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.
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…
Following the announcement that the Siri grading program will return, Apple today has published a new FAQ document further outlining its privacy policies around Siri. The support document offers more detail on the Siri grading program, as well as other steps Apple is taking to protect user privacy.
Apple today announced that it will be reinstating the Siri audio program later in the year with some new policy changes. Apple apologized for how it previously handled user data.
The company says it will no longer retain audio recordings by default. Users will have to opt in if they want Apple to use voice samples, and Apple will aim to delete any recordings that are inadvertent activations.
If you were hoping to use Facebook’s Clear History tool, telling the social network to forget everything it knows about your browsing history and app usage, a court order means you won’t be able to do so anytime soon…
Apple CEO Tim Cook has written a piece for Italy’s most popular newspaper, mourning the passing of Europe’s head of data protection, Giovanni Buttarelli.
Buttarelli took the lead on the introduction of the world’s toughest privacy regulations, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). GDPR requirements are so stringent that even Apple had to boost its privacy efforts in order to comply …
Apple, Google, and Mozilla are all taking action to block state surveillance of web users through their respective browsers…
A court filing says that Facebook warned staff of the risk that led to a huge security breach that last year allowed hackers to access almost 29 million accounts — but failed to warn its users…
After Apple and Google have come under fire for using humans to review recordings of users captured by their voice assistants, a report today from Bloomberg highlights that Facebook was doing the same until roughly a week ago.
A number of location-based dating apps can be used to track the real-time locations of users, armed with nothing more than their username and the official API…
A federal appeals court has given the go-ahead to a class action lawsuit that claims Facebook face recognition for photos is illegal in Illinois…
A new report today from The Information details a change coming with iOS 13 that will force WhatsApp and others to redesign their messaging apps. The small but notable change has to do with how third-party apps use iOS to make internet voice calls with the PushKit VoIP API and also run in the background which will be restricted come this fall.
After launching for a limited amount of users back in June, Guardian Firewall + VPN for iOS has now been made available to the public. The popular app features both intelligent firewall and VPN functionality, gives alerts when companies try to track you, and more. If you’d like to test out the app before paying for a subscription, there’s also a free lite version.
Apple has announced in a statement that it is suspending the program which entailed human Apple contractors listening and grading a sample of Siri responses for quality control.
The company is conducting a thorough internal review of its Siri policies, and it will reinstate (a presumably different form of) Siri grading when it is finished. When Siri grading returns, users will be able to choose to opt-out of grading.
A recent report from CenturyLinkQuote looks at the amount of money Americans lost last year in online scams that were reported to the FBI. Along with the massive total of $2.4 billion in losses, the report breaks down which states had the highest victim rates and highest average losses per victim.
A report from The Guardian last week highlighted privacy concerns about Siri recordings being listened to by its contractors. While Apple has responded by saying that only 1% of Siri activations are reviewed by humans and that Apple IDs are not associated with them, many users are asking for the ability to opt-out of Siri recordings being saved to Apple’s servers.