The illegal use of Global Positioning System (GPS) jammers in the UK has been revealed in a groundbreaking study. GPS jammers are believed to be mostly used by people driving vehicles fitted with tracking devices in order to mask their whereabouts.

Volkswagen has agreed to stop its Blackberry servers sending emails to some of its employees when they are off-shift.

Researchers have demonstrated a new technique capable of stealing personal information from Facebook.

Using 'socialbots', computer programs that mimic real Facebook profiles, the researchers were able to harvest vast quantities of personal data.

As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there's a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview. Eli Pariser argues powerfully that this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy.

A row has broken out between Wikileaks and one of the newspapers it collaborated with to leak US diplomatic cables. The whistle-blowing group said unredacted versions of the 251,000 diplomatic cables had been leaked on the internet. Wikileaks blamed the disclosure on the Guardian newspaper and said it had started legal action against the paper. The newspaper has strongly denied the claims, blaming a "security breach". In a short statement on Twitter, Wikileaks said: "A Guardian journalist has, in a previously undetected act of gross negligence or malice... disclosed top secret decryption passwords to the entire, unredacted, Wikileaks Cablegate archive.

There are over 12 thousand CCTV cameras on the London Underground system, monitoring the movements of millions of passengers every single day. But some commuters are also doing their own electronic reconnaissance.

North London's Hasidic Jewish community is an intensely private world, where marriage is an integral rite of passage, strict rules must be adhered to and faith is taken seriously.

Material that is published on Twitter should be considered public and can be published.

I published all of my known genetic data as open source and released all my rights to the data. I’m proud to be the first person in the world to commit my genetic data into a decentralized source control system under a public domain license. The initial reactions that I received when I told some of my friends that I was going to do this was a combination of shock and skepticism.

Freedom Box is the name we give to a personal server running a free software operating system, with free applications designed to create and preserve personal privacy. Freedom Box software is particularly tailored to run in "plug servers," which are compact computers that are no larger than power adapters for electronic appliances. Located in people's homes or offices such inexpensive servers can provide privacy in normal life, and safe communications for people seeking to preserve their freedom in oppressive regimes.

German researchers have created software called X-Pire that gives images an expiration date by tagging them with an encrypted key.

When Facebook was entirely dominated by people under the age of 25, things were simple. But now an important social question has arisen - should you "friend" your child, or accept a parent as a "friend"?

A project that could radically reduce the amount of personal information we share in our dealings has been revealed by IBM researchers.

An open source alternative to Facebook - called Diaspora.

Path arrived at the idea of limiting users to a network of 50 people following research done by Oxford University Professor of Evolutionary Psychology Robin Dunbar. He espoused that 150 is the maximum number of social relationships that the human brain can sustain at a given time and that 50 is roughly the outer boundary of our personal networks. Facebook's approach and that of other social networks from Bebo to MySpace and Google Buzz is at odds with that thinking.

The Israeli army has come up with a novel way of exposing women who lie about their religious background in order to avoid military service. It is using the social networking site Facebook to check up on them. More than 1,000 women have been tracked down after they falsely claimed they were exempt from the draft because they were Orthodox Jews.

Fraudsters obtain more than £1,000 from every identity they steal, official figures suggest.

The cables published today reveal how the US uses its embassies as part of a global espionage network, with diplomats tasked to obtain not just information from the people they meet, but personal details, such as frequent flyer numbers, credit card details and even DNA material.

Under the proposal, firms would have to design systems to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages. Services based overseas would have to route communications through a server on United States soil where they could be wiretapped.

Facebook has responded to Google's decision to block the export of contact information from Gmail by offering users a work-around solution.

A website which pays the public to monitor live commercial CCTV footage online has been launched in Devon.

It seems like every time Facebook amends its privacy policy, the web is up in arms. The truth is, Facebook’s well publicized privacy fight is nothing compared to the vulnerability of all unsecured HTTP sites — that includes Facebook, Twitter and many of the web’s most popular destinations. Developer Eric Butler has exposed the soft underbelly of the web with his new Firefox extension, Firesheep, which will let you essentially eavesdrop on any open Wi-Fi network and capture users’ cookies. As Butler explains in his post, “As soon as anyone on the network visits an insecure website known to Firesheep, their name and photo will be displayed” in the window. All you have to do is double click on their name and open sesame, you will be able to log into that user’s site with their credentials.

It's extremely common for websites to protect your password by encrypting the initial login, but surprisingly uncommon for websites to encrypt everything else. This leaves the cookie (and the user) vulnerable. HTTP session hijacking (sometimes called "sidejacking") is when an attacker gets a hold of a user's cookie, allowing them to do anything the user can do on a particular website. On an open wireless network, cookies are basically shouted through the air, making these attacks extremely easy.

One visit to a booby-trapped website could direct attackers to a person's home, a security expert has shown.

Nothing said online is really private, says Bill Thompson.

Measures are needed to stop brain scans being misused by courts, insurers and employers.

The National Identity Card scheme will be abolished within 100 days with all cards becoming invalid.

About 600 gigabytes of data was taken off of the Wi-Fi networks in more than 30 countries" and that "Google has been vacuuming up fragments of people's online activities broadcast over public Wi-Fi networks for the past four years.

China is considering forcing its citizens to use their real names when they post comments on internet bulletin boards.

Animals should not be seen as "fair game" for filmmakers.

Eric Schmidt said that there was "no, harm, no foul", after the firm admitted that it had been collecting snippets of web activity from people's wi-fi.

Google has admitted that for the past three years it has wrongly collected information people have sent over unencrypted wi-fi networks.

The privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network.

Can the supremacy of Facebook, as the world's biggest social network rapidly heading towards 500 million users, ever be truly challenged at this stage?

Twitter and Facebook give Iran's secret services a superb platform for gathering intelligence.

The tool, called GoogleSharing, is a Firefox add-on that mixes the requests of many different users together, such that Google is not capable of telling what is coming from whom.

The coalition has recommended that a warrant be required before internet providers must hand over the online information - just as a warrant is required for a physical search of a suspect's computer or filing cabinets.

Google has said that it will begin to roll out a privacy reset for its controversial social network Buzz.

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) was a forward-looking statute when enacted in 1986. It specified standards for law enforcement access to electronic communications and associated data, affording important privacy protections to subscribers of emerging wireless and Internet technologies. Technology has advanced dramatically since 1986, and ECPA has been outpaced. The statute has not undergone a significant revision since it was enacted in 1986 - light years ago in Internet time. As a result, ECPA is a patchwork of confusing standards that have been interpreted inconsistently by the courts, creating uncertainty for both service providers and law enforcement agencies. ECPA can no longer be applied in a clear and consistent way, and, consequently, the vast amount of personal information generated by today’s digital communication services may no longer be adequately protected.

It works by analysing the movement of accelerometers, found in many handsets. Activities such as walking, climbing stairs or even cleaning can be identified, the researchers say.

About 24,000 clients of HSBC's private banking operation in Switzerland had personal details stolen by a former employee, the company has admitted.

Parents in the US have accused a school of spying on children by remotely activating webcams on laptops.