Privacy is a growing concern in today’s world. Follow along with all our coverage related to privacy, security, what Apple and other companies are doing to keep your information safe, and what steps you can take to keep your information private.
9to5Mac Security Bite is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Making Apple devices work-ready and enterprise-safe is all we do. Our unique integrated approach to management and security combines state-of-the-art Apple-specific security solutions for fully automated Hardening & Compliance, Next Generation EDR, AI-powered Zero Trust, and exclusive Privilege Management with the most powerful and modern Apple MDM on the market. The result is a totally automated Apple Unified Platform currently trusted by over 45,000 organizations to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.
Plastic webcam covers—especially of the sliding kind—boomed in popularity sometime in the 2010s as a low-tech way to keep hackers from eavesdropping on compromised machines. The concern felt justified at the time. But by 2020, Apple was beginning to issue warnings that those covers aren’t actually needed and can even damage a MacBook’s display.
For this Security Bite, let’s set aside our tin-foil hats and talk about how webcam covers don’t meaningfully improve privacy, could cause features like True Tone to not work properly, and are far more likely to damage your screen than stop someone from spying on you.
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A privacy flaw in Apple’s Hide My Email feature means that your real email address can be discovered. A security researcher said that tests found 100% of generated addresses allowed an attacker to reveal the real email associated with the Apple account.
Tyler Murphy said that he discovered and reported the issue to Apple more than a year ago, but it still hasn’t been fixed, and he has now made the decision to go public …
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People commonly disclose all kinds of personal data to AI chatbots, including the highly inadvisable practice of asking them for health advice. In addition to the grave medical dangers of obtaining inaccurate advice, users are also running significant privacy risks.
Most AI chatbots have terms and conditions that allow any of your conversations with them to be used as training data, and often app terms that allow data to be collated and sold. Democrats now propose to update a privacy law to prevent the sale of health data …
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Apple recently introduced Personalized Collections in the App Store, which provides users with individually tailored recommendations for new apps they might enjoy.
Two security researchers have highlighted the extremely extensive analytics data the company is capturing in order to compile these recommendations, logging every tap you make …
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It’s more than 18 months since I wrote an opinion piece suggesting that while the wait for the new Siri is frustrating, the privacy payoff would be worth it.
A lot of time has passed since then, and of course user frustration at the ongoing delay has grown significantly. While goodwill has undoubtedly been lost, a recent announcement does provide some hope that privacy may still rescue the company’s tarnished reputation in AI …
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Act surprised! A new privacy study has found that data brokers and AI companies deliberately deceive consumers who attempt to opt out of the sale of their personal data. An audit of the opt-out processes of dozens of major data companies found that they employ a variety of underhand practices – including fake forms …
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Discord is now using end-to-end encryption for all voice and video calls across all platforms: desktop, mobile, web and console.
It’s been a very long time coming – the company first shared its privacy plans back in 2023 and began the migration process a year later …
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Earlier this year, Apple launched its newest iPhone privacy feature—Limit Precise Location—but only a few carriers supported it initially. Following iOS 26.5’s launch this week, Apple now says that the feature is available for many more users.
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The FBI and NSA jointly announced that Russia has been systematically compromising the security of home and small office routers since at least 2024.
They obtained a court order to allow them to remotely reset thousands of affected devices in the US, but if yours is one of them, it needs to be urgently replaced …
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Problems with Venmo privacy were first highlighted way back in 2018. A security researcher demonstrated how the API could be used to obtain an alarming amount of personal data about users of the digital cash app.
A related vulnerability was still in place in 2024 when it was used to highlight potentially embarrassing information about JD Vance. A new report says that the company is very belatedly fixing the problem …
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Apple and Meta are publicly opposing a new Canadian bill that they say could force tech companies to break encryption or build backdoors into their products. Here are the details.
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The US Supreme Court is hearing arguments about the legality of so-called geofence warrants, sometimes also referred to as “digital dragnets” because they capture the location data of a great many innocent citizens in addition to criminal suspects.
In a practice raising obvious privacy concerns, tech giants are increasingly being asked by law enforcement to identify all of the smartphone users present at a particular location at the time a crime was committed …
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Around 3 million user photos from dating app OkCupid were used for AI training by a third-party company in direct contravention of the company’s own privacy policy …
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Apple has updated its Developer Program License Agreement with new rules on how third-party accessories must handle forwarded notifications and Live Activities. Here are the details.
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A VPN company has put together AI chatbot privacy ratings based on the data collection practices of the ten most popular AI chatbots in the App Store.
The iPhone chatbots are ranked worst to best, and there are no prizes for guessing which of the competing apps collects the most personal data …
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Meta claimed for years that it was technically challenging to implement end-to-end encryption across Facebook Messenger and Instagram DMs, but back in 2023 said that it had resolved those issues.
Unfortunately, the company has now made a U-turn on Instagram direct messages, and that’s bad news for all of us …
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The tech industry is currently in the middle of a rather gradual security transition from usernames and passwords to passkeys.
Passkeys are far more secure as online services don’t store your username and password, but Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says that the use of Face ID and Touch ID has an additional benefit …
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Both the Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) have confirmed that they’re buying location data of US citizens from data brokers without warrants.
Senator Ron Wyden has described this as both “dangerous” and an “outrageous” privacy abuse of the Fourth Amendment …
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9to5Mac Security Bite is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Making Apple devices work-ready and enterprise-safe is all we do. Our unique integrated approach to management and security combines state-of-the-art Apple-specific security solutions for fully automated Hardening & Compliance, Next Generation EDR, AI-powered Zero Trust, and exclusive Privilege Management with the most powerful and modern Apple MDM on the market. The result is a totally automated Apple Unified Platform currently trusted by over 45,000 organizations to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.
Meta quietly updated its Instagram Help Center recently announcing that end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) messaging will no longer be supported on the platform after May 8, 2026. If you have encrypted chats, you will want to export them before the deadline.
The company’s official reasoning: low adoption. “Very few people were opting in to end-to-end encrypted messaging in DMs, so we’re removing this option from Instagram in the coming months,” a Meta spokesperson said. “Anyone who wants to keep messaging with E2EE can easily do that on WhatsApp.”
That explanation could be technically true, but still a little hard to take seriously…
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TikTok is setting itself apart from most other online platforms that offer messaging by stating that it won’t be introducing end-to-end encryption to ensure the privacy of direct messages.
This means that the company will be able to read messages sent between users, which is likely to cause concerns even after its US operations were separated from its Chinese owner …
Update: Added comment from TikTok below
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A new report says that video feeds from Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses are sent for review by human data annotators in Kenya, and that the footage includes sensitive content that is supposed to be excluded.
Whistleblowers says that the video seen by third-party contractors used by Meta includes everything from people having sex to bank cards …
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You may recall that way back in 2017, the WPA2 encryption standard used by most Wi-Fi routers at the time was cracked and had to be replaced with a new version, WPA3. Now a new attack method dubbed AirSnitch means that Wi-Fi encryption on most networks can be bypassed in order to access all of the traffic passing through the router.
Almost all routers are vulnerable, so there are three steps you should take in order to protect yourself, with the greatest risk occurring through use of public Wi-Fi hotspots …
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9to5Mac Security Bite is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Making Apple devices work-ready and enterprise-safe is all we do. Our unique integrated approach to management and security combines state-of-the-art Apple-specific security solutions for fully automated Hardening & Compliance, Next Generation EDR, AI-powered Zero Trust, and exclusive Privilege Management with the most powerful and modern Apple MDM on the market. The result is a totally automated Apple Unified Platform currently trusted by over 45,000 organizations to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.
Much like the infamously useless “close door” button in an elevator, reporting spam on an iPhone or Mac often feels like a placebo. This skepticism isn’t exclusive to Apple either. There is widespread distrust of reporting features in general. The issue largely stems from a lack of transparency. Because users rarely see a noticeable decline in junk mail after hitting “report,” many assume the button does nothing and eventually stop using it altogether.
While Apple does provide a great support document for how to make reports, it doesn’t explain exactly what it does with these reports to improve its security prowess. Allow me to shed some light here…
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When Amazon announced a wider rollout of a surveillance feature to help Ring smart doorbells locate lost dogs, it was immediately seen as a precursor to using the feature to identify people.
That the company did in fact plan to do this has now been confirmed by a leaked email which Ring has admitted is genuine …
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