Rare earth magnets have surprising and useful properties. They generate quite powerful fields for the magnets' small size, and these are "hard" fields that are almost unaffected by other fields nearby.

Permanent magnets have disadvantages, too. "You can't turn them off," Helander said, which means they can pull in anything they can attract within range.

Microsoft researchers figured out how an algorithm that generated new, unique domains for Necurs' infrastructure operated and was able to correctly guess six million domain names that would be generated over a 25-month period, it said. These domains were then reported to registrars so they could be promptly blocked.

The participants, a representative sample of the US population, watched a 3-minute video detailing both the commercial value of genomic data and genetic privacy issues. This included a statement that consumer genetic testing firm 23andMe sells access to its database to pharmaceutical firms for $140 per individual’s data.

While 38 per cent said they wouldn’t share their data, 50 per cent said they would if they were paid, and 12 per cent said they would do it for free.

Sensor Tower, a popular analytics platform for tech developers and investors, has been secretly collecting data from millions of people who have installed popular VPN and ad-blocking apps for Android and iOS, a BuzzFeed News investigation has found. These apps, which don’t disclose their connection to the company or reveal that they feed user data to Sensor Tower’s products, have more than 35 million downloads.

Apple and Google restrict root certificate privileges due to the security risk to users. Sensor Tower’s apps bypass the restrictions by prompting users to install a certificate through an external website after an app is downloaded.

Brave's decision comes as online advertisers and analytics firms are moving away from tracking users via cookies to using fingerprints.

For non-technical users or readers who are not familiar with the term, user fingerprints are a collection of technical details about a user and their browser. They include a large spectrum of data, such as platform details and Web API measurements.

Despite two previous postponements, four months’ notice, dozens of letters, and a protest outside its headquarters, on Monday this week ICANN refused to say whether it will consider the broader public interest in its decision, or apply the same criteria it used last time the registry changed ownership.

It’s no coincidence that the primary criticism leveled at ICANN since its inception in 1998 is that it is – and remains – largely unaccountable. It makes decisions of global import and holds itself up as a model of modern “multistakeholder” decision-making, where everyone impacted has a say, but in reality the organization never reveals internal deliberations and it goes to great lengths to shield its decisions from scrutiny.

In a case lodged with the Federal Court today, the Australian Information Commissioner, Angelene Falk, accused Facebook of exposing the data of 311,127 Australians between March 2014 and May 2015 through the This Is Your Digital Life app, a quiz that harvested the data of 87 million users worldwide.

The suit seeks a maximum penalty of AU$1.7m (£870,000) per person, meaning Facebook faces a AU$529bn (£266bn) fine if the court awarded the max civil penalty for each of the 311k+ people affected.

The professor found evidence that Chrome, Firefox, and Safari all tagged telemetry data with identifiers that were linked to each browser instance. These identifiers allowed Google, Mozilla, and Apple to track users across browser restarts, but also across browser reinstalls.

The professor said that Edge collected the hardware UUID of the user's computer, an identifier that cannot be easily changed or deleted without altering a computer's hardware.

Similarly, Prof. Leith also found that Yandex transmitted a hash of the hardware serial number and MAC address to its backend servers.

A mechanical engineer-turned-tech entrepreneur has plans to, well, empower people around the world to build their own 100-megawatt nuclear power reactors.

Smaller reactors like this one have purported benefits in safety and regulatory time, but that’s only true if the rigorous testing required of a nuclear solution ends up in their favor, and that itself will still take time.

Christen Dubois, Director and Associate General Counsel at Facebook, said today that Facebook engineers tracked down 45 suspicious Facebook lookalike domains registered through Namecheap, which had the owners' details hidden through the company's WhoisGuard side-service.

Since early 2019, Facebook's legal department has been filing lawsuits left and right against various third-parties abusing its platform.