Home » UK ISP News Archive » Article Tag: Internet Privacy (227 Posts)

Articles for Category Tag - Internet Privacy

New UK Smart Data Laws May Help Broadband Deal Comparisons

10th September, 2020 (0 Comments)

The UK Government has proposed to mandate that broadband and phone providers, as well as related companies in the sector, should participate in their new “Smart Data” initiative, which aims to foster the “sharing [of] customer data” in order to deliver better product comparisons and billing management across accounts etc.

NETGEAR Decline to Patch Security Flaw in 45 Routers and Modems

31st July, 2020 (19 Comments)

Back in June it was revealed that around 80 of NETGEARs broadband wireless router(s), modems and other products suffered from a remote code execution vulnerability, which could allow “unauthenticated remote code execution with root privileges.” The company patched some of those but seems to have no plan for doing the rest.

EE UK Boosts Parental Controls Over Children’s Smartphones

28th July, 2020 (2 Comments)

Mobile operator EE (BT) has today launched “Set Up Safe” for all UK Pay Monthly customers, which is a free new SMS service that is designed to help parents “quickly and easily set up their child’s phone with safety features” (i.e. block adult internet content, set spending caps and stop them adding extra charges to the bill etc.).

NO Huawei – UK Gov BANs New 5G Mobile Kit from Dec 2020 UPDATED

14th July, 2020 (62 Comments)

The UK Government has today confirmed a dramatic U-turn, which means that new core and non-core 5G kit from Chinese tech giant Huawei will be banned from use in mobile networks from 31st December 2020. But existing kit will get until 2027 for removal and a decision on FTTP broadband ISPs will come later.

Backdoor Access Found in CDATA’s Chinese FTTH Broadband Kit

11th July, 2020 (30 Comments)

Chinese firm CDATA, which makes networking kit for FTTH and Hybrid Fibre Coax based broadband ISPs (often sold re-branded as OptiLink, V-SOL CN, BLIY etc.), is facing a serious problem after security researchers found 7 vulnerabilities in OLT kit including backdoor accounts that grant access to a hidden Telnet admin.

BT and Vodafone Seek 5-7 Years to Pull Huawei or Risk Blackouts UPDATE

9th July, 2020 (16 Comments)

Senior broadband and mobile figures from UK telecoms giants BT and Vodafone have today warned cross-party MPs on the Science and Technology Committee that they’d need at least 5-7 years to fully remove Huawei’s kit from their networks, or “blackouts” could be a risk. The cost may also rise into the billions.

Lords Tell UK Gov to Stop Pandemic of Internet Misinformation

29th June, 2020 (9 Comments)

A new cross-party report from the House of Lords Digital Technologies Committee has called on the UK Gov to ensure that their future Online Harms Bill can tackle the rising “pandemic of misinformation” on the internet, which they warn is a “threat” to democracy. More censorship and blocking by broadband ISPs is proposed.

Government Considers Zero Huawei Kit in UK Telecoms by 2023 UPDATE2

23rd May, 2020 (68 Comments)

At the start of 2020 the UK gave broadband ISPs and mobile operators a green light to use only non-core focused telecoms kit from Chinese giant Huawei (here), including a cap to reduce their market share. But new reports allege that the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, could be about to do a dramatic U-turn and shock the industry.

Google Chrome Joins Firefox – Soft Defaults to DNS over HTTPS

20th May, 2020 (9 Comments)

The latest version (v83) of Google’s popular Chrome website browser has finally made its new ‘Secure DNS’ feature available to all, which by “default … will automatically upgrade you” to use their DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) service. But in order to placate concerns it only does this if your current broadband ISP supports it.

Ofcom Records Drop in UK Nuisance Calls, But Problems Remain

4th May, 2020 (6 Comments)

A few years ago Ofcom nudged UK broadband ISPs and mobile operators to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Nuisance Calls, which committed them to develop technical measures for “reducing the impact of unlawful nuisance calls on consumers.” The latest data shows an improvement, but not as much as we’d like.

Government Attempts to Expand UK Internet Snooping Bodies

23rd April, 2020 (8 Comments)

The Government appears to have decided that, while the country’s attention is distracted by the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) crisis, it might as well try to increase the number of bodies capable of obtaining communications data from UK phone, mobile and broadband ISPs under the Investigatory Powers Act (IPAct).

Smishing – UK Mobile Firms Unite to Stop COVID-19 Text SCAMS

22nd April, 2020 (3 Comments)

A rise in COVID-19 (Coronavirus) related text message scams (e.g. Smishing), which often attempt to trick UK mobile users into parting with their money or other sensitive personal details, has prompted mobile operators to join with other industries in order to update a trial of the new SMS SenderID Protection Registry.

Law Firm Claims Virgin Media Data Breach Victims Due £5k Each

17th April, 2020 (37 Comments)

Cable TV and broadband ISP Virgin Media UK appears to be facing the prospect of a “group litigation” (class action) lawsuit from Your Laywers, which claims that the operator’s failure to protect the personal details belonging to 900,000 of their customers could result in each being able to claim £5,000 (c.£4.5bn total).

Government Considers COVID-19 Tracking of UK Mobile Phones

30th March, 2020 (17 Comments)

The UK Government appears to be considering an idea that could see them attempt to monitor the spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) by working with mobile network operators (e.g. Three UK, Vodafone, BT (EE) and O2) to track the location data of handsets (Smartphones etc.), but it’ll only be able to use “properly anonymised” data.

Security Vulnerabilities Strike 50 Models of Netgear Routers

7th March, 2020 (5 Comments)

Once again a mass of almost 50 different models of broadband wireless router(s), WiFi range extenders and gateways from Netgear, including some of their more recent kit (mostly affecting those within the D6000, R6000, R7000, R8000, PR2000, R9000 and XR500 families), have been hit by a string of new security vulnerabilities.

Data Breach at Virgin Media Exposes 900,000 UK Customers UPDATE

6th March, 2020 (21 Comments)

As if yesterday’s broadband outage wasn’t bad enough. UK ISP Virgin Media is now facing their second embarrassment of the week after last night revealing that the personal details belonging to 900,000 of their customers had been exposed by an “incorrectly configured” marketing database. Oh and somebody unknown accessed it.

Network Rail and C3UK Confirm WiFi Personal Data Breach

2nd March, 2020 (4 Comments)

The organisation responsible for maintaining 20,000 miles of railway (train tracks etc.), Network Rail, has confirmed that one of their free WiFi hotspot provider’s – C3UK – has suffered a personal data breach that leaked the email addresses and travel details of about 10,000 people online.