https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/googles-widely-opposed-ad-platform-the-privacy-sandbox-launches-in-chrome/
Don't let Chrome's big redesign distract you from the fact that Chrome's invasive new ad platform, ridiculously branded the "Privacy Sandbox," is also getting a widespread rollout...
Roomba testers feel misled after intimate images ended up on Facebook
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/10/1066500/roomba-irobot-robot-vacuum-beta-product-testers-consent-agreement-misled/
A Roomba recorded a woman on the toilet. How did screenshots end up on Facebook...
The latest update tells you when apps are listening to you, or, watching you. I don't have an iPhone, but on my android, I have very few apps, and, the ones I do have I have already set their permission levels to make myself feel better...
https://gizmodo.com/oculus-will-now-require-facebook-login-to-use-social-fe-1840376657
Apparently it can be opted out of but I think we all know that that won't last:
I´m always checking the latest news of privacy coins because that is the type of cryptos that I usually buy.
In this opportunity I´m talking about DeepOnion, one of the privacy cryptos that is not usually mentioned by the media/influencers.
I´m following this coin since the release (June 2017)...
(Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected Facebook Inc’s (FB.O) effort to undo a class action lawsuit claiming that it illegally collected and stored biometric data for millions of users without their consent.
The 3-0 decision from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San...
So,
Many of us have been curious about what the hell our IoT is doing on our networks, how often it dials the mother ship and what it is sending. Researchers at Princeton University want to know too, and have started a project to collect data from IoT devices on your network to inform you, and...
A recent study from the BMJ found that many popular health apps share more data with advertisers than they probably should. The researchers analyzed 24 Android apps with scripts that simulate real world usage, and found that 19 of them shared potentially sensitive user data with 55 "unique...
This week, users on Reddit accused Epic Games of spying on their customers through the Epic Games Store software. Among other things, the thread accuses the Epic client of making a copy of Steam's localconfig.vdf, sending hardware information and a list of running processes to Epic, and...
Facebook's news coverage hasn't been particularly positive over the past few months, but they had a particularly bad day yesterday. Following a widespread outage that lasted over 14 hours, and likely cost the company millions in advertising revenue, the New York Times released a report claiming...
IBM, and a number of other researchers and institutions, have made extensive use of a Yahoo!-curated Flickr database for their facial recognition development efforts, and according to a recent report from NBC, this is raising concerns among privacy experts and the subjects within those photos...
The internet turned 30 this year, and CERN celebrated it with a long (and if I'm being honest, not particularly exciting) webcast featuring its creator, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. However, after the recent Cambridge Analytica data scandal and what seems like a new privacy/security related scandal...
Following protests from externals sources as well as their own employees, Google allegedly shelved their plans to launch the censored "Dragonfly" search engine in China last year. But, according to a recent report, Google employees have discovered that work on Dragonfly is ongoing. Inside...
A recent report from Motherboard claims that some Canadian police departments are aggregating sensitive personal data from multiple sources and making it available to "partners cops, school staff, social workers, health care workers, and the provincial government." While the data is reportedly...
Here at HardOCP, I think the sheer volume of garbage that makes its way into Facebook posts before moderators take it down is common knowledge. Facebook itself has the daunting task of trying moderate all that content, and according to a recent writeup from The Verge, they subcontract some of...
Google recently announced that Google Assistant features are coming to its Nest Secure home security system. Giving consumers free features seems like a great idea, but Google forgot to list the microphone in the technical specifications for Nest Secure devices. Google says it was an "error" to...
A security researcher spotted a bug in Facebook that would've allowed attackers to take over accounts from users that clicked on a single link. According to Youssef Sammouda, a vulnerable endpoint easily allowed him to makes posts on a user's timeline, delete profile picture, or delete accounts...
According to a recent BBC report, about 2.7 million calls made to a Swedish national health service telephone line have been "exposed." The calls date back to 2013, and supposedly contain sensitive medical information and social security numbers, while Martin Svensson says that there was no...
The NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence published a report on the challenges governments face with online security, and Wired managed to spot a particular interesting experiment within the multi-section report. As part of an experiment, the independent NATO organization used...
According to a report from the Washington Post, Facebook is negotiating with the FCC over a multi-billion dollar fine for its privacy issues and practices. The fine is expected to be the largest ever levied against a tech company. In 2011, the FTC and Facebook reached a deal to improve the...
In January, Motherboard found that AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint were unwittingly compromising their user's privacy and security. The telecommunication giants were reportedly selling data to third parties in bulk, a practice they've been criticized for before, who in turn were selling data about...
Scandals from social media companies and tech giants seem to make the headlines every day, and stories of data breaches or serious vulnerabilities follow right behind them. The publicity is prompting lots of talk about the value of privacy, but a recent article from NBC highlights a critical...
Following Facebook's latest privacy scandal, where they, among other things, blatantly violated Apple's guidelines for the iOS Enterprise Certificate program, Apple revoked Facebooks certifications, effectively disabling many of their corporate apps. Now, TechCrunch reports that Apple has...
Facebook recently faced another wave of negative publicity following a TechCrunch report, which claimed that Facebook sideloaded apps onto users' devices that tracked almost everything, and did so with a relatively lax parental consent process. On iOS devices, installing 3rd party apps from...
TechCrunch just posted a report claiming that Facebook paid teens to install a "VPN that spies on them" on Android and iOS devices. More specifically, the social media company has allegedly been paying users between the ages of 12 and 35 "up to $20 per month plus referral fees" to download the...
9to5Mac reports that a major bug in FaceTime allowed anyone with an iDevice running iOS 12.1 or latter to call someone else with FaceTime, and hear audio from their end without the other person ever picking up. Apparently, all you have to do is type your own phone number to the "add person"...
The Illinois Supreme Court has ruled in favor of consumer protections and privacy in a case that has broad implications related to the collection of biometric data. Stacy Rosenbach sued Six Flags Great America over the electronic collection of her son's fingerprints to use a season pass. She...
AFP reports that Nest, a smart camera manufacturer founded by former Apple engineers and owned by Alphabet, is urging customers to use two factor authentication for their home systems. The plea comes after local media near San Francisco reported on a couple's trouble with a Nest camera mounted...
Last year, an exposed ElasticSearch server reportedly leaked data on nearly 57 Million U.S. citizens. ElasticSearch servers aren't supposed to be exposed to the web, especially if they don't have a password, and the security researcher warned that exposed servers like that are a significant...
According to a press release from CNIL, France's data protection authority, Google was just hit with a 50 Million Euro (or $57 Million USD) fine for "lack of transparency, inadequate information and lack of valid consent regarding the ads personalization." The organization says that Google's...
The UpGuard Data Breach Research team, who previously uncovered data breaches in U.S. voting systemsand an Experian partner, recently exposed a massive leak from Oklahoma's Department of Securities. The contents of the files "ran the gamut from personal information to system credentials to...
Following their investigation into the smartphone geolocation black market, Motherboard reports that AT&T will stop selling location data to third parties. More specifically, AT&T said they will "eliminate all location aggregation services - even those with clear consumer benefits." Meanwhile...
Motherboard just posted an article claiming that T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T are selling customer data that ultimately allows individuals to geolocate U.S. phones with nothing but a phone number. Journalist Joseph Cox gave a phone number and $300 to a "bounty hunter," and quickly got a Google...
The city of Los Angeles is suing the Weather Company for deceptively marketing location services in its Weather Channel app as only used to localize weather reports. In fact it is alleged that consumers had their private geolocation information data mined by the intrusive tool masquerading as a...
app
data collection
data mining
digital privacy
hedge funds
ibm
lawsuit
los angeles
privacyprivacy policy
targeted advertising
technology
weather channel
weather channel app
weather company
The fact that Facebook shares data from Android phones, even when users aren't logged in, is no secret. Facebook, Facebook Messenger and Instagram are all baked into my HTC's system image, and it takes work just to keep them disabled. But Privacy International recently tested a wide range of 3rd...
Fox 13 in Salt Lake City reports that Craig Hall, a member of Utah's house of representatives, introduced a "Electronic Information or Data Privacy" bill that could be the first of its kind in the nation. Among other things, the bill would extend some legal protections physical items are given...
A recent study from Berkeley shows that machine learning can be used to connect anonymized health data from different sources, potentially identifying users in that data and violating federal HIPAA regulations. This specific study took physical activity data from health monitor/smartwatches and...
According to a recent report by Reuters, Amazon's experiments with Alexa are having some unintended consequences. The publication claims that Alexa blurted out "Kill your foster parents" last year. Other incidents involved chats about sex acts or dog defecation, and anonymous sources claim that...
As spotted by TechCrunch, Apple has changed the format of its biannual transparency report. While the tech giant still lists government information request statistics in the PDF format, for those who want it, they've also launched an interactive website that breaks down the information in an...
Reuters reports that a German Alexa user got access to "thousands of recordings" from their neighbor. According to the German trade publication c’t, the customer reportedly contacted Amazon about the mixup, and was able to download the recordings before Amazon deleted the download link. An...