The European Parliament has voted by a significant margin to streamline its systems for managing everything from travel to border security by amassing an enormous information database that will include biometric data and facial images—an issue that has raised significant alarm among privacy advocates. This system, called the Common Identity Repository (CIR), streamlines a number Read more about EU Votes to Amass a Giant Centralised Database of Biometric Data with 350m people in it[…]

An Amazon.com Inc. team auditing Alexa users’ commands has access to location data and can, in some cases, easily find a customer’s home address, according to five employees familiar with the program. The team, spread across three continents, transcribes, annotates and analyzes a portion of the voice recordings picked up by Alexa. The program, whose Read more about Is Alexa Listening? Amazon Employees Can Access Home Addresses, telephone numbers, contacts[…]

“Free apps marketed to people with depression or who want to quit smoking are hemorrhaging user data to third parties like Facebook and Google — but often don’t admit it in their privacy policies, a new study reports…” writes The Verge. “You don’t have to be a user of Facebook’s or Google’s services for them Read more about ‘They’re Basically Lying’ – (Mental) Health Apps Caught Secretly Sharing Data[…]

Websites met informatie over gevoelige onderwerpen lappen de privacywet massaal aan hun laars. Dat zegt de Consumentenbond. Veel sites plaatsen zonder toestemming cookies van advertentienetwerken, waardoor die zeer persoonlijke informatie over de bezoekers in handen krijgen. Onderzoekers van de Consumentenbond zochten in maart en april op onderwerpen binnen de categorieën geloof, jeugd, medisch en geaardheid. Read more about Personal information on sites about faith, illness, sexual orientation, addiction, schools in NL is directly passed on to advertisers without GDPR consent.[…]

Smart cities are designed to make life easier for their residents: better traffic management by clearing routes, making sure the public transport is running on time and having cameras keeping a watchful eye from above. But what happens when that data leaks? One such database was open for weeks for anyone to look inside. Security Read more about Security lapse exposed a Chinese smart city surveillance system[…]

On Thursday, at just about the same time as the most highly anticipated government document of the decade was released in Washington D.C., Facebook updated a month-old blog post to note that actually a security incident impacted “millions” of Instagram users and not “tens of thousands” as they said at first. Last month, Facebook announced Read more about Facebook uploaded the contacts of 1.5m people without permission[…]

The Information Commissioner’s Office has fined commercial pregnancy and parenting club Bounty some £400,000 for illegally sharing personal details of more than 14 million people. The organisation, which dishes out advice to expectant and inexperienced parents, has faced criticism over the tactics it uses to sign up new members and was the subject of a Read more about Pregnancy and parenting club Bounty fined £400,000 for shady data sharing practices of more than 14 million people[…]

Sonos stands accused of seeking to obtain “excessive” amounts of personal data without valid consent in a complaint filed with the UK’s data watchdog. The complaint, lodged by tech lawyer George Gardiner in a personal capacity, challenges the Sonos privacy policy’s compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation and the UK’s implementation of that law. Read more about Sonos finally blasted in complaint to UK privacy watchdog – lets hope they do something with it[…]

Seven people, described as having worked in Amazon’s voice review program, told Bloomberg that they sometimes listen to as many as 1,000 recordings per shift, and that the recordings are associated with the customer’s first name, their device’s serial number, and an account number. Among other clips, these employees and contractors said they’ve reviewed recordings Read more about A Team At Amazon Is Listening To Recordings Captured By Alexa[…]

While the ethics around data collection and consumer privacy have been questioned for years, it wasn’t until Facebook’s Cambridge Analytics scandal that people began to realize how frequently their personal data is shared, transferred, and monetized without their permission. Cambridge Analytica was by no means an isolated case. Last summer, an AP investigation found that Read more about Does Google meet its users’ expectations around consumer privacy? This news industry research says no[…]

Of course the US can look in, under CLOUD rules, because Google is an American company. The move of the files has been done without consent from the patients by Medical Research Data Management, a commercial company, because (they say), the hospitals have given permission. Also, hospitals don’t need to ask for patient permission, because Read more about Dutch  medical patient files moved to Google Cloud – MPs want to know if US intelligence agencies can view them[…]

WASHINGTON — The Drug Enforcement Administration secretly collected data in bulk about Americans’ purchases of money-counting machines — and took steps to hide the effort from defendants and courts — before quietly shuttering the program in 2013 amid the uproar over the disclosures by the National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, an inspector general report Read more about D.E.A. Secretly Collected Bulk Records of Money-Counter Purchases[…]

Many other cars download and store data from users, particularly information from paired cellphones, such as contact information. The practice is widespread enough that the US Federal Trade Commission has issued advisories to drivers warning them about pairing devices to rental cars, and urging them to learn how to wipe their cars’ systems clean before Read more about Tesla Model 3 records data unknown to you, sends it to Tesla without your knowledge and keeps a whole load of other data  too.[…]