Tech News Today 1731

The Senate voted to roll back Obama-era FCC rules that prevent internet service providers, like Verizon and Comcast, from selling our private, demographic data without asking permission first. Critics of the broadband privacy rules that Congress passed in the waning months of the Obama administration say that the rules target broadband providers unfairly, but privacy experts call this a crushing loss to privacy.

Wikileaks wants to give you a friendly reminder to update your Mac and your iPhone. And their way of telling us this is by dropping a new trove of Vault 7 documents. These are called "Dark Matter", which contain decades-old documentation for CIA projects that can infect Macs at the firmware level, if you haven't gotten your available updates.

In 2016, 50% of all the active Android phones in the world didn't receive a security patch -- with many not getting any OS updates in over a year. Google disclosed this shameful stat in an annual Android Security Year in Review released Thursday.

In that post, Google's security team said it is working on news ways to make it easier for its hardware partners and telecommunications companies to issue Android OS updates and patches to the public. Google issued Android software updates to 735 million devices from more than 200 manufacturers in 2016.

Brian X. Chen from the New York Times joins us to tell us to wipe all of our devices, forget all our passwords, and other tips for protecting our privacy and rights when we travel. And we explore new research that says it's possible to create solar powered robot skin that's softer than human skin.

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Links

• New WikiLeaks docs show how the CIA hacks iPhones and MacBooks
• Android plans to improve security update speed this year
• Senate Republicans just voted to give internet providers the green light to sell your web-browsing data without your consent
• Introducing Message Reactions and Mentions for Messenger
• Instagram Has Two-Factor Authentication Now, So Turn It On
• Safeguard Your Data From Searches
• What Travelers Should Know About New Restrictions on Devices
• This New Robot Skin Is More Sensitive Than A Human Hand