In the wake of the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by scores of President Trump’s supporters, a lone researcher began an effort to catalogue the posts of social media users across Parler, a platform founded to provide conservative users a safe haven for uninhibited “free speech” — but which ultimately devolved into a hotbed Read more about Every Deleted Parler Post, Many With Users’ Location Data, Has Been Archived. Parler goes down. Still can’t export your Whatsapp history.[…]

Engineers at Cloudflare and Apple say they’ve developed a new internet protocol that will shore up one of the biggest holes in internet privacy that many don’t know even exists. Dubbed Oblivious DNS-over-HTTPS, or ODoH for short, the new protocol makes it far more difficult for internet providers to know which websites you visit. But Read more about ODoH: Cloudflare and Apple design a new privacy-friendly internet protocol for DNS[…]

Since Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014, users have wondered and worried about how much data would flow between the two platforms. Many of them experienced a rude awakening this week, as a new in-app notification raises awareness about a step WhatsApp actually took to share more with Facebook back in 2016. On Monday, WhatsApp updated Read more about WhatsApp Has Shared Your Data With Facebook since 2016, actually.[…]

WhatsApp users must agree to share their personal information with Facebook if they want to continue using the messaging service from next month, according to new terms and conditions. “As part of the Facebook Companies, WhatsApp receives information from, and shares information with, the other Facebook Companies,” its privacy policy, updated this week, stated. “We Read more about If you’re a WhatsApp user, you’ll have to share your personal data with Facebook from next month – and no, you can’t opt out this time[…]

With a nearly 80 percent uptake among the country’s population, Singapore’s TraceTogether app is one of the best examples of what a successful centralized contact tracing effort can look like as countries across the world struggle to contain the coronavirus pandemic. To date, more than 4.2 million people in Singapore have download the app or Read more about Singapore police can access now data from the country’s contract tracing app[…]

The combine harvester, a staple of farmers’ fields since the late 1800s, does much more these days than just vacuum up corn, soybeans and other crops. It also beams back reams of data to its manufacturer. GPS records the combine’s precise path through the field. Sensors tally the number of crops gathered per acre and Read more about Access To Big Data Turns Farm Machine Makers Into Tech Firms[…]

Firefox 85, scheduled to be released next month, in January 2021, will ship with a feature named Network Partitioning as a new form of anti-tracking protection. The feature is based on “Client-Side Storage Partitioning,” a new standard currently being developed by the World Wide Web Consortium’s Privacy Community Group. “Network Partitioning is highly technical, but Read more about Firefox to ship ‘network partitioning’ as a new anti-tracking defense[…]

The slightly creepy “Productivity Score” may not be all that’s in store for Microsoft 365 users, judging by a trawl of Redmond’s patents. One that has popped up recently concerns a “Meeting Insight Computing System“, spotted first by GeekWire, created to give meetings a quality score with a view to improving upcoming get-togethers. It all Read more about As if Productivity Score wasn’t creepy enough, Microsoft has patented tech for ‘meeting quality monitoring devices’ – PS is being defanged though[…]

Microsoft’s Productivity Score has put in a public appearance in Microsoft 365 and attracted the ire of privacy campaigners and activists. The Register had already noted the vaguely creepy-sounding technology back in May. The goal of it is to use telemetry captured by the Windows behemoth to track the productivity of an organisation through metrics Read more about Privacy campaigner flags concerns about Microsoft’s creepy Productivity Score now in 365[…]

The IRS was able to query a database of location data quietly harvested from ordinary smartphone apps over 10,000 times, according to a copy of the contract between IRS and the data provider obtained by Motherboard. The document provides more insight into what exactly the IRS wanted to do with a tool purchased from Venntel, Read more about IRS contracted to Search Warrantless Location Database Over 10,000 Times[…]