To get started, head to facebook.com/ads/preferences. Here, you’ll find a large collection of “interests” Facebook thinks you have, sorted into categories. Click on “Lifestyle and Culture” to find, among other things, where you land politically. If you haven’t explicitly Liked the Facebook page of a particular politician, Facebook will guess and place that guess here. Read more about Find Out How Facebook Thinks You Think With This Setting[…]

Facebook knows more about your personal life than you probably realize. As part of the company’s increasingly aggressive advertising operation, Facebook goes to great lengths to track you across the web. The company compiles a list of personal details about every user that includes major life events and general interests. For years, details have been Read more about All of the Creepy Things Facebook Knows About You[…]

Anti-Beacon is small, simple to use, and is provided free of charge. It was created to address the privacy concerns of users of Windows 10 who do not wish to have information about their PC usage sent to Microsoft. Simply clicking “Immunize” on the main screen of Anti-Beacon will immediately disable any known tracking features Read more about Spybot Anti-Beacon for Windows[…]

the plan’s not in action yet but has been agreed in principle. It’s hoped the scheme will be up and running in about six months, by which time you’ll only be able to buy trackable SIMs when you visit. The good news is that if your phone roams, you’ll be exempt. And with roaming plans Read more about Thailand plans to track non-citizens with their mobile phones[…]

A little-known web standard that lets site owners tell how much battery life a mobile device has left has been found to enable tracking online, a year after privacy researchers warned that it had the potential to do just that. The battery status API was introduced in HTML5, the fifth version of the code used Read more about Your battery status is being used to track you online[…]

Perfect anonymization of data sets that contain personal information has failed. But the process of protecting data subjects in shared information remains integral to privacy practice and policy. While the deidentification debate has been vigorous and productive, there is no clear direction for policy. As a result, the law has been slow to adapt a Read more about A legal approach to mitigate anonymisation with risk[…]

The popular streaming service is now the latest platform that is opening its data to targeted advertising. Everything from your age and gender, to the music genres you like to listen will be available to various third-party companies. Spotify is calling it programmatic buying and has already enabled it. Advertisers will have access to the Read more about Spotify is now selling your information to advertisers[…]

the new legislation — which Edward Snowden has called “Russia’s new Big Brother law” — is not only severe against those involved in “international terrorism,” its financing, and its non-denunciation. Law enforcement agencies will also be granted access to any user’s messages without any judicial oversight. Several key provisions will directly affect the internet and Read more about Russian leader Putin signs controversial ‘Big Brother’ law[…]

More than 800 UK police staff inappropriately accessed personal information between June 2011 and December 2015, according to a report from activist group Big Brother Watch. The report says some police staff used their access to a growing trove of police data, which includes personal information on civilians, for entertainment and personal and financial gain. Read more about UK Police Accessed Civilian Data 1283 times for Fun and Profit, New Report Says[…]

Facebook wants to show advertisers that their ads make you visit their bricks-and-mortar stores and buy their stuff. To do this, they’ll use phones’ location services to track whether people actually walk into the stores after seeing an ad. Source: Facebook Will Start Tracking Which Stores You Walk Into

Researchers from the University of Washington and the University of California, San Diego did an experiment to see what could be learned from just the information many cars are already recording. The result was that the way people drove was as identifiable as a fingerprint. […] When it was given data from all 16 sensors Read more about You Can Absolutely Be Identified Just By How You Drive[…]

In a study published online Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Stanford University researchers demonstrated how they used publicly available sources—like Google searches and the paid background-check service Intelius—to identify “the overwhelming majority” of their 823 volunteers based only on their anonymized call and SMS metadata. Using data collected through Read more about Study shows phone metadata is much more sensitive than top spies admit[…]

The NCC, a consumer rights watchdog, is conducting an investigation into 20 apps’ terms and conditions to see if the apps do what their permissions say they do and to monitor data flows. Tinder has already been reported to the Norwegian data protection authority for similar breaches of privacy laws. The NCC’s investigation into Runkeeper Read more about Runkeeper is secretly tracking you around the clock and sending your data to advertisers[…]

In my hands is something dangerous. It is proof that someone moved confidential government data out of Mexico and into the United States. It is a hard drive with 93.4 million downloaded voter registration records— The Mexican voter database. See the interview with Chris Vickery commenting on this breach: Before going any further, let’s make Read more about 93.4m Mexican Voters Data found on open US server[…]

The new rules include provisions on: a right to be forgotten, “clear and affirmative consent” to the processing of private data by the person concerned, a right to transfer your data to another service provider, the right to know when your data has been hacked, ensuring that privacy policies are explained in clear and understandable Read more about Data protection reform – Parliament approves new rules fit for the digital era[…]

Hotjar is a new and easy way to truly understand your web and mobile site visitors. Source: Hotjar – Heatmaps, Visitor Recordings, Conversion Funnels, Form Analytics, Feedback Polls and Surveys in One Platform I’ve been seeing this on more and more sites recently. They state that the service is cheap (but no pricing to be Read more about Hotjar – Records mouse behaviour to see where visitors are scrolling, mousing and clicking to make heatmaps[…]

Clearista products were designed with medical applications in mind before they became beauty products. The idea was that removing the product got you access to traces or biological markers that give an insight into the health of a person. They also cover blemishes and dark spots on the skin. So the CIA is interested, as Read more about CIA’s Fundings Clearista Skin Care Products That Collect DNA among other markers for health[…]

Pentagon: DRTBox can usually nab phone’s crypto session keys in under a second. Source: City cops in Disneyland’s backyard have had “stingray on steroids” for years Military grade Dirtboxes have been flying for the police without requiring a warrant for years. The 4th Reich irrepresive surveillance machine strikes again – Anaheim won’t be the only Read more about Anaheim cops in Disneyland’s backyard have had plane based mass mobile phone hacking stuff going for years[…]

Without trust, Microsoft thinks, nobody is going to use any cloud services, and the Snowden revelations put the trustworthiness of all technology suppliers in the spotlight. So when a warrant arrived at Microsoft’s Dublin data centre one day in 2013, a not uncommon occurrence for a cloud host, Microsoft was ready to kick back. What Read more about Microsoft explains why Irish Warrant Fight is important[…]

Per 1 januari is de naam van het College bescherming persoonsgegevens (CBP) veranderd in Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens. Voortaan kan de Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens boetes opleggen en zijn organisaties verplicht ernstige datalekken direct te melden aan de toezichthouder. Onvoldoende zorgvuldige omgang met persoonsgegevens levert voortaan dus zowel een boete als reputatieschade op. De maximale boete is 820.000 euro. Read more about CBP wordt Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens[…]

This might seem like a slightly strange statistic for Microsoft to keep track of, but the company knows how long, collectively, Windows 10 has been running on computers around the world. To have reached this figure (11 billion hours in December, apparently) Microsoft must have been logging individuals’ usage times Source: Why is Microsoft monitoring Read more about Why is Microsoft monitoring how long you use Windows 10?[…]