Discord has begun requiring some users in the United Kingdom and Australia to verify their age through a facial scan before being permitted to access sensitive content. The chat app’s new process has been described as an “experiment,” and comes in response to laws passed in those countries that place guardrails on youth access to Read more about Discord Wants Your Face: Begins Testing Facial Scans for Age Verification[…]
LG TVs will soon leverage an AI model built for showing advertisements that more closely align with viewers’ personal beliefs and emotions. The company plans to incorporate a partner company’s AI tech into its TV software in order to interpret psychological factors impacting a viewer, such as personal interests, personality traits, and lifestyle choices. The Read more about Your TV is watching you better: LG TVs’ integrated ads get more personal with tech that analyzes viewer emotions[…]
In a brief statement citing a court order in Belgium but providing no other details, Cisco says that its OpenDNS service is no longer available to users in Belgium. Cisco’s withdrawal is almost certainly linked to an IPTV piracy blocking order obtained by DAZN; itt requires OpenDNS, Cloudflare and Google to block over 100 pirate Read more about OpenDNS Quits Belgium Under Threat of Piracy Blocks or Fines of €100K Per Day after having quit France[…]
Cloud-based web application platform Vercel is among the latest companies to find their servers blocked in Spain due to LaLiga’s ongoing IPTV anti-piracy campaign. In a statement, Vercel’s CEO and the company’s principal engineer slam “indiscriminate” blocking as an “unaccountable form of internet censorship” that has prevented legitimate customers from conducting their daily business. Since Read more about LaLiga Piracy Blocks Randomly Take Down huge innocent segments of internet with no recourse or warning, slammed as “Unaccountable Internet Censorship”[…]
Apple Inc. will begin analyzing data on customers’ devices in a bid to improve its artificial intelligence platform, a move designed to safeguard user information while still helping it catch up with AI rivals. Today, Apple typically trains AI models using synthetic data — information that’s meant to mimic real-world inputs without any personal details. Read more about Apple to Spy on User Emails and other Data on Devices to Bolster AI Technology[…]
The European Commission has started issuing burner phones and stripped-down laptops to staff visiting the U.S. over concerns that the treatment of visitors to the country has become a security risk, according to a new report from the Financial Times. And it’s just the latest news that America’s slide into fascism under Donald Trump is Read more about EU gives burner phones and laptops on visits to U.S. (as well as they have been doing for China)[…]
A court has blocked a British government attempt to keep secret a legal case over its demand to access Apple Inc. user data in a victory for privacy advocates. The UK Investigatory Powers Tribunal, a special court that handles cases related to government surveillance, said the authorities’ efforts were a “fundamental interference with the principle Read more about UK Effort to Keep Apple Encryption Fight Secret Is Blocked[…]
tl;dr – Meta did a VW by using a special version of their AI which was optimised to score higher on the most important metric for AI performance. Over the weekend, Meta dropped two new Llama 4 models: a smaller model named Scout, and Maverick, a mid-size model that the company claims can beat GPT-4o Read more about Meta gets caught gaming AI benchmarks with Llama 4[…]
The EU has shared its plans to ostensibly keep the continent’s denizens secure – and among the pages of bureaucratese are a few worrying sections that indicate the political union wants to backdoor encryption by 2026, or even sooner. While the superstate has made noises about backdooring encryption before, the ProtectEU plan [PDF], launched on Read more about EU: These are scary times – let’s backdoor encryption and make everyone unsafe![…]
T-Mobile sells a little-known GPS service called SyncUP, which allows users who are parents to monitor the locations of their children. This week, an apparent glitch in the service’s system obscured the locations of users’ own children while sending them detailed information and the locations of other, random children. 404 Media first reported on the Read more about T-Mobile SyncUP Bug Reveals Names, Images, and Locations of Random Children[…]
A tenured computer security professor at Indiana University and his university-employed wife have not been seen publicly since federal agents raided their homes late last week. On Friday, the FBI with help from the cops searched two properties in Bloomington and Carmel, Indiana, belonging to Xiaofeng Wang, a professor at the Indiana Luddy School of Read more about Indiana security prof and wife vanish after FBI raid[…]
Microsoft is no longer playing around when it comes to requiring every Windows 11 device be set up with an internet-connected account. In its latest Windows 11 Insider Preview, the company says it will take out a well-known bypass script that let end users skip the requirement of connecting to the internet and logging in Read more about Windows 11 is closing a loophole that let you skip making a Microsoft account[…]
[…]Your TV wants your data The TV business traditionally included three distinct entities. There’s the hardware, namely the TV itself; the entertainment, like movies and shows; and the ads, usually just commercials that interrupt your movies and shows. In the streaming era, tech companies want to control all three, a setup also known as vertical Read more about Your TV is watching you watch and selling that data[…]
A few weeks ago, the UK’s regional and national daily news titles ran similar front covers, exhorting the government there to “Make it Fair”. The campaign Web site explained: Tech companies use creative content, such as news articles, books, music, film, photography, visual art, and all kinds of creative work, to train their generative AI Read more about Yes, let’s “Make it Fair” – by recognising that copyright has failed to reward creators properly[…]
HP Inc. has settled a class action lawsuit in which it was accused of unlawfully blocking customers from using third-party toner cartridges – a practice that left some with useless printers – but won’t pay a cent to make the case go away. One of the named plaintiffs in the case is called Mobile Emergency Read more about HP settles lawsuit for $0 after bricking printers that don’t use HP ink[…]
In a moment of clarity after initially moving forward a deeply flawed piece of legislation, the French National Assembly has done the right thing: it rejected a dangerous proposal that would have gutted end-to-end encryption in the name of fighting drug trafficking. Despite heavy pressure from the Interior Ministry, lawmakers voted Thursday night (article in Read more about A Win for human rights: France Rejects Backdoor Mandate[…]
China’s Cyberspace Administration and Ministry of Public Security has outlawed the use of facial recognition without consent. The two orgs last Friday published new rules on facial recognition and an explainer that spell out how orgs that want to use facial recognition must first conduct a “personal information protection impact assessment” that considers whether using Read more about China bans facial recognition without consent and in all public places. And it needs to be encrypted.[…]
23andMe has capped off a challenging few years by filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy today. Given the uncertainty around the future of the DNA testing company and what will happen to all of the genetic data it has collected, now is a critical time for customers to protect their privacy. California Attorney General Rob Bonta Read more about 23andMe files for bankruptcy: How to delete your data before it’s sold off[…]
Even by Amazon standards, this is extraordinarily sleazy: starting March 28, each Amazon Echo device will cease processing audio on-device and instead upload all the audio it captures to Amazon’s cloud for processing, even if you have previously opted out of cloud-based processing: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/03/everything-you-say-to-your-echo-will-be-sent-to-amazon-starting-on-march-28/ It’s easy to flap your hands at this bit of thievery Read more about Amazon annihilates Alexa privacy settings, turns on continuous, nonconsensual audio uploading[…]
Walled Culture has been following closely Italy’s poorly-designed Piracy Shield system. Back in December we reported how copyright companies used their access to the Piracy Shield system to order Italian Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to all of Google Drive for the entire country, and how malicious actors could similarly use that unchecked Read more about Massive expansion of Italy’s Piracy Shield underway despite growing criticism of its flaws and EU illegality[…]
A Moscow-based disinformation network named “Pravda” — the Russian word for “truth” — is pursuing an ambitious strategy by deliberately infiltrating the retrieved data of artificial intelligence chatbots, publishing false claims and propaganda for the purpose of affecting the responses of AI models on topics in the news rather than by targeting human readers, NewsGuard Read more about A well-funded Moscow-based global ‘news’ network has infected Western artificial intelligence tools worldwide with Russian propaganda[…]
Fabled RepairTuber and right to repair crusader Louis Rossmann has shared a new video encapsulating his surprise, and disappointment, that Brother has morphed into an “anti-consumer printer company.” More information about Brother’s embrace of the dark side are shared on Rossmann’s wiki, with the major two issues being new firmware disabling third party toner, and Read more about Brother locking down third-party printer ink cartridges via forced firmware updates, removing older firmware versions from support portals[…]
Those were wild times, when engineers pitted their wits against one another in the spirit of Steve Wozniack and SSAFE. That era came to a close – but not because someone finally figured out how to make data that you couldn’t copy. Rather, it ended because an unholy coalition of entertainment and tech industry lobbyists Read more about US Tariffs for the EU? Then let’s get rid of the anti competitive rules the US rammed down the throat of the EU for tariff free trade[…]
Aside from reporting it on Cloudflare’s forum, there appears to be little users can do, and the company doesn’t seem to be paying attention. Cloudflare is one of the giants of content distribution network. As well as providing fast local caches of busy websites, it also attempts to block bot networks and DDoS attacks by Read more about Cloudflare blocking Pale Moon and other alternative browser engines[…]
process called Android System SafetyCore – which arrived in a recent update for devices running Android 9 and later. It scans a user’s photo library for explicit images and displays content warnings before viewing them. Google says “the classification of content runs exclusively on your device and the results aren’t shared with Google.” Naturally, it will Read more about How to stop Android from scanning your phone pictures for content and interpreting them[…]