Items tagged with Privacy
Google’s effort to end support for the use of cookies for user tracking in its Chrome web browser won’t be moving forward as the company originally planned. This initiative, dubbed Privacy Sandbox, has had several delays since it was announced several years ago. This decision comes after taking feedback from...
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Apple’s iPhone ads have touted the privacy features the company bakes into its products as a key differentiator between its devices and those of its competitors. This time around, though, the messaging is a lot more sinister. Its latest ad, dubbed ”Flock,” warns those who venture outside the walled garden of the...
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AT&T on Friday issued a notice saying it suffered a data breach that affects "nearly all" of its cellular customers (not to be confused with a separate AT&T data breach earlier this year). At last official count, AT&T said it serves around 109 million wireless subscribers, and given that most of those customers are...
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Whenever there is a data breach, there's a risk that the stolen data will find its way to the dark web, a section of the internet that is not indexed by search engines like Google Search and Microsoft Bing. Like a seedy alleyway, the dark web is a place where illicit transactions can (and do) take place. Stolen credit...
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Apple started its AI push in earnest at this year’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference, where it announced it would provide several chatbot options alongside OpenAI’s ChatGPT. However, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Meta’s Llama won’t be one of them after the two companies discussed the matter briefly earlier...
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When the first batch of Copilot+ PCs release to retail next week (they're already up for preorder), they'll be missing a key AI feature that Microsoft remains bullish on—Recall, which aims to make it easier for users to retrace their steps by taking snapshots every five seconds. While the intent of this functionality...
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Microsoft is somewhat pulling in the reins on its Recall feature, which is a key part of the company's Copilot+ initiative for next-gen PCs (starting with Snapdragon X Elite/Plus systems). In theory, Recall is supposed to make life easier for users by helping to find things by continually taking snapshots of content...
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Adobe rankled creators this week when it prompted Photoshop users to agree to new terms of service. The mandatory policy included some troubling provisions about Adobe's supposed ownership of user content, and prompted fears that the work of creators would be fed into the company's AI models. Adobe has issued a...
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Apple released iOS 17.5.1 a few days ago to fix a problem where users were seeing old photos that were deleted show back up on their devices, causing plenty of privacy concerns among users online. Unfortunately, Apple’s only remarks for the update mentioned a fix for a “database corruption” without going deeper into...
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Contrary to what some may think, hackers can have scruples and, in some cases, honorable intentions—it's kind of the whole idea behind white hat hacking and events like Pwn2Own. But then there are the kind who wouldn't think twice about breaching a cancer center and swipe personal details of hundreds of thousands of...
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A new feature in the latest beta for WhatsApp gives users more peace of mind that their messages and calls made within the app are end-to-end encrypted. The latest enhancement provides a visual confirmation that their chats are indeed securely encrypted using the Signal protocol.
Most people who use WhatsApp do so...
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It turns out that you do not need Chinese backdoors in products if people are just installing IoT devices with poor security. This is evidenced by a recent report regarding video doorbells manufactured by a Chinese company, which can be easily compromised. Further, these doorbells are sold around the United States at...
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Privacy is a hot-button issue for individuals and the enterprise, which has lead to some clever innovations, such as self-destructing USB drives, among other devices. To that end, the Biden administration is looking to address data privacy with a new executive order with a goal to “protect Americans’ sensitive...
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The European Union (EU) has set its sights on ByteDance’s TikTok app concerning a range of potential violations, including an overly addictive design, privacy shortfalls, and other concerns. EU industry chief Thierry Breton remarked the EU is launching an investigation into the app over a suspected breach of...
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Around the world, countries are plagued with oppression, corruption, and misguided leadership that journalists and ethical hackers are trying to fight. However, keeping data safe from prying eyes can be difficult in some of these places with restrictive laws and invasive policies in place. Despite this, though, people...
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Artificial intelligence is increasingly more pervasive, across many industries. The technology, however, does pose some risks, such as the capability to help create bioweapons or other nefarious things. AI technology can also be used for deepfakes, which the Federal Communications Commission is trying to quell with...
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Meta’s WhatsApp says it will soon bring other encrypted messaging apps into one handy dandy location, making finding users a lot easier. The upcoming change is not all WhatsApp’s doing, however, as European lawmakers deemed Meta, the parent of WhatsApp, to be one of six “gatekeeper” companies that fall under the...
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It's sort of a sad state of things that your smartphone is almost assuredly tracking your every action and movement, and then sending that data to nebulous remote services. Perhaps that's not surprising to, but this really shouldn't be the way things are. Unfortunately, that's the world we live in today, however. Your...
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It might not be nice, but it might just be fair to call anyone who uses Google Chrome's Incognito Mode and then expects real privacy a "rube," given that Google is a company that makes an incredible amount of money on selling other people's information. We're not saying that, though, and the reason is simply because...
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For millions of Chrome browser users, third-party tracking cookies are no longer part of the deal while surfing the internet. That's because Google has finally begun implementing its plan to phase out third-party cookies, albeit initially for a small fraction of Chrome users—just 1%. While that may seem like a...
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No one likes to lose things, so Facebook's new "Link History" sounds okay at first. It's a new feature rolling out to the Android and iOS mobile apps that promises to keep a list of the links you've recently visited from Facebook. Is this a rare instance of benevolence from Mark Zuckerberg? Nope, Link History might...
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In a move designed to enhance the privacy of user data, Google is changing how some data is stored in Google Maps. The company remarked in a blog post that the change will store data from a user's Timeline locally on their actual phones, instead of Google's cloud.
The company says it wants users to “spend less time...
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