Not long ago, both Google and Apple found themselves in hot water when it came to light that both companies had been making use of third-party partners to review Siri recordings.

As the companies explained at the time, their goal was to make their voice recognition software more efficient and more effective.

Apple has partnered with Goldman Sachs and their long-awaited "Apple Card" begins rolling out in limited fashion. The card becomes available to all iPhone owners in the United States toward the end of August.

According to CEO Tim Cook, a random selection of people who signed up to be notified about the Apple Card are getting an early-access sneak peek.

If you own an iPhone, be aware that a new iMessage vulnerability has been recently found and patched by Apple. This was part of the iOS 12.4 update.

The flaw allowed hackers to access and read the contents of files stored on iOS devices remotely.

Let's take a little time to talk about the vast numbers of smart devices in use around the world. You probably have several in your home or office. Smart devices need operating systems, just like your phone and your PC. Of course, mobile device operating systems must be much smaller and more compact.

If you own an Android device, there's a new threat to be at least moderately concerned about.  It takes the form of a new ransomware family that spreads from one victim to the next with text messages that contain poisoned links to every contact on an infected device.

Do you have an Android device?  Are you running Android Nougat, Oreo, or Pie (versions 7x, 8x, or 9x)?  Do you play games on your phone?

If you answered yes to those questions, you may have a problem. It is a bigger problem given that there are more than a billion devices currently in service running one of those operating systems.

Do you use LibreOffice? It's an open source clone that's functionally similar to Microsoft Office that has grown quite popular over the years. It is available for Windows, macOS and Linux systems.

While open-source software solutions generally have the reputation of being safer and more secure, they're not immune to vulnerabilities.

We're talking about the result of a massive five billion dollar fine over violations surrounding the Cambridge Analytica scandal. While the staggering size of the fine made all the headlines, there's more to the company's agreement than just several billion dollars.

Another week, another massive data breach.

In this case, Capital One was the target when an unknown individual gained access to the company's servers.

The breach was detected by an independent security researcher, who contacted Capital One on July 19th.

Recently, researchers from Boston University published a paper called "Tracking Anonymized Bluetooth Devices". The paper detailed a flaw in the ubiquitous Bluetooth communication protocol that could expose device users to tracking and even leak their IDs. As explained in the paper, many Bluetooth devices announce their presence by using their MAC addresses as the basis to generate a random number in order to prevent long-term tracking.