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.
App Tracking Transparency (ATT) is an Apple privacy initiative intended to allow iPhone owners greater control over how developers collect and use their data. However, the company was accused of treating its own apps more favourably than third-party ones.
The company has now agreed to apply new rules to how ATT works throughout the EU, following an investigation by the German antitrust regulator. Update: Apple statement added at the end of the piece …
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Apple recently released updates to three versions of macOS, stating that they fixed a serious screen sharing vulnerability in macOS Tahoe, Sequoia, and Sonoma.
At the time, there was no indication that the security flaw was being exploited in the wild, but now there is, so if you haven’t yet updated your Mac, you’ll want to do so asap …
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Security researchers last week revealed a flaw in Apple’s iCloud Private Relay feature. While this is supposed to protect your IP address from the websites you visit, a vulnerability means that it often fails to do so.
Any time there’s a problem with an Apple product or service, a class action lawsuit is sure to follow, and this is no exception …
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We learned yesterday that a judge is allowing a $32B lawsuit to proceed, alleging that Apple Photos face recognition violates a state privacy law.
It has been conflated with Meta’s use of face recognition, despite the two companies’ approaches falling at opposite ends of the privacy spectrum. In allowing the case to proceed, the court fundamentally misunderstands how the feature works …
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Apple will face a class-action lawsuit alleging it violated Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), in a case that could cost the company more than $30 billion. Here are the details.
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While it’s been reported that Apple is debating whether or not the camera in its upcoming glasses product should allow users to shoot photos and videos, DuckDuckGo is going one step further …
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The Consumer Federation of America (CFA) estimates that online scams cost Americans almost $150 billion last year – seven times the amount reported to the FBI.
The organization says that the number of cyber scams is increasing dramatically, and that most victims never report their losses to law enforcement …
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A California Apple user has filed a proposed class action accusing the company of misleading customers about Hide My Email’s privacy protections. Here are the details.
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Meta this week launched its own AI image model integrated into the Instagram app. While this might sound useful, it comes with rather a big privacy issue: by default, anyone can use your profile photo and posts as prompts for generative images.
You can fix this by flipping two toggles, but they’re pretty well hidden …
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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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