Encrypted email provider Protonmail has hailed a recent Swiss legal ruling as a “victory for privacy,” after winning a lawsuit that sees it exempted from data retention laws in the mountainous realm. From a report: Referring to a previous ruling that e…
In hearing with Snap, TikTok and YouTube, lawmakers tout new rules to protect kids online
Fallout from revelations around teen mental health on Instagram continues — and not just for Facebook. On Tuesday, policy reps from YouTube, Snap and TikTok faced Congress to talk about kids and online safety, marking the first time the latter two companies appeared in a major tech hearing. The hearing, held by the Senate Subcommittee […]
TikTok dodges questions about biometric data collection in Senate hearing
In its first-ever Congressional hearing, TikTok successfully dodged questions about what it plans to do with the biometric data its privacy policy permits it to collect on the app’s U.S. users. In an update to the company’s U.S. privacy policy in June, TikTok added a new section that noted the app “may collect biometric identifiers […]
‘Banning Anonymous Social Media Accounts Would Only Stifle Free Speech and Democracy’
Owen Jones, a British newspaper columnist and activist for the Labour Party, writes in an opinion piece for The Guardian: The aftermath of the horrific killing of Conservative MP David Amess should have been a moment for politicians and the public to u…
Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen, raises trust and security questions over its e2e encryption
Frances Haugen, one of (now) multiple Facebook whistleblowers who have come forward in recent years with damning testimony related to product safety, gave testimony in front of the UK parliament today — where, in one key moment, she was invited to clarify her views on end-to-end encryption following a report in the British newspaper the […]
Digital ID tech is moving fast. #GoodID will ensure it doesn’t break things
Robert Karanja Contributor Share on Twitter Robert Karanja is a Director of Responsible Technology and Africa Lead for Omidyar Network and is based in Nairobi, Kenya. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated many technological shifts – how many of us knew what Zoom was before last spring? Rapidly-developed mRNA COVID vaccines are themselves a case study […]
Snap says iOS privacy changes hit its ad business harder than expected
In an earnings call Thursday, Snap said that it failed to meet revenue expectations for its third quarter. Snap reported $1.07 billion in Q3 revenue, missing Wall Street’s hopes that the company would bring in $1.1 billion. The company notched 306 million daily active users, up from the 293 million it reported in Q2. That […]
Mark Zuckerberg named as defendant in Facebook privacy suit
Washington D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine has added Mark Zuckerberg to a lawsuit against Facebook over consumer privacy violations related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. “Our continuing investigation revealed that he was personally involved in decisions related to Cambridge Analytica and Facebook’s failure to protect user data,” Racine said of the decision to name Zuckerberg […]
A massive ‘stalkerware’ leak puts the phone data of thousands at risk
The private phone data of hundreds of thousands of people are at risk. Call records, text messages, photos, browsing history, precise geolocations and call recordings can all be pulled from a person’s phone because of a security issue in widely used consumer-grade spyware. But that’s about as much as we can tell you. TechCrunch repeatedly […]
7-Eleven Breached Customer Privacy By Collecting Facial Imagery Without Consent
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: In Australia, the country’s information commissioner has found that 7-Eleven breached customers’ privacy by collecting their sensitive biometric information without adequate notice or consent. From June 2…