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.
In the two years since Apple released Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention feature that keeps websites from tracking users around the web, it looks to have almost totally eliminated the ability for advertisers to market to specific demographics. A new report from The Information dives into how Apple’s offensive against ads has made things more difficult for advertisers while aiming for greater user privacy.
This week we learned that the iPhone 11 Pro still tracks location data even when users have turned the features off. Apple gave a limited response saying that “We do not see any actual security implications,” and that it was working as intended. However, now Apple has followed up with more details about why the iPhone 11 Pro is doing this and that it will include a toggle in an iOS update to stop location tracking totally.
Video sharing app TikTok, in the top five non-gaming iPhone apps thanks to its popularity with US teenagers, has been accused of violating child protection laws, potentially putting them at risk from predators.
Additionally, it is claimed in a new lawsuit that the app sends personal data to China, despite promising not to…
A security researcher has found that the iPhone 11 Pro still intermittently collects location data even when the user has blocked it from doing so.
Apple has seemingly admitted this, telling the researcher that this is ‘expected behavior’ …
Privacy concerns have been raised as it was revealed that Uber videos and audio records passengers on some rides…
A US judge has ruled that Customs and Border Protection and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents can no longer search travelers’ digital devices without good reason…
Web designer Joshua Maddux has found the iOS Facebook app activating the iPhone camera while scrolling his feed. He found the same issue on five separate devices, with others able to replicate. The same issue does not appear to be present in the Android app.
Maddux posted a video (below) showing the behavior…
Apple doesn’t just vaguely tout privacy as a feature in its products. It also has a dedicated website at apple.com/privacy that explains exactly how privacy features work in detail. Apple is updating its user-friendly privacy site today for the fourth year in a row with a focus on new benefits in iOS 13, iPadOS 13, watchOS 6, and more.
A new laser-based hack discovered for devices with MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems) microphones makes iPhone, HomePod, Google Home, Amazon Echo, and more vulnerable to line of sight attacks from up to several hundred feet away.
Facebook is suing an Israeli company for a WhatsApp hack which allowed various governments to spy on more than 1,000 users, reports Reuters. The attack was made possible by a security vulnerability in the app, later fixed.
WhatsApp sued Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group on Tuesday, accusing it of helping government spies break into the phones of roughly 1,400 users across four continents in a hacking spree whose targets included diplomats, political dissidents, journalists and senior government officials…
Apple has shared a new one-minute ad focused on iPhone privacy. The video highlights how much private information we have stored on smartphones and that it should belong to “you.”
Former FBI general counsel Jim Baker, who fought Apple on the San Bernardino iPhone case, says that he has now rethought some of his views on strong encryption.
Baker left the FBI last year to join a DC-based think tank, where his role is to write for the justice-focused blog, Lawfare…
The Justice Department has made a big-name hire for its tech giant antitrust investigation team. Although the government has consistently declined to name the companies under investigation, it is widely believed that they include Apple, Google and Facebook.
The latest senior hire from the private sector is a specialist in antitrust cases …
Facebook has expanded on comments CEO Mark Zuckerberg made about the company’s child protection plans when it switches to end-to-end encryption for its messaging apps as part of a belated focus on privacy…
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg would be in jail now under the terms of a proposed new privacy law which would hold company execs personally responsible for their company’s failings.
Under the proposed Mind Your Business Act, senior company executives could go to prison for anything up to 20 years…
Apple has found itself embroiled in yet another China-related controversy, as it appears to be sending user browsing data to Tencent, a Chinese company. That data includes the website visited and the IP address of the iOS user.
Apple has the best of intentions here – the data sharing is done to help protect users from fraudulent websites – but the fact that the company now uses a Chinese conglomerate to do so is raising eyebrows…
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has hit back at calls by the US, UK, and Australian governments to block end-to-end encryption in messaging apps. In doing so, he joins Apple, Google, Microsoft, and others who have previously stood up for strong encryption.
As we learned yesterday, the US attorney general and acting head of Homeland Security have co-signed an open letter with the UK’s secretary of state for the Home Office and Australia’s minister for Home Affairs…
After Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this past spring that the company would build end-to-end encryption into all of its products and services, government officials from the US, UK, and Australia are set to share a public letter requesting Facebook halts its plan to include total privacy for its apps. And with Apple’s iMessage already featuring end-to-end-encryption, could it be targeted soon as well?
A British iPhone owners’ lawsuit against Google filed in 2017 and which the High Court blocked in 2018 has today been reinstated.
The ‘representative action’ (the UK equivalent of a class action lawsuit) was seeking compensation for every Brit who used an iPhone between June 2011 and February 2012, with the campaign group behind it seeking £500 ($613) per user…
A new US-UK treaty due to be signed next month will compel Facebook to share encrypted messages with UK police…
Private Instagram Stories, which are supposed to be automatically deleted after 24 hours, can remain live for an extra day – with some photos remaining on the service even longer…
Apple and Google have both been ordered by the US Department of Justice to share personal details like names, phone numbers, and IP addresses for the users of a specific gun scope app. The request comes as the government is trying to stop breaches of weapons export regulations and has created a new round of privacy concerns.
Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) was introduced back in 2017 as a way to combat what the company described as overly-intrusive user tracking when browsing the web.
Ad tracking technology has become so pervasive that it is possible for ad tracking companies to recreate the majority of a person’s web browsing history. This information is collected without permission and is used for ad re-targeting, which is how ads follow people around the Internet.
The ad industry wasn’t happy about it, and something of a quarrel ensued. Today, it’s come up with a proposed alternative to ITP – but the idea is a hugely controversial one…
Protestors in Hong Kong are increasingly turning to the privacy of offline chat apps to reduce the risk of government surveillance…