HBO is facing a class action lawsuit over allegations that it gave subscribers’ viewing history to Facebook without proper permission, Variety has reported. The suit accuses HBO of providing Facebook with customer lists, allowing the social network to match viewing habits with their profiles. It further alleges that HBO knows Facebook can combine the data Read more about HBO hit with class action lawsuit for allegedly sharing subscriber data with Facebook[…]

Italy’s data privacy watchdog said it will fine the controversial facial recognition firm Clearview AI for breaching EU law. An investigation by Garante, Italy’s data protection authority, found that the company’s database of 10 billion images of faces includes those of Italians and residents in Italy. The New York City-based firm is being fined €20 Read more about Italy slaps creepy webscraping facial recognition firm Clearview AI with €20 million fine[…]

The country’s forthcoming Online Safety Bill will require citizens to hand over even more personal data to largely foreign-headquartered social media platforms, government minister Nadine Dorries has declared. “The vast majority of social networks used in the UK do not require people to share any personal details about themselves – they are able to identify Read more about UK Online Safety Bill to require more data to use social media – eg send them your passport[…]

Israeli authorities say it should be probed and U.S. authorities are calling for it to be sanctioned, but EU officials have a different idea for how to handle Pegasus spyware: just ban that shit entirely. That’s the main takeaway from a new memo released by EPDS, the Union’s dedicated data watchdog on Tuesday, noting that Read more about EU Data Watchdog Calls for Total Ban of Pegasus Spyware[…]

received email from two people who told me that Microsoft Edge enabled synching without warning or consent, which means that Microsoft sucked up all of their bookmarks. Of course they can turn synching off, but it’s too late. Has this happened to anyone else, or was this user error of some sort? If this is Read more about Is Microsoft Stealing People’s Bookmarks, passwords, ID / passport numbers without consent?[…]

Crisis Text Line, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit support options for the suicidal, is in some hot water. A Politico report last week highlighted how the company has been caught collecting and monetizing the data of callers… to create and market customer service software. More specifically, Crisis Text Line says it “anonymizes” some user Read more about Suicide Hotline Collected, Monetized The Data Of Desperate People, Because Of Course It Did[…]

[…] according to a new FAQ posted on Google’s Workplace administrator forum. At the end of that month, the company will be adding a new feature—“Workspace search history”—that can continue to track these customers, even if they, or their admins, turn activity tracking off. The worst part? Unlike Google’s activity trackers that are politely defaulted Read more about Google adds new opt out tracking for Workspace Customers[…]

[… ] there are plenty of cases where you throw down hundreds of dollars for a piece of hardware and then you end up being the product anyway. Case in point: TVs. On Wednesday, the television giant LG announced a new offering to advertisers that promises to be able to reach the company’s millions of Read more about LG Announces New Ad Targeting Features for TVs – wait, wtf, I bought my TV, not a service![…]

[…]To be clear, data collection is far from an Amazon-specific problem; it’s pretty much par for the course when it comes to tech companies. Even Apple, a company vocal about user privacy, has faced criticism in the past for recording Siri interactions and sharing them with third-party contractors. The issue with Amazon, however, is the Read more about How to Download Everything Amazon Knows About You (It’s a Lot)[…]

Germany’s federal cybersecurity watchdog, the BSI, did not find any evidence of censorship functions in mobile phones manufactured by China’s Xiaomi Corp (1810.HK), a spokesperson said on Thursday. Lithuania’s state cybersecurity body had said in September that Xiaomi phones had a built-in ability to detect and censor terms such as “Free Tibet”, “Long live Taiwan Read more about German IT security watchdog: No evidence of censorship function in Xiaomi phones[…]

Apple’s AirTags and Find My service can be helpful for finding things you lose—but they also introduce a big privacy problem. While those of us on iOS have had some tools for fighting those issues, Apple left those of us on Android without much to work with. A new Android AirTag finder app finally addresses Read more about This App Will Tell Android Users If an AirTag Is Tracking Them[…]

Apple has quietly nixed all mentions of CSAM from its Child Safety webpage, suggesting its controversial plan to detect child sexual abuse images on iPhones and iPads may hang in the balance following significant criticism of its methods. Apple in August announced a planned suite of new child safety features, including scanning users’ iCloud Photos Read more about Apple Removes All References to Controversial CSAM Scanning Feature – where they would scan all the pictures you took[…]

[…] Consumer Reports, which recently published a 48-page white paper on VPNs that looks into the privacy and security policies of 16 prominent VPN providers. Researchers initially looked into some 51 different companies but ultimately honed in on the most prominent, high-quality providers. The results are decidedly mixed, with the report highlighting a lot of Read more about Report: VPNs Are Often a Mixed Bag for Privacy[…]

Prisons around the US are installing AI speech-to-text models to automatically transcribe conversations with inmates during their phone calls. A series of contracts and emails from eight different states revealed how Verus, an AI application developed by LEO Technologies and based on a speech-to-text system offered by Amazon, was used to eavesdrop on prisoners’ phone Read more about Prisons snoop on inmates’ phone calls with speech-to-text AI[…]

The co-founder of a company that has been trusted by technology giants including Google and Twitter to deliver sensitive passwords to millions of their customers also operated a service that ultimately helped governments secretly surveil and track mobile phones, Bloomberg reported Monday, citing former employees and clients. From the report: Since it started in 2013, Read more about Executive at Swiss Tech Company Said to Operate Secret Surveillance Operation[…]

Life360, a popular tracking app that bills itself as “the world’s leading family safety service,” is purportedly selling location data on the 31 million families and kids that use it to data brokers. The chilling revelation may make users of the Tile Bluetooth tracker, which is being bought by Life360, think twice before continuing to Read more about Life360 Reportedly Sells Location Data of Families and Kids[…]

There is no “going dark.” Consecutive FBI heads may insist there is, but a document created by their own agency contradicts their dire claims that end-to-end encryption lets the criminals and terrorists win. Andy Kroll has the document and the details for Rolling Stone: [I]n a previously unreported FBI document obtained by Rolling Stone, the Read more about Documents Shows Just How Much The FBI Can Obtain From Encrypted Communication Services[…]

“Your phone’s front camera is always securely looking for your face, even if you don’t touch it or raise to wake it.” That’s how Qualcomm Technologies vice president of product management Judd Heape introduced the company’s new always-on camera capabilities in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor set to arrive in top-shelf Android phones early Read more about Qualcomm’s new always-on smartphone camera is always looking out for you[…]

Following an investigation, the Irish data protection watchdog issued a €225m (£190m) fine – the second-largest in history over GDPR – and ordered WhatsApp to change its policies. WhatsApp is appealing against the fine, but is amending its policy documents in Europe and the UK to comply. However, it insists that nothing about its actual Read more about WhatsApp privacy policy tweaked in Europe after record fine[…]

In recent years, Amazon.com Inc has killed or undermined privacy protections in more than three dozen bills across 25 states, as the e-commerce giant amassed a lucrative trove of personal data on millions of American consumers. Amazon executives and staffers detail these lobbying victories in confidential documents reviewed by Reuters. In Virginia, the company boosted political Read more about The Amazon lobbyists who kill U.S. consumer privacy protections[…]

The South Korean Ministry of Justice has provided more than 100 million photos of foreign nationals who travelled through the country’s airports to facial recognition companies without their consent, according to attorneys with the non-governmental organization Lawyers for a Democratic Society. While the use of facial recognition technology has become common for governments across the Read more about South Korea Is Giving Millions of Photos of all foreign travelers since 2019 to Facial Recognition Researchers[…]

[…] Mysk, a duo of app developers and security researchers, recently exposed Chrome’s shadiness on Twitter. In the tweet, Mysk brings to light that, by default, Chrome is sharing your phone’s motion data with the websites you visit. This is not cool. Why you don’t want third parties accessing your motion data To start with, Read more about How to Stop Chrome From Sharing Your Motion Data on Android[…]

[…] this news again comes courtesy of Microsoft’s roadmap service, where Redmond prepares you for the joys to come. This time, there are a couple of joys. The first is headlined: “Microsoft 365 compliance center: Insider risk management — Increased visibility on browsers.” It all sounded wonderful until you those last four words, didn’t it? Read more about Microsoft will now snitch on you at work like never before[…]