You Pay More When Companies Get Hacked

The conflict in Ukraine has been going on for more than 150 days with no end in sight. The war in the south of the country is having an impact on freedom of speech and online censorship for a long time.

A flurry of more than half a dozen new Russian laws, all proposed or passed in the last few months, will help to separate Russia from the global internet. The free and open internet could be damaged if the move succeeds. There is some good news. Russia's attempts to block and censor people's online lives are hitting some stumbling blocks.

The Bipartisan Safe Communities Act was signed by Joe Biden last month. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was banned from studying gun violence in America for decades when senators were drafting the law. Much of the data used to inform the Act came from somewhere else. We looked at the legality of states blocking people from crossing state lines to get an abortion after the fall of Wade.

It is possible to lend your phone to a friend who wants to look at your holiday photos or to a stranger who needs to make an emergency phone call. A few changes to your settings on your phone can help to keep your data safe.

There's more. We don't break or cover the news in depth. To read the full story, click on the headline. Staying safe out there is important.

Every year the list of companies that have been hacked grows. Poor security practices and technical misconfigurations are some of the reasons why these incidents occur. While each incident is different, it's clear that a data breach can have a huge impact on those impacted: individuals who have their data leaked, and companies who have to deal with reputation and financial damage. According to an IBM report, the cost of a data breach has reached an all-time high. That is an increase from last year.

IBM says that companies are hitting their customers with the costs of data breeches. Sixty percent of the organizations that were surveyed said they had increased their prices due to the data breach. The report didn't give any examples. It is not clear if companies are passing on the costs of cyberattacks to their customers in the future. Only 17 percent of the companies said it was the first data breach they had suffered.

A new set of bombshells. The European Union's phones were targeted with the hacking tool of the NSO Group, according to a report. The EU Justice Commissioner was told by Apple that his phone might have been hacked. According to the EU investigation, there are signs of compromise on some devices. The officials announced that 14 EU member states have bought the product in the past.

There were other revelations this week. The leader of Greece's opposition political party launched a complaint that his phone had been targeted with Israeli-made spy ware. Sub zero was linked to European firm DSIRF. According to the details published to coincide with the hearing of the House Intelligence Committee, Subzero was used to target banks in Austria, the UK, and Panama.

If technology companies want to sell their products in China, they will have to comply with the rules. Apple discovered that it may have to compromise the security protections they put in place around people's data. The developer of the video game was aware of the potential consequences when it was ready to launch in China.

The company believed it could be hacked if it entered China and that rivals would create their own version of the game. According to an internal presentation, expect that hacking has begun. The documents show how Roblox used Chinese censorship laws, including tampering with historical facts and misrepresenting Chinese territories on maps, as well as other local laws. The Chinese app of Roblox was shut down at the beginning of this year.

For a long time, Apple's and Mozilla's browsers have limited how third-party cookies can be used. These small snippets of code, which are saved to your device when you visit websites, can be used to track your browsing history and show you ads based on what you've seen. They are seen as a privacy nightmare. The move to ditch third-party cookies for chrome was a big deal. In practice, the change has been difficult. The plan has been delayed for a second time. Third-party cookies have been given a stay of execution until at least the end of the decade. Privacy advocates say the replacements are worse than cookies and the advertising industry says they will decrease competition.