Toronto Electricians and Electrical Contractors

Phony HTTPS Everywhere Extension Used in Fake Tor Browser ESET researchers recently discovered a false “ trojanized ” version of Tor Browser that collectively stole $40,000 USD in Bitcoin. This does not mean that Tor or Tor Browser itself is compromised in any way. It only means that attackers found a new, insidious way to create and distribute a fake version of the Tor Browser. In this case, attackers also faked EFF’s own HTTPS Everywhere extension using a modified manifest.json file with a few settings changes. The attackers used a fake HTTPS Everywhere extension in their campaign because Tor does in fact package the HTTPS Everywhere and No Script extensions into its browser. Including details like normal extensions in the trojanized version of Tor could prevent eagle-eyed users from catching red flags that indicate they’re using a fake browser. Nefarious HTTPS Everywhere Code The manifest.json file in web extensions states explicit permissions and scope of activity the we

Strengthen California’s Next Consumer Data Privacy Initiative EFF and a coalition of privacy advocates recently asked the sponsor of a new California ballot initiative to strengthen its provisions on consumer data privacy. The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA) created new ways for the state’s residents to protect themselves from corporations that invade their privacy by harvesting and monetizing their personal information. Specifically, the CCPA gives each Californian the right to know exactly what pieces of personal information a company has collected about them; the right to delete that information; and the right to opt-out of the sale of that information. The CCPA is a good start, but we want more privacy protection. In 2018, the sponsor of an initiative on consumer data privacy, Alastair Mactaggart, obtained enough petition signatures to place the initiative on the ballot. He agreed to remove the initiative from the ballot in exchange for the legislature’s

Private Companies, Government Surveillance Software and Human Rights It's old news that governments around the world are misusing private company-sold digital surveillance software track and target people for human rights abuses. Recently, Amnesty International reported finding that two prominent Moroccan human rights defenders had been targeted using Israeli-based NSO Group’s software. Just this week WhatsApp sued NSO group for using spyware, noting in the legal Complaint that NSO group counts the Kingdom of Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Mexico as customers and that WhatsApp had found targets with telephone numbers from each of those countries. Thanks to advocacy and research by EFF as well as our friends at Citizen Lab, Amnesty International, Privacy International, and others, there is now widespread understanding of the problem. But companies and activists and governments are still struggling to find solutions.  All the while private companies based in the UK and G

Facebook Faces Another Congressional Grilling Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg was called back to Capitol Hill to speak about the company’s impact on the financial and housing sectors—particularly in light of its proposal to launch a cryptocurrency wallet, Calibra, and its involvement in the creation of the Libra cryptocurrency. We’ve criticized Facebook on many fronts for years, and we share the wide ranging concerns of lawmakers who want to ensure their constituents’ privacy and rights are protected from Facebook’s abuses as it looks to expand its reach. Throughout the hearing, we appreciate that the committee members focused on Facebook’s actions as the basis of their skepticism about Libra, rather than around blockchain technology. Zuckerberg faced several pointed questions about the company’s cryptocurrency proposal, but many rightly focused their ire on the company’s past actions and asked whether Facebook recognized how its tarnished reputation makes it difficul

Nickelback's Record Label Abuses Copyright to Silence Political Speech EFF legal intern Samantha Hamilton co-wrote this blog post Nickelback never asked to become a meme. And yet, after the Internet decided it hated the Canadian alternative rock band and due to the lead singer’s unique voice, users have shared their image millions of times. But their record label decided to draw a line at President Trump tweeting a meme putting the Biden-Ukraine controversy into a Nickelback music video. We may tend not to think of memes as political speech, but they can be. And when someone expresses a political message via meme, using copyright law to silence their speech when it is very clearly fair use is an abuse of copyright. In July, President Trump pushed Ukrainian officials to investigate Hunter Biden, presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son, for corruption. Trump stoked the fire on October 2 when he tweeted a video clip from Nickelback’s music video for their 2005 hit “Photograph,”

Inventergy Backs Away from Nuisance Lawsuit over GPS Patent EasyTracGPS is a family-owned business that provides GPS tracking solutions to commercial shipping fleets. Recently, EasyTracGPS faced a litigation threat from Inventergy LBS, LLC, which accused it of infringing U.S. Patent No. 8,760,286. That patent supposedly claims a “ [s]ystem and method for communication with a tracking device ,” but like so many patents, actually claims generic steps of data collection and processing that any computer could perform. This is not the kind of invention that can be patented. EFF represented EasyTracGPS pro bono, writing Inventergy a letter explaining that its patent was invalid, and that its bad faith assertion of patent infringement violates state law. Inventergy withdrew the lawsuit the same day it received the letter. As we explain in our letter, Inventergy’s patent should be declared invalid under one of the basic building blocks of US patent law, 36 U.S.C. § 101. In the groundbre

Companies Can Still Do More to Protect Privacy in Brazil: Internet Lab Releases Fourth "Who Defends Your Data" Report Internet Lab , the Brazilian independent research center, has published their fourth annual report of “ Quem Defende Seus Dados?" (“Who defends your data?"), comparing policies of their local Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and how they treat users’ data after receiving government requests. Vivo (Telefónica) still takes the lead, but Tim is not far behind. Claro/NET (América Móvil) , SKY (DirectTV/AT&T) , and Oi also show progress compared to 2018’s report . In this year’s report, all companies, except Nextel , received at least a partial star for providing information on data disclosure to the government. Most of the ISPs have published details on how their users’ data is collected and processed. While Net joined the list in the new report, Algar lost the partial star earned in 2018. Vivo is still the only company to prov

DNS over HTTPS Will Give You Back Privacy that Big ISPs Fought to Take Away An absurd thing is happening in the halls of Congress. Major ISPs such as Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon are banging on the doors of legislators to stop the deployment of DNS over HTTPS (DoH), a technology that will give users one of the biggest upgrades to their Internet privacy and security since the proliferation of HTTPS . This is because DoH ensures that when you look up a website, your query to the DNS system is secure through encryption and can’t be tracked, spoofed, or blocked.  But despite these benefits, ISPs  have written dozens of congressional leaders about their concerns , and are handing out misleading materials invoking Google as the boogeyman. EFF, Consumer Reports, and National Consumers League wrote this letter in response . The reason the ISPs are fighting so hard is that DoH might undo their multi-million dollar political effort to take away user privacy. DoH isn’t a Google techn

The Ethics Board of One of the Largest Vendors of Police Tech Makes the Case Against ALPRs   Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs)—a mass surveillance technology that allows law enforcement to record the location and travel patterns of nearly every driver on the road—are poorly regulated, threaten privacy, and worsen the racial and economic inequalities already ingrained in our justice system.  That’s what EFF and other advocates have been saying for years. But now it’s coming from an oversight body formed by one of the nation’s largest police tech vendors. Last week, the AI and Policing Technology Ethics Board at Axon, a tech company best known for popularizing body-worn cameras and the Taser, released a damning report concerning the commercial sale of ALPRs. The board, whose purpose is to “help guide and advise the company on ethical issues,” concluded that while it sees the potential value of ALPRs, their current role in society is too broad and problematic. The sheer am

Price Setter LLC Falsely Claims Online Ad Invention, Demands Money from Android Devs Unfortunately, app developers are facing another onslaught of letters demanding money they shouldn’t have to pay.  This time, the sender is Jorge Maass, a patent owner who also runs a real-estate business in Texas. In recent months, Maass has been sending out threatening letters under the name of his company, Price Setter, LLC. The letters tell developers that the apps they built infringe his patent —and they owe him money—just for using standard software to display online ads.  The Price Setter letters, titled “Notice of Potential Infringement” [ PDF ] or the more threatening “Final Notice of Potential Infringement,” [ PDF ] demand that developers pay an annual license fee ranging from $400 to $2,000, depending on the number of times the app is downloaded. In the letter, Price Setter specifically cites claim 15 of U.S. Patent No. 9,892,445 . This claim doesn’t come close to showing that Maass i

What if "Sesame Street" Were Open Access? The news of iconic children’s television show “Sesame Street”’s new arrangement with the HBO MAX streaming service has sent ripples around the Internet. Starting this year, episodes of “Sesame Street” will debut on HBO and on the HBO MAX service, with new episodes being made available to PBS “at some point.” Parents Television Council’s Tim Winter recently told New York Times that “ HBO is holding hostage underprivileged families ” who can no longer afford to watch new “Sesame Street” episodes. The move is particularly galling because the show is partially paid for with public funding. Let's imagine an alternative: what if “Sesame Street” were open access? What if the show’s funding had come with a requirement that it be made available to the public? Open access advocacy is about showing decisionmakers a world they hadn’t thought possible, where certain resources are available to anyone regardless of economic means. It migh

In the Debate Over Online Speech and Security, Let’s Get to the Science A debate is raging, in Congress and the media, over whether or not we need new regulations to try to shape how Internet platforms operate. Too often, however, the discussion is based on rhetoric and anecdote, rather than empirical research. The recently introduced National Commission on Online Platforms and Homeland Security Act is intended to change that, and we’re pleased to support its goals. Comprehensive Research Can Help Ensure Policy Choices are Based on Factual Evidence When we are faced with a hard societal problem, we are often tempted to look for “obvious” answers. For example, politicians and the media used to regularly blame violent video games for real-world violence, even though scientific research has shown there is no causal link. Evidence notwithstanding, the belief that violent video games cause violence has led to a series of proposals to censor lawful speech, from unconstitutional effort

Don’t Let Science Publisher Elsevier Hold Knowledge for Ransom It’s Open Access Week and we’re joining SPARC and dozens of other organizations this week to discuss the importance of open access to scientific research publications.  An academic publisher should widely disseminate the knowledge produced by scholars, not hold it for ransom. But ransoming scientific research back to the academic community is essentially the business model of the world’s largest publisher of scientific journals: Elsevier. In February of this year, after drawn-out negotiations broke down, the University of California terminated its subscription with Elsevier. A central sticking point in these negotiations was around open access : specifically Elsevier’s refusal to provide universal open access to UC research, a problem exacerbated by skyrocketing subscription fees . This has been an ongoing fight, not just in California . Many academics (and EFF) believe that scholarly research most effectivel

Patents Are About Sharing Information with the Public. Don’t Shroud Them in Secrecy. Patents give their owners the power to stop people (and companies) from doing whatever the patent claims as an “invention” for twenty years. But that power doesn’t come for free: it’s a trade. In exchange for the right to sue others to stop using the invention, patent applicants have to disclose enough information about their invention to allow others in the field to make and use it. Encouraging people to share information so that others can use it to make further advances is the whole point of the patent system.   The public can read the information in a patent from the moment it’s published. But for the twenty years of a patent’s term, the owner can sue anyone who uses their invention without their permission. To get permission, members of the public need to know who owns the patent and therefore has the power to control and demand payment for its use. Unfortunately, essential information about

Weakening Our System of Patent Challenges Will Hurt Consumers, Unions, and Health Care Providers The Stronger Patents Act, S. 2082 , won’t give us a stronger patent system—just the opposite, in fact. It is a deliberate attempt to dismantle one of the few effective forums for challenging wrongly-issued patents. The bill would put dramatic and unwarranted changes into effect that would make the U.S. Patent Office’s system of inter partes review, or IPR, much less effective. That means the Stronger Patents Act will weaken the quality of issued patents and the patent system as a whole. TAKE ACTION TELL THE SENATE TO REJECT THE STRONGER PATENTS ACT Weakening IPR procedures will restore the dangerously unbalanced patent system that produced a patent troll epidemic. We know that kind of system does real harm: the best available studies indicate that patent trolls cost the economy billions in unnecessary legal costs. Meritless patent claims are still a serious problem, and one that we