Security, Spoken

In these predominantly digital times, it's all too easy to build up a long trail of unused accounts that are now gathering dust: free trials that you never followed up on, streaming services you abandoned, on-demand clothing boxes that in the end weren't quite what you were looking for, and so on. In some ways these old accounts aren't doing any harm besides gathering virtual dust or sending you the occasional email nag.

In these predominantly digital times, it's all too easy to build up a long trail of unused accounts that are now gathering dust: free trials that you never followed up on, streaming services you abandoned, on-demand clothing boxes that in the end weren't quite what you were looking for, and so on. In some ways these old accounts aren't doing any harm besides gathering virtual dust or sending you the occasional email nag.

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Spend enough time on the social media app TikTok, and you’re bound to see a Life360 meme. That’s because Life360, a location-sharing app aimed at families, is apparently ruining the lives of teenagers all across the United States. The service allows parents to track their kids’ whereabouts in real time, among other features. As one girl with long blond hair jokes in a popular TikTok clip, it’s set her summer vacation on fire.

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In the wake of jarring revelations about how United States law enforcement agencies have deployed facial recognition, Congress seemed, for a moment, galvanized to act. Based on a Homeland Security Committee hearing in the House Wednesday, that moment appears to be fading—as hundreds of local, state, and federal law enforcement officials continue to amass and access the controversial data every day.

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You may not recognize the name Magecart, but you’ve seen its impact. A set of sophisticated hacking groups, Magecart has been behind some of the bigger hacks of the past few years, from British Airways to Ticketmaster, all with the singular goal of stealing credit card numbers. Think of them as the ATM skimmers of the web. And thanks to poor security hygiene, they’ve managed to hit 17,000 domains in the past few months alone.

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Next week, Amazon will celebrate Prime Day, a bacchanal of modestly discounted ephemera. But amid the flurry of cheap TVs and ebooks and what else, maybe Instant Pots? Watch out for this clever phishing campaign that might hit your inbox. Researchers from security company McAfee today have shared details of a so-called phishing kit, which contains the tools an aspiring hacker would need to kick off a phishing campaign, designed to target Amazon customers.

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The announcement came as we began to board. Last month, I was at Detroit’s Metro Airport for a connecting flight to Southeast Asia. I listened as a Delta Air Lines staff member informed passengers that the boarding process would use facial recognition instead of passport scanners. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Allie Funk is a research analyst for Freedom on the Net, Freedom House's annual country-by-country assessment of internet freedom. She focuses on developments in the US and Asia.

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YouTube is currently under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission following complaints that the platform improperly collected data from young users. It’s unclear how much data this might be, but there’s reason to believe it could be a lot. For many kids, YouTube has replaced television; depending on how parents use online platforms, children could begin to amass data even before birth.

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Six months of 2019 are on the books already, and certainly there have been six months' worth of data breaches, supply chain manipulations, state-backed hacking campaigns, and harbingers of cyberwar to show for it. But the hallmark of 2019, perhaps, is feeling like the worst is yet to come. Ransomware is an ever-growing threat, corporate and US government security is still a mess, and geopolitical tensions are rising worldwide.

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Stalkers have ways of tracking you even without fancy malware, airport facial recognition is becoming more common, and WIRED has some advice on how to take the very best fireworks photos. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Want to receive this two-minute roundup as an email every weekday? Sign up here! Today's Headlines Opting out of facial recognition at the airport isn't easy.

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