Troy Hunt, web security expert and creator of the website Have I Been Pwned (HIBP), wrote a blog post announcing his partnerships with Firefox and 1Password. For those unfamiliar with the site, Have I Been Pwned allows you to search across multiple data breaches to see if your email address has been compromised. The service is especially handy now that data breaches are becoming a daily occurrence. Hunt writes: Last November, there was much press about Mozilla integrating HIBP into Firefox. I was a bit surprised at the time as it was nothing more than their Breach Alerts feature which simply highlighted if the site being visited had previously been in a data breach (it draws this from the freely accessible breach API on HIBP). But the press picked up on some signals which indicated that in the long term, we had bigger plans than that and the whole thing got a heap of very positive attention. I ended up fielding a heap of media calls just on that one little feature - people loved the idea of HIBP in Firefox, even in a very simple form. As it turns out, we had much bigger plans and that's what I'm sharing here today. Over the coming weeks, Mozilla will begin trialling integration between HIBP and Firefox to make breach data searchable via a new tool called "Firefox Monitor." Here's what Hunt has to say about 1Password: As of now, you can search HIBP from directly within 1Password via the Watchtower feature in the web version of the product. This helps Watchtower become "mission control" for accounts and introduces the "Breach Report" feature. If you're a 1Password user you can use this feature right now, just head on over to the 1Password login page.

Google Earth's new Measure tool is rolling out to Android and Chrome devices that will let you measure the distance and area of things on the map. An iOS version is said to be "coming soon." The Verge reports: With the tool, users can measure the distance between two points or the surface area of a selected chunk of the map. (Now you can finally find out how far your house is from the North Pole.) Users aren't limited to simple squares, either. The Measure tool will let you select the borders of an area so it's easier to measure irregularly shaped objects like parks, buildings, or even states and countries.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Trump administration is looking to widen its trade war with China by restricting Chinese access to U.S. technology, according to reports from the Wall Street Journal and Reuters. "The Treasury Department is crafting rules that would block firms with at least 25 percent Chinese ownership from buying companies involved in what the White House calls 'industrially significant technology,'" the Wall Street Journal says. A separate proposal would institute beefed-up export controls preventing Chinese companies from buying these technologies from U.S. firms. The policies could be announced as soon as this week, the Journal says. In the past, the Trump administration has blocked multiple attempts by Chinese companies to buy U.S. semiconductor firms and imposed a sweeping export ban on Chinese smartphone maker ZTE after ZTE was caught selling U.S. technology to Iran and North Korea -- though the administration recently lifted the ban.

Tick bites can cause all sorts of nasty afflictions. And if you're bitten by a Lone Star tick, here's one more to add to the list: a red meat allergy. NPR reports: About 10 years ago, Dr. Scott Commins, an allergist and associate professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, was among the first physicians to identify the allergy in patients with tick bites. Back then, there were just a few dozen known cases. That has increased dramatically. "We're confident the number is over 5,000 [cases], and that's in the U.S. alone," Commins says. There are also cases in Sweden, Germany and Australia -- likely linked to other species of ticks. In the U.S., the Lone Star tick has expanded its range beyond the Southeast, and there are documented cases of alpha gal meat allergies farther north -- including New York, Maine and Minnesota. "The range of the tick is expanding," says Commins. So is awareness about the red meat allergy it can cause. "We have a blood test, and the word is getting out."

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved the first prescription drug derived from the marijuana plant, as a treatment for rare forms of epilepsy that primarily afflict children. From a report: The FDA said Monday that it cleared GW Pharmaceuticals's Epidiolex, also known as cannabidiol, to reduce seizures associated with forms of epilepsy known as Lennox-Gastaut syndrome and Dravet syndrome, in patients 2 years of age and older. Cannabidiol is derived from the cannabis plant, also known as marijuana. U.K.-based GW Pharmaceuticals says the solution, taken by mouth, is made from a proprietary strain of cannabis designed to maximize a therapeutic component while minimizing components that produce euphoria. GW Pharmaceuticals grows the plants in the U.K.

The FDA said Monday that the drug doesn't cause the high that comes from the chemical tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, which is the main psychoactive component of marijuana. FDA officials also said the drug doesn't appear to have abuse potential, citing minimal reports of euphoria in patients who took the drug in clinical studies. Further reading: StatNews, The Guardian, and FDA.

News outlet The Intercept on Monday published a report that reveals eight AT&T-owned locations: two in California, one in Washington, another in Washington, D.C., one in New York, one in Texas, one in Illinois, and one in Georgia, that serve as backbone or "peering" facilities that the NSA has secretly been using for eavesdropping purposes. Spokespeople of AT&T, which refers to the aforementioned peering sites as "Service Node Routing Complexes", and NSA, could neither confirm or deny the report's findings. From the report: The NSA considers AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners and has lauded the company's "extreme willingness to help." It is a collaboration that dates back decades. Little known, however, is that its scope is not restricted to AT&T's customers. According to the NSA's documents, it values AT&T not only because it "has access to information that transits the nation," but also because it maintains unique relationships with other phone and internet providers. The NSA exploits these relationships for surveillance purposes, commandeering AT&T's massive infrastructure and using it as a platform to covertly tap into communications processed by other companies.

[...] While network operators would usually prefer to send data through their own networks, often a more direct and cost-efficient path is provided by other providers' infrastructure. If one network in a specific area of the country is overloaded with data traffic, another operator with capacity to spare can sell or exchange bandwidth, reducing the strain on the congested region. This exchange of traffic is called "peering" and is an essential feature of the internet.

Because of AT&T's position as one of the U.S.'s leading telecommunications companies, it has a large network that is frequently used by other providers to transport their customers' data. Companies that "peer" with AT&T include the American telecommunications giants Sprint, Cogent Communications, and Level 3, as well as foreign companies such as Sweden's Telia, India's Tata Communications, Italy's Telecom Italia, and Germany's Deutsche Telekom.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Privacy and government affairs officers from a number of the largest tech companies plan to convene in San Francisco on Wednesday to discuss how to tackle growing questions and concerns about consumer privacy online. The Information Technology Industry Council, a Washington trade group that represents major tech companies, organized an all-day meeting to jump-start the conversations. Members include Facebook, Google, Apple, Salesforce, IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Qualcomm, Samsung, Dropbox, and others. ITI expects the meeting to be attended by companies across the industry's sectors, including hardware, software and device makers -- but declined to say which companies would be there.

As if seeing a popular movie with MoviePass -- where you can't reserve tickets in advance -- wasn't stressful enough, it's about to get more expensive, too. From a report: The movie-ticket subscription service, which charges $9.95 per month to see a movie a day in the US, will start surge pricing on popular movies next month, Business Insider reported. MoviePass will charge subscribers $2 or more to see titles that the app decides are very popular with its members beginning in July, Mitch Lowe, MoviePass's CEO, told the publication. He was vague on the details. "At certain times for certain films -- on opening weekend -- there could be an additional charge for films," Lowe said, calling the forthcoming policy "high-demand" pricing. But if you've paid for a year's subscription to MoviePass upfront, don't worry: Lowe said these subscribers would not be subjected to the new pricing policy. MoviePass will begin rolling out two other previously announced features, like the option to upgrade to premium movie formats such 3D and IMAX, or bring a friend to the movies, by August, Lowe added.