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For Internet Privacy, VPNs Are an Imperfect Shield

When Congress voted to  overturn online privacy rules  last week, Steve Wilmot, a Los Angeles songwriter, reacted like many worried consumers: He looked into signing up for a technology service known as a virtual private network, or VPN. The online privacy rules, which were set to go into effect this year and which  President Trump fully repealed on Monday , would have required broadband providers like Comcast and Charter to get permission from customers before selling their browsing history to advertisers. Without restrictions, the companies can track and sell people’s information with greater ease. A VPN was a natural service to consider in response. That’s because the technology creates a virtual tunnel that shields your browsing information from your internet service provider. So Mr. Wilmot researched VPNs in hopes of protecting his own browsing data. “I don’t really want anybody to have any sort of access to what I’m looking at,” he said. “If anyone is going t...
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This app will file your taxes for you

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With the 2017  tax filing deadline  fast approaching, the Taxfyle app wants to simplify the process -- and take some of the stress away. The startup, which was founded in 2015, matches customers with a licensed tax professional who files a return in an average of 45 minutes. To start, users answer a short series of questions, such as whether they own a home or have dependents. From there, customers receive a guaranteed quote and can upload documents directly to the app. The tax professional can ask followup questions through the app's encrypted chat function and notify customers when the tax return has been filed and accepted. "There hasn't been much disruption in the accounting and tax space for quite a while," cofounder and CEO Richard Lavina told CNNTech. "We wanted to build something different." Prices start at $39, and go up based on the complexity of a customer's taxes. For example, someone who earned income in several states and owns m...
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This former Uber exec wants to bring jobs to Kansas

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Brian McClendon never thought about diving into politics -- until Donald Trump won the election. McClendon, then Uber's VP of maps and business platform, initially believed "nobody could possibly elect this guy." The polls, he said, seemed to back up that belief. Like much of Silicon Valley, he is still reeling from the shock. "I have not been sleeping well since November 8," he told CNNTech. That first week after Trump's victory, McClendon told Uber CEO Travis Kalanick he planned to leave the company to "do something" in response to the election. "He understood," McClendon says, when asked about Kalanick's reaction. "I don't want to put anyone else's political beliefs out there, but he understood." Last week, McClendon, 52, officially left his executive job at Uber to explore getting into politics in his home state of Kansas. McClendon has stayed tight-lipped on the details, but he tells CNNTech one of...
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WikiLeaks' CIA hacking claims: How worried should you be?

WikiLeaks has set off an avalanche of alarming headlines with its  publication  of purported CIA documents. Allegations that the U.S. agency has hacked into smartphones, laptops, and internet-connected TVs to spy on people around the world are enough to make anyone paranoid. But security experts are urging tech consumers to keep calm and take a few simple precautions. The document dump reveals nothing terribly new or surprising in technical terms, the experts say. Mobile spy tools have been around for years. "That the CIA hacks is like saying water is wet -- it's them doing their job," said Nicholas Weaver, senior researcher with the International Computer Science Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. The WikiLeaks publication serves as a reminder that anyone with a smartphone or another device connected to the internet is vulnerable to hacking. Related: Your data is not safe. Here's how to lock it down "No computer system is impenet...
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Samsung unveils first new flagship phones since exploding phone debacle

Say goodbye to the Galaxy's home button and hello to an infinity display. Samsung   ( SSNLF )  unveiled the Galaxy S8 and S8+ at an event in New York on Wednesday. The new phone displays are bigger than the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge and they have curved screens that flow onto the sides. For the first time on a Samsung phone, the physical home button is removed entirely. (This is already the case on most other Android devices.) The S8 will be the first phone to feature  Bixby,  Samsung's new AI assistant. Despite a crowded voice assistant market, Samsung insists Bixby is "fundamentally" different from competitors like  Apple's   ( AAPL ,  Tech30 )  Siri and  Amazon's   ( AMZN ,  Tech30 )  Alexa. It remains to be seen how this will play out. Samsung touts the assistant as being able to "see, remind and recommend," but much of this functionality is already available with rival assistants. One potentially interesting feature i...
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Apple sued by regulator over refusal to service 'bricked' iPhones

Australia's consumer watchdog is taking Apple to court. The regulator is accusing the U.S. tech giant of violating consumers' rights by refusing to service certain iPhones and iPads that were disabled by a software update. Some iPad and iPhone users who used third parties to fix broken screens later received an error message after downloading an Apple software update, rendering their devices unusable, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Through the software update, Apple effectively "bricked" devices repaired by third parties and then "refused to look at or service" them, the commission said, calling it a breach of Australian consumer law. Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. After downloading the software update and connecting their iPhone or iPad to a computer, hundreds of users got an "error 53" message saying that "the device could not be restored, and the device had stopp...
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