Gadgetory

it's time to get worked up over search warrants I'm Bridget Carey and this is your cnet update the video service voodoo was hacked the old-fashioned way it's hard drives were stolen from the office after a break-in and the hard drives contain customer names email and postal addresses phone numbers birth dates and the last four digits of some credit cards voodoo has reset all passwords and sent out a warning email to users the company says passwords were encrypted but if you ever get a notification about your information being stolen from a website or service don't just shrug it off change your password on any site that also uses the same sign in information thieves will use your password and email combo on dozens of sites to see if it unlocks access to anything else as Tax Day approaches here's some comforting news for my fellow Americans the Internal Revenue Service doesn't believe it needs a search warrant before reading your email internal IRS documents state that Americans enjoy generally no privacy in their email facebook chats Twitter direct messages and similar online communications so the IRS can just go after these documents without going to a judge for a search warrant of course that goes against what many lawmakers have argued that your email is protected by the same Fourth Amendment privacy as your hard drive or physical letter that's in your desk a federal appeals court in 2010 ruled that Americans do have expectations of privacy in email and it might make you feel better to know that email providers like Google Microsoft Yahoo and Facebook do expect warrants for email access these IRS guidelines were in a handbook obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and that group is speaking out against this guideline asking the IRS to amend its policies t-mobile will be selling the iphone on Friday and it's running a promotion to learn new customers in with a trade-in program bring in an iPhone 4 or 4s and customers get an iphone 5 without any down payment normally tmobile charges a hundred dollars to walk out with the iPhone 5 and then customers pay off the rest of the phone in monthly installments if the tradin is worth more than a hundred bucks t-mobile could even lower monthly payments from say twenty dollars a month to fifteen dollars a month it's all part of t-mobile's new system where you don't sign up for a two-year contract you just have to pay off the cost of the phone over two years and you can leave t-mobile any time just as long as you paid off that phone of course if you have the time and energy to sell it on a site like ebay you'll get more money for a used iphone than you would with a trade-in program that's your tech news update you can find more details on our show blog sina com / update from our studios in New York I'm Bridget Carey