aware of a data security issue involving customer payment card data at certain Saks Fifth Avenue, Saks Off 5th and Lord & Taylor stores in North America,” the company said in a statement. “We have identified the issue, and have taken steps to contain it. Once we have more clarity around the facts, we will notify our customers quickly and will offer those impacted free identity protection services, including credit and web monitoring.”

Hudson’s Bay said that its investigation was continuing but that its e-commerce platforms appeared to have been unaffected by the breach. The company declined to identify how many customer accounts or stores were affected.

The theft is one of the largest known breaches of a retailer and shows just how difficult it is to secure credit-card transaction systems despite the lessons learned from other large data breaches, including the theft of 40 million card numbers from Target in 2013 and 56 million card numbers from Home Depot in 2014. Last year, Equifax, a credit reporting firm, disclosed that sensitive financial information on 145.5 million Americans had been exposed in a breach of the company’s systems.

Hudson’s Bay said customers could get further information on dedicated pages on the websites of Saks Fifth Avenue, Saks Off 5th and Lord & Taylor.

The Ultimate Guide to Facebook's New Privacy Settings

It seems there isn’t a day that goes by without Facebook and privacy being in the news. Most recently, there’s the small matter of the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal, which is causing users to leave Facebook in droves. But there is an alternative. Our guide to Facebook’s privacy settings explains all you need to know to keep using the popular social network safely.

Facebook Privacy Settings: The basics explained

You can find a list of apps that have access to your Facebook data, such as your name, pictures, birthday and friends list, on the App Settings page. There’s a good chance the list will be significantly longer than expected.

Clicking each entry in the list shows you the types of data you’ve given them permission to access. By unchecking each box, you can limit how many of your personal details they can get their hands on. You can also unlink the apps from your Facebook account on this page, by clicking the ‘X’ that appears next to them.

You can also switch off Facebook’s integration with apps completely, meaning you won’t be able to log into apps, games and other websites using your Facebook account. To do this, go to Settings, Apps and Websites and Plugins, then select Edit and Disable Platform.

Using your Facebook account to login to another app bridges your digital islands, allowing the two companies to collect more data and build an in depth profile about you and your activity. Set up a new login and password for the apps you’re using. to help you to avoid data being shared between different services.

1. I want to get an overview of my privacy settings

Facebook’s privacy settings are spread over a number of portions of the site. However, you can do a quick health check by tapping the padlock to the right of the Home screen and selecting Run Privacy Check Up. This will allow you see privacy settings at a glance over three key areas of Facebook

1) Posts – As explained below, this will explain how to control your privacy settings for every post.
2) Apps – Who sees your activity within third-party apps
3) Profile – Here you can limit what personal information (work, age, contact details) is visible to who.

2. I want to control who sees my posts

This is perhaps the key privacy concern of Facebook users who’re concerned. No-one wants their boss spying on their weekend activities, so it’s important to be clear about when you post. Whenever you upload a photo, fill in a status, or check in at a location there’s the opportunity to customise who you wish to share with. You can also adjust this by clicking the padlock and selecting “Who can see my stuff?”

The three main options are:

• Friends – Only people you’re friends with can see the post. If you’re posting photos of your children or any information you’d deem personal then this is what you need to select.
• Public – Anyone can see it whether they’re friends or not. If you want to be part of a public discussion to be seen by friends and within search; like on Twitter, then select this.
• Only You – Perhaps if you use Facebook as a repository for personal memories or a blog you can select Only You to ensure you, the account holder are the only one who sees it.

Here you can also select Custom to add Friends of Friends to the list of people who can see the post while there’s also the opportunity to post only for the eyes of various Groups you may be part of.

3. I want to hide my personal information

Thankfully, much of this can be controlled via the Privacy Check Up mentioned above. You can alter who sees what by heading to the About section of your profile and selecting Edit under each section. To alter privacy settings from Friends to Only Me will hide the information from your profile. In many cases you may want to remove it completely by clicking the X.

4. I want to hide posts from other people

If you’re still friends with an ex on Facebook, it might be considered poor form to post photos of you in a new relationship in a place where he/she can see them. You can get around this by hitting Custom from the “Who should see this?” menu and tagging people you wish to hide the post from.

5. I want to post something, but hide it from my timeline

Maybe you have something to say and don’t want it as a permanent record on your timeline, a thought, a meme, a joke in context that’s of its time, a photo, etc. You can achieve this by ticking the Hide From Timeline box in the post field.

6. I want to stop people sharing my photos and posts

If you’ve shared a photo or a status on Facebook, it’s open to be re-shared by those who have access to it. That means Friends and, if you’ve tagged people, Friends of Friends. If the post is Publicthen anyone in the world can share it There’s no way around that, other than to set the post to Only Me in the first place, which kind of defeats the point in most cases.

7. I want to limit who can send me friend requests

Click Settings > Privacy and head to “who can send me friend requests.” You can change it from Everybody to Friends of Friends, but that’s about as far as you can go. This is also accessible form the Privacy Shortcuts accessed by clicking the padlock.

8. I want to block someone

Use the Privacy Shortcuts or go to Settings > Blocking, begin typing the name of the friend (or ex-friend) you wish to block from your account. You can also block certain people from sending you messages, but you have to be friends with them.

It’s also possible to block people people you’re not friends with by heading to their profile, clicking the “…” on the right hand side and selecting Block.

9. I want to limit who can look me up through contact information

Facebook probably has your phone number and some email addresses. If folks (i.e. potential employers, old flames, stalkers, etc.) were to enter these in search, they may be able to discover your profile. In Settings > Privacy you can correct this by selecting either Everyone, Friends of Friends or Friends.

10. I want my Facebook page kept off Google

There’s no hiding from Facebook’s overarching Search engine, all you can do is lock down your privacy settings and hope you have a common name. However it’s different in the case of other search engines like Google. Within Settings > Privacy, you can ensure your Facebook profile is exempt by selecting No.

11. I want to protect my location

Facebook loves it when you check into places, it gobbles up all of that lovely data to attract advertisers. However, you may want to protect your location. The very obvious step is not to click the location pin when posting.

However, when you’re using the mobile app, Facebook may try to use GPS and Wi-Fi to name your location. You can prevent this from happening by entering the Location settings on your mobile device and denying Facebook access.

In iOS: Settings > Privacy > Location > Facebook > Never

AI Predicts Your Lifespan Using Activity Tracking Apps

Researchers can estimate your expected lifespan based on physiological traits like your genes or your circulating blood factor, but that's not very practical on a grand scale. There may be a shortcut, however: the devices you already have on your body. Russian scientists have crafted an AI-based algorithm that uses the activity tracking from smartphones and smartwatches to estimate your lifespan with far greater precision than past models.

The team used a convolutional neural network to find the "biologically relevant" motion patterns in a large set of US health survey data and correlate that to both lifespans and overall health. It would look for not just step counts, but how often you switch between active and inactive periods -- many of the other factors in your life, such as your sleeping habits and gym visits, are reflected in those switches. After that, it was just a matter of applying the understanding to a week's worth of data from test subjects' phones. You can even try it yourself through Gero Lifespan, an iPhone app that uses data from Apple Health, Fitbit and Rescuetime (a PC productivity measurement app) to predict your longevity.

This doesn't provide a full picture of your health, as it doesn't include your diet, genetics and other crucial factors. Doctors would ideally use both mobile apps and clinical analysis to give you a proper estimate, and the scientists are quick to acknowledge that what you see here isn't completely ready for medical applications. The AI is still more effective than past approaches, though, and it could be useful for more accurate health risk models that help everything from insurance companies (which already use activity tracking as an incentive) to the development of anti-aging treatments.

Under Armour's MyFitnessPal Data Breach Affected 150 Million Users

Under Armour,  the fitness company that owns MyFitnessPal,  disclosed today a data breach that affected about 150 million users. MyFitnessPal, a food and nutrition application, earlier this week became aware of the breach, which took place late last month.

The breached data did not include any Social Security numbers, driver license numbers or any other government-issued identifiers, according to Under Armour. The company also said payment card information was not collected.

“The company quickly took steps to determine the nature and scope of the issue and to alert the MyFitnessPal community of the incident,” Under Armour wrote in a press release.

Four days after Under Armour became aware of the issue, the company said it started to notify members of the MyFitnessPal community via email and in-app messaging. Under Armour recommends MyFitnessPal users change their passwords.

“Under Armour is working with leading data security firms to assist in its investigation, and also coordinating with law enforcement authorities,” the press release stated. “The investigation indicates that the affected information included usernames, email addresses, and hashed passwords – the majority with the hashing function called bcrypt used to secure passwords.”

Apple releases iOS 11.3 with new Animojis

Apple  just released an iOS update for your iPhone and iPad. 11.3 introduces a ton of bug fixes but also a bunch of new features. If you forgot about Animjois, today is your lucky day as Apple is adding four new Animojis — a dragon, a bear, a lion and a skull.

But that’s not all. Apple already shared a preview of iOS 11.3 a couple of months ago. There’s a big ARKit update to ARKit 1.5. It can recognize more objects and surfaces.

And iOS 11.3 is also the battery update we’ve all been waiting for. There’s some new info in the settings about the status of your battery. It tells you the overall capacity and if it’s time to change your battery.

You can also choose to disable Apple’s controversial decision to throttle performance with old batteries. Apple says it’s a beta feature for now.

Apple is also introducing a new feature in the Health app. You can now centralize all your health records in the app. It’s only limited to a handful of clinics for now.

Apple is adding customer support conversations to Messages. You can initiate a conversation with a business to order something, book a table and more. Discover, Hilton, Lowe’s and Wells Fargo are already on board. Health Records and Business Chats are only available in the U.S. as a beta for now.

You’ll also see a new privacy icon across the operating system. A new website to export all your data is coming in May as well. Apple needs to add those features to comply with GDPR.

Finally, Apple Music is getting a new video clips section, the App Store Updates tab now shows you the size of each update and more tiny little things. And if you care about security, it’s always a good thing to update to the latest version of iOS. Unfortunately, iOS 11.3 still doesn’t include iMessage in iCloud.

Back up your iPhone or iPad to iCloud or your computer using iTunes before updating. You can then head over to the Settings app, then ‘General’, then ‘Software Update’. macOS, watchOS and tvOS updates are also available today.