It has been called the “most extreme surveillance in the history of Western democracy.” It has not once but twice been found to be illegal. It sparked the largest ever protest of senior lawyers who called it “not fit for purpose.” And now the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act of 2016 – better known as the Read more about Why should the UK pensions watchdog be able to spy on your internet activities? Same reason as the Environment Agency and more than 50 more[…]

Among startups and tech companies, Stripe seems to be the near-universal favorite for payment processing. When I needed paid subscription functionality for my new web app, Stripe felt like the natural choice. After integration, however, I discovered that Stripe’s official JavaScript library records all browsing activity on my site and reports it back to Stripe. Read more about Stripe Payment Provider is Silently Recording Your Movements On its Customers’ Websites[…]

As Rolling Stone reported, the app is now playing host to virtual sex parties,  “play parties,” and group check-ins which have become, as one host said, “the mutual appreciation jerk-off society.” According to Zoom’s “acceptable use” policy, users may not use the technology to “engage in any activity that is harmful, obscene, or indecent, particularly Read more about Zoom sex party moderation: app uses machine-learning to patrol nudity – will it record them to put up on the web?[…]

Apple has released a set of “Mobility Trends Reports” – a trove of anonymised and aggregated data that describes how people have moved around the world in the three months from 13 January to 13 April. The data measures walking, driving and public transport use. And as you’d expect and as depicted in the image Read more about Apple: We respect your privacy so much we’ve revealed a little about what we can track when you use Maps[…]

The EFF’s staff technologist — also an engineer on Privacy Badger and HTTPS Everywhere, writes: Twitter greeted its users with a confusing notification this week. “The control you have over what information Twitter shares with its business partners has changed,” it said. The changes will “help Twitter continue operating as a free service,” it assured. Read more about Twitter Obliterates Its Users’ Privacy Choices[…]

Observant Firefox users on Windows who have updated the web browser to Firefox 75 may have noticed that the upgrade brought along with it a new scheduled tasks. The scheduled task is also added if Firefox 75 is installed on a Windows device. The task’s name is Firefox Default Browser Agent and it is set Read more about Mozilla installs Scheduled Telemetry Task on Windows with Firefox 75 – if you had put telemetry on[…]

Facebook Inc said on Monday it would start surveying some U.S. users about their health as part of a Carnegie Mellon University research project aimed at generating “heat maps” of self-reported coronavirus infections. The social media giant will display a link at the top of users’ News Feeds directing them to the survey, which the Read more about Facebook asks users about coronavirus symptoms, releases friendship data to researchers[…]

But what many people may not know is that, until Thursday, a data-mining feature on Zoom allowed some participants to surreptitiously have access to LinkedIn profile data about other users — without Zoom asking for their permission during the meeting or even notifying them that someone else was snooping on them. The undisclosed data mining Read more about A Feature on Zoom Secretly Displayed Data From People’s LinkedIn Profiles[…]

Thousands of personal Zoom videos have been left viewable on the open Web, highlighting the privacy risks to millions of Americans as they shift many of their personal interactions to video calls in an age of social distancing. From a report: Many of the videos appear to have been recorded through Zoom’s software and saved Read more about Thousands of recorded Zoom Video Calls Left Exposed on Open Web[…]

The very fact that the tag being delisted when searching for this unnamed individual is the “right to be forgotten” tag shows that whoever this person is, they recognize that they are not trying to cover up the record of, say, an FTC case against them from… oh, let’s just say 2003… but rather are Read more about Someone Convinced Google To Delist Our Entire Right To Be Forgotten Tag In The EU For Searches On Their Name, which means we can’t tell if they are abusing the system[…]

Government officials across the U.S. are using location data from millions of cellphones in a bid to better understand the movements of Americans during the coronavirus pandemic and how they may be affecting the spread of the disease… The data comes from the mobile advertising industry rather than cellphone carriers. The aim is to create Read more about US Officials Use Mobile Ad Location Data to Study How COVID-19 Spreads, not cellphone tower data[…]

Israel has long been known for its use of technology to track the movements of Palestinian militants. Now, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to use similar technology to stop the movement of the coronavirus. Netanyahu’s Cabinet on Sunday authorized the Shin Bet security agency to use its phone-snooping tactics on coronavirus patients, an official confirmed, Read more about Israel uses anti-terrorist tech to monitor phones of virus patients[…]

On Friday video-conferencing software Zoom issued an update to its iOS app which stops it sending certain pieces of data to Facebook. The move comes after a Motherboard analysis of the app found it sent information such as when a user opened the app, their timezone, city, and device details to the social network giant. Read more about Zoom Removes Code That Sends Data to Facebook – but there is still plenty of nasty stuff in there[…]

As the global coronavirus pandemic pushes the popularity of videoconferencing app Zoom to new heights, one web veteran has sounded the alarm over its “creepily chummy” relationship with tracking-based advertisers. Doc Searls, co-author of the influential internet marketing book The Cluetrain Manifesto last century, today warned [cached] Zoom not only has the right to extract Read more about Yeah, that Zoom app you’re trusting with work chatter? It lives with ‘vampires feeding on the blood of human data’[…]

At this point we’re all familiar with apps of all sorts tracking our every move and sharing that info with pretty much every third party imaginable. But it actually may not be as simple as tracking where you go and what you do in an app: It turns out that these apps might be dropping Read more about Android Apps Are Transmitting what other apps you have ever installed to marketing peole[…]

Despite evidence to the contrary, Amazon’s Ring is still insisting its the best thing people can put on their front doors — an IoT camera with PD hookups that will magically reduce crime in their neighborhoods simply by being a mute witness of criminal acts. Boasting over 1,000 law enforcement partnerships, Ring talks a good Read more about Ring corporate surveillance doorbells Continues To Insist Its Cameras Reduce Crime, But Crime Data Doesn’t Back Those Claims Up[…]

NB you can disable outgoing communication in the public network using windows defender by using the instructions here (HP). They come down to opening windows defender firewall, allowing an app or feature through windows defender firewall, searching for HP and then deselecting the public zone. At first the setup process was so simple that even Read more about HP printers try to send loads of data back to HP about your devices and what you print[…]

Science fiction has whetted our imagination for helpful voice assistants. Whether it’s JARVIS from Iron Man, KITT from Knight Rider, or Computer from Star Trek, many of us harbor a desire for a voice assistant to manage the minutiae of our daily lives. Speech recognition and voice technologies have advanced rapidly in recent years, particularly with the adoption Read more about Private By Design: Free and Private Voice Assistants[…]

Pervasive surveillance through digital technologies is the business model of Facebook and Google. And now governments are considering the web giants’ tools to track COVID-19 carriers for the public good. Among democracies, Israel appears to have gone first: prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced “emergency regulations that will enable the use of digital means in Read more about Pervasive digital locational surveillance of citizens deployed in COVID-19 fight[…]

Earlier today, March 16, Brave filed a formal complaint against Google with the lead General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) enforcer in Europe. In a February Cointelegraph interview, Dr. Johnny Ryan, Brave’s chief policy and industry relations officer, explained that Google is abusing its power by sharing user data collected by dozens of its distinct services, Read more about Brave Browser Delivers on Promise, Files GDPR Complaint Against Google[…]

Banjo, an artificial intelligence firm that works with police used a shadow company to create an array of Android and iOS apps that looked innocuous but were specifically designed to secretly scrape social media, Motherboard has learned. The news signifies an abuse of data by a government contractor, with Banjo going far beyond what companies Read more about Banjo, the company that will use an AI to spy on all of Utah through all their cams Used a Secret Company and Fake Apps to Scrape Social Media[…]

Whisper, the anonymous messaging app beloved by teens and tweens the world over, has a problem: it’s not as anonymous as we’d thought. The platform is only the latest that brands itself as private by design while leaking sensitive user data into the open, according to a damning Washington Post report out earlier today. According Read more about Whisper App Exposes Entire History of Chat Logs, personal details and location[…]