In a blog post earlier today, the famously privacy-conscious Mark Zuckerberg announced that—in honor of Data Privacy Day, which is apparently a thing—the official rollout of a long-awaited Off-Facebook Activity tool that allows Facebook users to monitor and manage the connections between Facebook profiles and their off-platform activity. “To help shed more light on these Read more about Facebook Enables Confusing ‘Off-Facebook Activity’ Privacy Tool, which won’t stop any tracking whatsoever[…]

An investigation by EFF of the Ring doorbell app for Android found it to be packed with third-party trackers sending out a plethora of customers’ personally identifiable information (PII). Four main analytics and marketing companies were discovered to be receiving information such as the names, private IP addresses, mobile network carriers, persistent identifiers, and sensor Read more about Ring Doorbell App Gives Away your data to 3rd parties, without your knowledge or consent[…]

A lawsuit — seeking class-action status — was filed this week in Illinois against Clearview AI, a New York-based startup that has scraped social media networks for people’s photos and created one of the biggest facial recognition databases in the world. The secretive startup was exposed last week in an explosive New York Times report Read more about Class-action lawsuit filed against creepy Clearview AI startup which scraped everyones social media profiles[…]

The dystopian nightmare begins. Today, London’s Metropolitan Police Service announced it will begin deploying Live Facial Recognition (LFR) tech across the capital in the hopes of locating and arresting wanted peoples. […] The way the system is supposed to work, according to the Metropolitan Police, is the LFR cameras will first be installed in areas Read more about London Police Will Start Using Live Facial Recognition Tech Now, Big Brother becomes a computer watching you[…]

What if a stranger could snap your picture on the sidewalk then use an app to quickly discover your name, address and other details? A startup called Clearview AI has made that possible, and its app is currently being used by hundreds of law enforcement agencies in the US, including the FBI, says a Saturday Read more about Clearview has scraped all social media sites illegally and vs TOS, has all your pictures in a massive database (who knows how secure this is?) and a face recognition AI. Is selling access to it to cops, and who knows who else.[…]

It should come as little surprise that any content you offer to the web for public consumption has the potential to be scraped and misused by anyone clever enough to do it. And while that doesn’t make this weekend’s report from The New York Times any less damning, it’s a great reminder about how important Read more about So Clearview has you, even if it violates TOS. How to stop the next guy from getting you in FB – maybe.[…]

Amazon’s Ring home security camera biz says it has fired multiple employees caught covertly watching video feeds from customer devices. The admission came in a letter [PDF] sent in response to questions raised by US Senators critical of Ring’s privacy practices. Ring recounted how, on four separate occasions, workers were let go for overstepping their Read more about Amazon fired four workers who secretly snooped on Ring doorbell camera footage[…]

The Trump administration’s plan to collect DNA evidence from migrants detained in U.S. Customs and Borders Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities will commence soon in the form of a 90-day pilot program in Detroit and Southwest Texas, CNN reported on Monday. News of the plan first emerged in October, when the Read more about DHS Plan to Collect DNA From Migrant Detainees Will Begin Soon – because centralised databases with personally sensitive data in them are a great idea. Just ask the Jews how useful they were during WWII[…]

Every minute of every day, everywhere on the planet, dozens of companies — largely unregulated, little scrutinized — are logging the movements of tens of millions of people with mobile phones and storing the information in gigantic data files. The Times Privacy Project obtained one such file, by far the largest and most sensitive ever Read more about Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset (no, not  your phone companies’), Zero Privacy – The New York Times[…]

Infrared cameras detect people and other objects by the heat they emit. Now, researchers have discovered the uncanny ability of a material to hide a target by masking its telltale heat properties. The effect works for a range of temperatures that one day could include humans and vehicles, presenting a future asset to stealth technologies, Read more about Camouflage made of quantum material could hide you from infrared cameras[…]

Next time you feel the need to justify to a family member, friend, or random acquaintance why you drive an old shitbox instead of a much more comfortable, modern vehicle, here’s another reason for you to trot out: your old shitbox, unlike every modern car, is not spying on you. That’s the takeaway from a Read more about Your Modern Car Is A Privacy Nightmare[…]

If you were one of the millions of people that signed up with Unrollme to cut down on the emails from outfits you once bought a product from, we have some bad news for you: it has been storing and selling your data. On Tuesday, America’s Federal Trade Commission finalized a settlement [PDF] with the Read more about Remember Unrollme, the biz that helped you automatically ditch unwanted emails? Yeah, it was selling your data, even though it said it wouldn’t[…]

Two browsers have yanked Avast and AVG online security extensions from their web stores after a report revealed that they were unnecessarily sucking up a ton of data about users’ browsing history. Wladimir Palant, the creator behind Adblock Plus, initially surfaced the issue—which extends to Avast Online Security and Avast SafePrice as well as Avast-owned Read more about Uninstall AVAST and AVG free anti-virus: they are massively slurping your data! Mozilla and Opera have removed them from their stores[…]

Customers in China who buy SIM cards or register new mobile-phone services must have their faces scanned under a new law that came into effect yesterday. China’s government says the new rule, which was passed into law back in September, will “protect the legitimate rights and interest of citizens in cyberspace.” A controversial step: It Read more about All new cell phone users in China must now have their face scanned, as do all US citizens entering or leaving the US (as well as all non-US citizens)[…]

Developers working on open-source ad-blocker uBlock Origin have uncovered a mechanism for tracking web browsers around the internet that defies today’s blocking techniques. A method to block this so-called unblockable tracker has been developed by the team, though it only works in Firefox, leaving Chrome and possibly other browsers susceptible. This fix is now available Read more about Bad news: ‘Unblockable’ web trackers emerge. Good news: Firefox with uBlock Origin can stop it. Chrome, not so much[…]

More than 600 police forces across the country have entered into partnerships with the camera giant allowing them to quickly request and download video captured by Ring’s motion-detecting, internet-connected cameras inside and around Americans’ homes. The company says the videos can be a critical tool in helping law enforcement investigate crimes such as trespassing, burglary Read more about Police can keep Amazon Ring camera video forever, and share with whomever they’d like, company tells senator[…]

we are making plans to adopt DNS over HTTPS (or DoH) in the Windows DNS client. As a platform, Windows Core Networking seeks to enable users to use whatever protocols they need, so we’re open to having other options such as DNS over TLS (DoT) in the future. For now, we’re prioritizing DoH support as Read more about Windows will go DNS over HTTPS – Take over your DNS queries, grab more of your browsing behaviour[…]

A majority of Americans believe their online and offline activities are being tracked and monitored by companies and the government with some regularity. It is such a common condition of modern life that roughly six-in-ten U.S. adults say they do not think it is possible to go through daily life without having data collected about Read more about Americans and Privacy: Concerned, Confused and Feeling Lack of Control Over Their Personal Information[…]