Digital kiosks from Soofa seem harmless, giving you bits of information alongside some ads. However, these kiosks popping up throughout the United States take your phone’s information and location data whenever you walk near them, and sell them to local governments and advertisers, first reported by NBC Boston Monday. “At Soofa, we developed the first Read more about Soofa Digital Kiosks Snatch Your Phone’s Data When You Walk By, sell it on[…]

The fundamental flaw with the age verification bills and laws passing rapidly across the country is the delusional, unfounded belief that putting hurdles between people and pornography is going to actually prevent them from viewing porn. What will happen, and is already happening, is that people–including minors–will go to unmoderated, actively harmful alternatives that don’t Read more about Age Verification Laws Drag Us Back to the Dark Ages of the Internet[…]

General Motors said Friday that it had stopped sharing details about how people drove its cars with two data brokers that created risk profiles for the insurance industry. The decision followed a New York Times report this month that G.M. had, for years, been sharing data about drivers’ mileage, braking, acceleration and speed with the Read more about General Motors Quits Sharing Driving Behavior With Data Brokers – Now sells it directly to insurance companies?[…]

Kenn Dahl says he has always been a careful driver. The owner of a software company near Seattle, he drives a leased Chevrolet Bolt. He’s never been responsible for an accident. So Mr. Dahl, 65, was surprised in 2022 when the cost of his car insurance jumped by 21 percent. Quotes from other insurance companies Read more about Automakers Are Sharing Consumers’ Driving Behavior With Insurance Companies[…]

More than 130 petitions seeking access to push notification metadata have been filed in US courts, according to a Washington Post investigation – a finding that underscores the lack of privacy protection available to users of mobile devices. The poor state of mobile device privacy has provided US state and federal investigators with valuable information Read more about Investigators seek push notification metadata in 130 cases – this is scarier than you think[…]

Meta will soon begin “collecting anonymized data” from users of its Quest headsets, a move that could see the company aggregating information about hand, body, and eye tracking; camera information; “information about your physical environment”; and information about “the virtual reality events you attend.” In an email sent to Quest users Monday, Meta notes that Read more about Meta will start collecting much more “anonymized” data about Quest headset usage[…]

[…] The scandal started when a student using the alias SquidKid47 posted an image on Reddit showing a campus vending machine error message, “Invenda.Vending.FacialRecognitionApp.exe,” displayed after the machine failed to launch a facial recognition application that nobody expected to be part of the process of using a vending machine. Enlarge / Reddit post shows error Read more about Canadian college M&M Vending machines secretly scanning faces – revealed by error message[…]

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that laws requiring crippled encryption and extensive data retention violate the European Convention on Human Rights – a decision that may derail European data surveillance legislation known as Chat Control. The Court issued a decision on Tuesday stating that “the contested legislation providing for the retention Read more about European human rights court says backdooring encrypted comms is against human rights[…]

23andMe is in a death spiral. Almost everyone who wants a DNA test already bought one, a nightmare data breach ruined the company’s reputation, and 23andMe’s stock is so close to worthless it might get kicked off the Nasdaq. CEO Anne Wojcicki is on a crisis tour, promising investors the company isn’t going out of Read more about 23andMe Thinks ‘Mining’ Your DNA Data Is Its Last Hope[…]

iPhone apps including Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, and X/Twitter are skirting Apple’s privacy rules to collect user data through notifications, according to tests by security researchers at Mysk Inc., an app development company. Users sometimes close apps to stop them from collecting data in the background, but this technique gets around that protection. The data is Read more about iPhone Apps Secretly Harvest Data When They Send You Notifications, Researchers Find[…]

BNR received more than 80 gigabytes of location data from data traders: the coordinates of millions of telephones, often registered dozens of times a day. The gigantic mountain of data also includes movements of people with functions in which safety plays an important role. A senior army officer could be followed as he drove from Read more about Dutch phones can be easily tracked online: ‘Extreme security risk’[…]

According to a survey of 2,000 Americans conducted by Kaspersky in November and published this week, 72 percent of drivers are uncomfortable with automakers sharing their data with advertisers, insurance companies, subscription services, and other third-party outfits. Specifically, 37.3 percent of those polled are “very uncomfortable” with this data sharing, and 34.5 percent are “somewhat Read more about Drivers would prefer to buy a low-tech car than one that shares their data[…]

Half a decade ago we documented how the U.S. wireless industry was caught over-collecting sensitive user location and vast troves of behavioral data, then selling access to that data to pretty much anybody with a couple of nickels to rub together. It resulted in no limit of abuse from everybody from stalkers to law enforcement Read more about Verizon Once Again Busted Handing Out Sensitive Wireless Subscriber Information To Any Nitwit Who Asks For It – because no US enforcement of any kind[…]