Two new bills target smartphone location tracking

Federal lawmakers last week proposed two separate bills that would regulate the collection and use of location data from smartphones and other mobile devices. The Location Privacy Protection Act of 2011, introduced Friday by Sens. Al Franken, D-Minn. and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., would require companies to obtain permission before collecting mobile users' location data and sharing it with third parties. The bill is similar to the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act, introduced Wednesday to create guidelines for when and how geolocation information can be accessed and used by government agencies, commercial entities and private citizens. The bills were born out of controversial revelations in April that Apple was storing user's location data.

More in News

Privacy-bolstering "Apps Act" introduced in House

The bill would provide consumers nationwide with similar protections already enforced by a California law.

Microsoft readies permanent fix for Internet Explorer bug used in energy attacks

Microsoft is prepping a whopper of a security update that will close 33 vulnerabilities, likely including an Internet Explorer (IE) flaw that has been used in targeted website attacks against the U.S. government.

Weakness in Adobe ColdFusion allowed court hackers access to 160K SSNs

Up to 160,000 Social Security numbers and one million driver's license numbers may have been accessed by intruders.