Since former NSA analyst Edward Snowden leaked evidence of the security agency’s covert surveillance of millions of Americans to journalist Glenn Greenwald last year, online privacy has become one of the tech sector’s most contentious issues.

Few issues in tech are as polarizing as online privacy, but the topic goes far beyond opinions about the security of personal data or how it should be used. In fact, online privacy (or the lack thereof) is shaping the future of search, whether you realize it or not.

Advertisers are desperate to plumb the depths of people’s personal lives in search of more accurate targeting, while many users are balking at how the monoliths of the tech sector are gathering, storing, and using their information. But what does the future hold, and should you be worried about how companies such as Google and Facebook are using your data?

Although millions of people continue to willingly hand over their personal data to Facebook and Google without question, increasing numbers of people are beginning to question whether their data is truly safe.

To assuage their concerns (and capitalize on the increasing desire for more secure online services), Apple and Google recently announced that the operating systems of their mobile devices would be encrypted by default. Encrypting user data means that information stored on such devices would be inaccessible to anyone but the user, even Apple and Google.

However, in what should have been hailed as a major step forward for the tech industry and privacy advocates, the move has instead raised been criticized and derided by lawmakers in Capitol Hill and across the country. Cathy Lanier, head of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department, claimed that iPhones and Android devices will now become the preferred tools of pedophiles and hardened criminals, and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder also played the “think of the children” card.

These asinine comments were echoed by numerous other officials, including FBI Director James Comey, who said that individuals using an encrypted device were essentially placing themselves “beyond the law.”

Apparently, not wanting law enforcement officials and three-letter agencies to have unrestricted access to your personal data automatically makes you a criminal.

There can be little doubt that law enforcement and the technology sector are likely to remain at loggerheads over whether user data is fair game or not. However, the privacy of the individual is not the only aspect of the debate. Indeed, the very future of search is predicated on users’ willingness to be tracked and monitored.

As I wrote in a previous post, Google Hummingbird was a huge leap for search, offering users increasingly personalized results that anticipate user queries based on prior activity, location, and numerous other factors. Doing so anonymously is impossible, and as recent evidence revealed, technology companies and the government have unprecedented access to your personal data.

Yet another critical security flaw has been found for Adobe's notoriously sieve-like Flash plug-in, this time by Google Engineer Michele Spagnuolo. His exploit tool, called "Rosetta Flash" is just a proof of concept, but could allow hackers to steal your cookies and other data using malicious Flash .SWF files. The exploit is well known in the security community, but had been left unfixed until now as nobody had found a way to harness it for evil. So how does this affect you? Many companies like Twitter, Microsoft, Google and Instagram have already patched their sites, but beware of others that may still be vulnerable. Adobe now has a fix, and if you use Chrome or Internet Explorer 10 or 11, your browser should automatically update soon with the latest versions of Flash, 14.0.0.145 (check your version here). However, if you have a browser like Firefox, you may want to grab the latest Flash version from Adobe directly (watch out for unwanted add-ons with pre-checked boxes). Finally, if you use apps like Tweetdeck or Pandora, you'll need to update Adobe AIR -- that should happen automatically, but the latest version is 14.0.0.137 for Windows, Mac and Android.

Via: Krebson Security

Source: Michele Spagnuolo, Adobe

It's hard to learn to play the piano just by watching a video of a great pianist. Interactive learning is much more effective! oppia.org helps you make embeddable interactive educational "explorations" that let people learn by doing.

The second experiment, quietly announced on Google's Open Source Blog, was the launch of Oppia, a project that aims "To make it easy for anyone to create online interactive activities" that others can learn from.

Google's new open source project essentially aims to take the headache or mystery out of the process by providing the framework by which anyone can quickly create these types of interactive learning experiences and add them to their site.

In describing Oppia, Google says that one can think of it as a "Smart feedback system," which is an attempt to begin automating how we "Teach a person to fish" - to use its example.

On the technical side, Google says that it's based Oppia on an extensible framework, allowing developers to add their own inputs and extend the range of potential formats and types of responses that Oppia understands.

Explorations, as Google calls the lessons users can build through its system, that are created on an Oppia server can be embedded in any web page, and embeddings can "Refer to a particular version" of the exploration so that future changes don't mess with the principle version, Google explained.

As with many Google projects of this kind, it's not totally clear how much attention and support Google intends to throw at Oppia going forward.

The project's home page conspicuously says that Oppia is not officially a Google product, which would seem to imply that Google isn't planning to dedicate a ton of manpower or resources to the project.

More on Oppia at home here and in Google’s YouTube explainer below: