Items tagged with Privacy
Earlier this month, Clearview AI reached a settlement agreement with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) over the company’s usage of Illinois citizens' biometric data without their consent. Clearview AI sells its recently patented facial recognition technology to both private companies and government agencies...
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Facebook does not have the best track record when it comes to its privacy. However, there are a few things you can do as a user which can help protect your account and personal information from other users.
Social media apps have become the hub where people go to connect to both old and new friends alike. Being...
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Tech companies are often inconsistent in their stances towards privacy. Take Google for example; the web search and advertising giant is forcing better data collection and sharing transparency in the Google Play Store and recently joined other big tech firms to back legislation banning the use of geofence and keyword...
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Back in November, Meta announced that it was shutting down Facebook’s Face Recognition system and deleting over 1 billion people’s facial recognition templates. Only a month later, Clearview AI won a patent on its facial recognition algorithm, after ranking first in the US in the National Institute of Standards and...
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We’ve written in the past about both reverse location searches and reverse keyword searches and their uncertain legal status. Various US law enforcement agencies have been able to obtain warrants forcing companies such as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft to hand over user location and search history data.
A reverse...
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When you fill out an online form and hit the submit button, you're willingly transmitting your personal data to the website and any third parties you may have agreed to in the fine print. That's fair game. However, an alarming security report suggests your data is sometimes transmitted even if you change your mind and...
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Do you ever think the internet's forum for public discourse is a little too public? Maybe a conversation with your friends doesn't need prying eyes on it, but you want everyone involved in the conversation. No, not Reddit.
Twitter seems to be right there with you, which is why it has introduced Twitter Circle. A...
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Last week, Google introduced its new data safety section for the Play Store, which states that Android application developers have until July 20th to fully disclose their data collection, sharing, and safety practices. A new analysis of popular Android apps shows why this kind of data collection transparency is...
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Earlier this week, we covered leaked details regarding a government contractor that demonstrated its ability to track billions of phones all over the world by spying on CIA and NSA agents’ activity. Government contractors are able to provide surveillance services by purchasing user data from third parties. However, US...
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Microsoft will be retiring Internet Explorer once and for all on June 15. However, Microsoft won’t be out of the web browser game with this retirement. The company has shifted its focus to maintaining and developing the Chromium-based Edge browser. Microsoft rolls out new Edge features fairly often, though some of...
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Back in May of 2021, Google announced that privacy labels would be coming to the Google Play Store. Now, almost a year later, the company has announced that it will soon be rolling these labels out to the Play Store with requirements for application developers. The Google Play Store already features an expandable...
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There are a number of underground online marketplaces where stolen user data is illegally bought and sold by cybercriminals. Government authorities recently seized and shutdown RaidForums, one of the most notable hubs for such illicit transactions. Meanwhile, there is an entire aboveground industry that specializes in...
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Google is about to slam the ban hammer on third-party apps currently in the Play Store that use the Accessibility API for recording calls. The move will make it more difficult to record calls on an Android device.
While the latest Pixel smartphones offer the ability to record phone calls through its pre-installed...
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Back in 2015, Google introduced its Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project as an effort to speed up mobile web browsing. AMP uses special web components to load alternate versions of webpages on Google servers, rather than serving webpages from the servers of the corresponding website. AMP webpages first appeared in...
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If you use Cash App, some of your personal details may have been exposed. In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Cash App developer Block (formerly Square) revealed it suffered a data breach last December in which a former employee downloaded financial reports for millions of US...
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It looks like Android devices will soon receive a highly requested privacy feature. The Google Android app has long permitted users to auto-delete or manually delete their search history, but the provided time range has always been rather limited. Android users will now be able delete the last 15 minutes of their...
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Last week, we covered warnings issued by two U.S. state attorneys general alerting citizens to the potential stalking threat posed by Apple AirTags. Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro stated that “In the wrong hands, these tracking devices could lead to disaster.” These warnings came a week after Apple...
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Since their release, we have been covering the privacy and safety concerns surrounding Apple AirTags. AirTags are cheap and easy-to-use tracking devices that make use of Apple’s billion device Find My network. AirTags are intended to be used for keeping track of and recovering personal belongings, but concerns have...
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Unlike Vegas, what happens on your smartphone may not always stay on your smartphone. App tracking is key to the booming advertising business, and it's why your online habits tend to manifest in ads targeted to your interest. That business model isn't going away entirely, but it is evolving with Apple and now Google...
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Since it’s meteoric rise in early 2020, Zoom has repeatedly come under fire, whether for playing fast and loose with the definition of end-to-end encryption, sharing user data with Facebook undisclosed, installing a hidden web server on customers’ Macs, publishing then back-tracking a claim of 300 million daily active...
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Apple’s AirTag tracking device has garnered a bit of negative attention since its release as privacy and safety concerns have arisen. The device is intended to be attached to personal belongings that are liable to be lost, so that their rightful owners may find them again. Apple claims that it has received written...
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Apple has fessed up to a bug introduced in iOS 15 that, for some iPhone users, was not respecting their wishes to opt out of sharing voice recordings to strengthen Siri, the built-in digital assistant. Fortunately this privacy bug was stomped out with the release of iOS 15.2, so be sure your iPhone is updated (the...
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