Privacy technologies

Privacy technologies

Spyware is one of the top threats to your mobile security and can severely impact your handset's performance if you are unlucky enough to become infected. It is a type of malware that typically lands on your iPhone or Android phone through malicious mobile apps or through phishing links, emails, and messages. While appearing to be a legitimate software package or useful utility, spyware will operate quietly in the background to monitor your movements,

Google provided a major breakthrough in the investigation into the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie when it surfaced video of an apparent intruder entering her home. The 84-year-old mother of Today Show host Savannah Guthrie has been missing since February 1st. The Nest camera at her front door was removed, and because investigators said she didn't pay for a premium subscription, the footage was presumed lost.

There are few things everyone can rally behind as much as finding a lost dog. But what if that mission is actually a workaround for mass surveillance? That's the question many people are asking following a Super Bowl commercial from Ring, Amazon's doorbell camera and home security brand. The 30-second video shows a series of missing dog posters and claims that 10 million pets go missing every year.

Now, you can choose an image and quickly request its deletion. Just click on the three dots that appear on the image. From there, choose "remove result" and then "It shows a sexual image of me." Other choices include the picture shows a person under 18 and that it has your personal information. If you choose the initial option then you will also be asked whether it contains a real image or deepfake. There's also an option to submit multiple photos at once.

There are people on the Internet who want to know all about you! Unfortunately, they don't have the best of intentions, but Google has some handy tools to address that, and they've gotten an upgrade today. The "Results About You" tool can now detect and remove more of your personal information. Plus, the tool for removing non-consensual explicit imagery (NCEI) is faster to use. All you have to do is tell Google your personal details first-that seems safe, right?

Young people are not emotionally, cognitively or socially mature enough to manage ­unlimited exposure to internet content. They have not developed the skills and attributes for self-regulation, so expecting them to be able to do something they are unable to do is setting them up for failure. While the exposure to inappropriate content is a real and present concern, we must also be aware that spending excessive time online compromises the development of social interaction skills and emotional resilience.

You may have noticed that many European Union (EU) governments and agencies, worried about ceding control to untrustworthy US companies, have been embracing digital sovereignty. Those bodies are turning to running their own cloud and services instead of relying on, say, Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. If you prize your privacy and want to control your own services, you can take that approach as well.

We live in a time where privacy is something we actually have to work to enjoy. Achieving a level of privacy we once had takes work, and you need to start thinking beyond a single desktop, laptop, tablet, or phone -- all the way to your LAN. Before I scare you all off, understand that this starts on the desktop and extends to the LAN. By beefing up both your devices and your network, you'll achieve a level of privacy that you wouldn't otherwise have.

Mobile Fortify, now used by United States immigration agents in towns and cities across the US, is not designed to reliably identify people in the streets and was deployed without the scrutiny that has historically governed the rollout of technologies that impact people's privacy, according to records reviewed by WIRED. The Department of Homeland Security launched Mobile Fortify in the spring of 2025 to "determine or verify" the identities of individuals stopped or detained by DHS officers during federal operations, records show.

Global Privacy Control is a browser-level signal that allows users to express-prior to any interaction with a website-their decision to opt out of the sale or sharing of their personal data. To meet these evolving legal requirements, Axeptio now integrates GPC signal detection and processing through a new feature available for projects using a CCPA banner, a prerequisite for remaining compliant in the United States.

Catch up quick: Researchers reported last month that bondu, an AI-powered conversational toy company, inadvertently exposed children's chat transcripts and personal data through a publicly accessible portal. Bondu, which allows parents to check their children's conversations, said it took down the exposed portal and relaunched it the next day with authentication measures, according to Wired. Driving the news: New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan, the ranking member of the Senate's Joint Economic Committee, is now asking bondu to explain how the exposure occurred.

The agency is flush with cash; it now has a larger budget than the FBI. To the point that ICE has, in fact, acquired two mobile data-capture companies, including Penlink, a longtime Department of Homeland Security vendor. The company tracks and maps purchasable or scrapable data from data brokers, pictures or videos posted on social media and geo-fencing, to name a few. Penlink's tech can even delve into or extract info from someone's phone, such as contacts, calendar events, chat messages and more.

Earlier this month, Joseph Thacker's neighbor mentioned to him that she'd preordered a couple of stuffed dinosaur toys for her children. She'd chosen the toys, called Bondus, because they offered an AI chat feature that lets children talk to the toy like a kind of machine-learning-enabled imaginary friend. But she knew Thacker, a security researcher, had done work on AI risks for kids, and she was curious about his thoughts.