Rob Waugh

A Chicago artist has created a cheap, effective way for the public to fight back against the growing profusion of security cameras - rubber masks which make the devices unable to identify people by making everyone look the same.

High-end Samsung phones could soon ship with a biometric scanner which puts fingerprint-swipe buttons (as seen in both Samsung and Apple’s flagship smartphones) in the shade, security-wise - an iris scanner.

Dr Joseph Atick, a pioneer in biometrics, who co-founded early facial recognition companies such as Visionics, now fears that large companies could use new versions of his technologies for electronic surveillance,- and warned of “unexpected consequences” unless the industry changed its habits.

Google, Facebook, Twitter and AOL have joined forces to stamp out fake tech support services where customers are fooled into calling bogus technical support lines, where they are encouraged, not to fix their comptuer, but to install malware - or give away details crucial for identity theft.

Many cybercriminals are not exactly Bond villain material - in fact, some are criminals with a level of weapons-grade stupidity that Bond villains wouldn't even employ as henchmen.

Technology giants with large ad networks need to do more to protect consumers from hackers infiltrating their advertising networks to deliver malicious adverts - or even point users to sites that serve malware, the U.S. Senate has warned.

The FBI is gearing up for a major crackdown on cybercrime, and says that arrests of major criminals will follow in weeks. Criminals in foreign countries will not be safe, a top FBI official said.

A Gartner survey has found that one in four employees who bring their own smartphones and tablets to work suffered a security issue in the past year - and spent an hour per day on their BYOD devices.

Phil Zimmermann invented the most widely used system of email encryption in the world - and says that Fortune 100 companies are queuing up for his encrypted Blackphone, which allows "whispered" conversations, anywhere.