For years, the tiny startup Kytch worked to invent and sell a device designed to fix McDonald’s notoriously broken ice cream machines, only to watch the fast food Goliath crush their business like the hopes of so many would-be McFlurry customers. Now Kytch is instead seeking to serve out cold revenge—nearly a billion dollars worth Read more about Ice Cream Machine Repairers Sue McDonald’s for $900 Million[…]
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[…]
tThe Washington Post reports: Clearview AI is telling investors it is on track to have 100 billion facial photos in its database within a year, enough to ensure “almost everyone in the world will be identifiable,” according to a financial presentation from December obtained by The Washington Post. Those images — equivalent to 14 photos Read more about 100 Billion Face Photos? Clearview AI tells investors it’s On Track to Identify ‘Almost Everyone in the World’[…]
A group of lawmakers have re-introduced the EARN IT Act, an incredibly unpopular bill from 2020 that “would pave the way for a massive new surveillance system, run by private companies, that would roll back some of the most important privacy and security features in technology used by people around the globe,” writes Joe Mullin Read more about It’s Back: Senators Want ‘EARN IT’ Bill To Scan All Online Messages by private companies – also misusing children as an excuse[…]
The UK government is set to launch a multi-pronged publicity attack on end-to-end encryption, Rolling Stone has learned. One key objective: mobilizing public opinion against Facebook’s decision to encrypt its Messenger app. The Home Office has hired the M&C Saatchi advertising agency — a spin-off of Saatchi and Saatchi, which made the “Labour Isn’t Working” Read more about Revealed: UK Gov’t Plans Publicity Blitz to Undermine Chat Privacy, encryption. Of course they use children. And Fear.[…]
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![…]
This is an art project by Tijmen Schep that shows how face detection algoritms are increasingly used to judge you. It was made as part of the European Union’s Sherpa research program. No personal data is sent to our server in any way. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. All the face detection algorithms will run on your Read more about How normal am I? – Let an AI judge you[…]
[…]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)[…]
To tackle climate change we need good data. This data exists; it is published by the International Energy Agency (IEA). But despite being an institution that is largely publicly funded, most IEA data is locked behind paywalls. […] In 2020 we launched a campaign to unlock this data; we started on Twitter (one example), last Read more about The IEA wants to make their data available to the public – now it is on governments of the world’s rich countries to make this happen[…]
Just as we’re in the midst of a Greenhouse series all about SOPA, copyright industry lobbyists, and former copyright industry lawyers now running the Copyright Office are conspiring to make copyright law worse and to favor Hollywood and give the big giant legacy copyright companies more control and power over the internet. And, yet, we Read more about Totally Bogus DMCA Takedowns From Giant Publishers Completely Nuke Book Review Blog Off The Internet[…]
U.S. federal agencies have been using a 35-year-old American surveillance law to secretly track WhatsApp users with no explanation as to why and without knowing whom they are targeting. In Ohio, a just-unsealed government surveillance application reveals that in November 2021, DEA investigators demanded the Facebook-owned messaging company track seven users based in China and Read more about WhatsApp Ordered To Help US Agents Spy On Chinese Phones using 1986 pen register act[…]
[.,..]To enforce the use of first-party cartridges, manufacturers typically embed chips inside the consumables for the printers to “authenticate.” But when chips are in short supply, like today, manufacturers can find themselves in a bind. So Canon is now telling German customers how to defeat its printers’ warnings about third-party cartridges. “Due to the worldwide Read more about Canon can’t get enough toner chips, so it’s telling customers how to defeat its DRM[…]
In a collaboration between journalists at The Markup and Mozilla researchers, this study seeks to map Facebook’s pixel tracking network and understand the kinds of information it collects on sites across the web. The Markup will use the data collected in this study to create investigative journalism around the kinds of information Facebook collects about Read more about Facebook Pixel Hunt – Mozilla Rally want to track the trackers[…]
A class action lawsuit filed in Chicago has accused John Deere of running an illegal repair monopoly. The lawsuit alleged that John Deere has used software locks and restricted access to repair documentation and tools, making it very difficult for farmers to fix their own agricultural equipment, a problem that Motherboard has documented for years Read more about John Deere Hit With Class Action Lawsuit for Alleged Tractor Repair Monopoly[…]
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[…]
The alleged 2017 deal between Google and Facebook to kill header bidding, a way for multiple ad exchanges to compete fairly in automated ad auctions, was negotiated by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, and endorsed by both Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (now with Meta) and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, according to an updated complaint filed in Read more about Google’s and Facebook’s top execs accused of fixing ads[…]
A Russian court fined Alphabet Inc.’s Google 7.2 billion rubles ($98 million) and Meta Platforms Inc. 2 billion rubles Friday for failing to remove banned content, the largest such penalties yet, as the authorities escalate a crackdown on foreign technology companies. The fines were due to the companies’ repeated failure to comply with orders to Read more about Google and Facebook Fined Big in Russia for Failing to Remove Banned Content – imprisonment threats follow forcing local data storage[…]
Snap is suing the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for rejecting its application to trademark the word “spectacles” for its digital eyewear camera device. But the USPTO has maintained that “spectacles” is a generic term for smart glasses and that Snap’s version “has not acquired distinctiveness,” as required for a trademark. In its complaint Read more about Snap suing to trademark the word “spectacles” for its smart glasses that no one has ever used or knows much about[…]
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[…]
Laws that forbid the illegal uploading and downloading of copyrighted content are common around the world but the rise of streaming has sometimes exposed gaps in legislation. Piracy-equipped Kodi devices, illegal streaming apps, and similar tools have led legal specialists to attempt to apply laws that didn’t envision the technology. In Malaysia, for example, it Read more about Malaysia in pocket of big business: Passes Bill to Imprison Illegal Streaming (even devices!) for 20 years[…]
According to the New York Times, China is recruiting YouTubers to report on the country in a positive light and counter the West’s increasingly negative perceptions. “The videos have a casual, homespun feel. But on the other side of the camera often stands a large apparatus of government organizers, state-controlled news media and other official Read more about How China Uses Western Influencers As Pawns In Its Propaganda War[…]