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[…]

Clearview AI worked to build a national database of every mug shot taken in the United States during the past 15 years, according to an email obtained by OneZero through a public records request. The email, sent by a representative for Clearview AI in August 2019, was in response to an inquiry from the Green Read more about Clearview AI: We Are ‘Working to Acquire All U.S. Mugshots’ From Past 15 Years[…]

Creepy facial recognition firm Clearview AI—which claims to have built an extensive database from billions of photos scraped from the public web—allowed the rich and powerful to use its app as a personal plaything and spy tool, according to reporting from the New York Times on Thursday. Clearview and its founder, Hoan Ton-That, claim that Read more about Clearview AI Let Celebs, Investors Use Facial Recognition App for fun[…]

DuckDuckGo, a privacy-focused tech company, today launched something called Tracker Radar—an open-source, automatically generated and continually updated list that currently contains more than 5,000 domains that more than 1,700 companies use to track people online. The idea behind Tracker Radar, first reported by CNET, is to share the data DuckDuckGo has collected to create a Read more about DuckDuckGo Made a List of Jerks Tracking You Online[…]

The controversial surveillance program that gave the NSA access to the phone call records of millions of Americans has cost US taxpayers $100m – and resulted in just one useful lead over four years. That’s the upshot of a report [PDF] from the US government’s freshly revived Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB). The Read more about After blowing $100m to snoop on Americans’ phone call logs for four years, what did the NSA get? Just one lead[…]

Facebook wants you to think it’s consistently increasing transparency about how the company stores and uses your data. But the company still isn’t revealing everything to its users, according to an investigation by Privacy International. The obvious holes in Facebook’s privacy data exports paint a picture of a company that aims to placate users’ concerns Read more about Facebook’s privacy tools are riddled with missing data[…]

Drone enthusiasts are up in arms over rules proposed by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that would require their flying gizmos to provide real-time location data to the government via an internet connection. The requirement, for drones weighing 0.55lb (0.25kg) or more, would ground an estimated 80 per cent of gadgets in the United Read more about US Gov wants to spy on all drones all the time: they must be constantly connected to the internet to give Feds real-time location data[…]

This is going to be a lengthy blog post so let me use this opening paragraph as a summary of where Project Svalbard is at: Have I Been Pwned is no longer being sold and I will continue running it independently. After 11 months of a very intensive process culminating in many months of exclusivity Read more about Project Svalbard, Have I Been Pwned will not be sold after all[…]

Ring, the Amazon-owned maker of smart-home doorbells and web-enabled security cameras, is changing its privacy settings two weeks after a study showed the company shares customers’ personal information with Facebook, Google and other parties without users’ consent. The change will let Ring users block the company from sharing most, but not all, of their data. Read more about Ring doorbells to change privacy settings after study showed it shared personal information with Facebook and Google[…]

Facebook is tightening its rules around the use of raw, device-level data used for measuring ad campaigns that Facebook shares with an elite group of advertising technology partners. As first spotted by AdAge, the company recently tweaked the terms of service that apply to its “advanced mobile measurement partner” program, which advertisers tap into to track the Read more about Facebook Cuts Off Some Mobile tracking Ad Data With Advertising Partners, should have done this long long ago[…]

An iPhone app built by controversial facial recognition startup Clearview AI has been blocked by Apple, effectively banning the app from use. Apple confirmed to TechCrunch that the startup “violated” the terms of its enterprise developer program. The app allows its users — which the company claims it serves only law enforcement officers — to Read more about Apple has blocked Clearview AI’s iPhone app for violating its rules[…]