#data-privacy

#data-privacy

Ad fraud isn't just a marketing problem anymore - it's a full-scale threat to the trust that powers the digital economy. In 2024 alone, fraud in mobile advertising jumped 21%, while programmatic ad fraud drained nearly $50 billion from the industry. During data privacy week 2026, these numbers serve as a reminder that ad fraud is not only about wasted budgets - it's also about how consumer data moves, gets tracked, and sometimes misused across complex ecosystems.

Akido Labs, a Los Angeles-based health care technology company that runs clinics and street medicine teams in California, plans to start using its AI model on homeless and housing insecure patients in the Bay Area next month. The program generates questions for outreach workers to ask patients and then suggests diagnoses, medical tests and even medication, which a human doctor then signs off on remotely.

But as schools seek to navigate into the age of generative AI, there's a challenge: Schools are operating in a policy vacuum. While a number of states offer guidance on AI, only a couple of states require local schools to form specific policies, even as teachers, students, and school leaders continue to use generative AI in countless new ways. As a policymaker noted in a survey, "You have policy and what's actually happening in the classrooms-those are two very different things."

ByteDance, TikTok's Chinese parent company, recently established a separate American entity to run the app's U.S. operations. This restructuring aims to separate U.S. TikTok from its Chinese parent, addressing concerns about data privacy and foreign control. The move came after years of pressure from lawmakers, who feared the Chinese government's potential access to Americans' data. In 2024, Congress enacted a law, mandating that TikTok's U.S. operations be separated from ByteDance.

The top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Finance Committee are asking the Social Security Administration to elaborate on a recent court filing which stated that SSA doesn't know the full extent of agency data accessed and shared by the Department of Government Efficiency. In a letter to SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano, Sens. Michael Crapo, R-Idaho, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked for a briefing on the recent court disclosure, writing that "we take very seriously the SSA's stewardship of any personally identifiable information (PII) in its purview."

As demand grows for privacy-first enterprise AI that can run without sending sensitive data to the cloud, SpotDraft has raised $8 million from Qualcomm Ventures in a strategic Series B extension to scale its on-device contract review tech for regulated legal workflows. The extension values SpotDraft at around $380 million, the startup told TechCrunch, nearly double its $190 million post-money valuation following its $56 million Series B in February of last year.

At this pivotal moment for AI, we can't make the same mistake we did with social media, when companies used our kids as guinea pigs and helped fuel a youth mental health crisis in the U.S. and around the world, Common Sense Media founder and CEO James Steyer said in a statement. Kids and teens need AI guardrails now, he added. That's why we will pursue every avenue, from the legislature to the ballot.

Today, I'm talking with Alex Lintner, who is the CEO of technology and software solutions at Experian, the credit reporting company. Experian is one of those multinationals that's so big and convoluted that it has multiple CEOs all over the world, so Alex and I spent quite a lot of time talking through the Decoder questions just so I could understand how Experian is structured, how it functions, and how the kinds of decisions Alex makes actually work in practice.

as soon as reasonably practical

It transforms Search into an experience that feels uniquely yours by connecting the dots across your Google apps, said Robby Stein, vice president of product for Google search, in a blog post. Google, long dominant in online search, has faced new threats from artificial intelligence startups like OpenAI and Perplexity AI Inc., which offer alternative ways to look up information.

TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has been at the center of controversy in the U.S. for years now due to concerns about user data potentially being accessed by the Chinese government. As a result, U.S. users have often found themselves caught in the middle of this tension. Last year, the app experienced a temporary outage in the U.S. that left millions of users in suspense before it was quickly restored.

This is not a novelty feature. It's a strategic choice. And at scale, it represents something far more dangerous than a questionable product decision. WHY AI COMPANIES ARE ENCOURAGING INTIMACY Romance is the most powerful engagement mechanism ever discovered. A user who treats AI as a tool can leave. A user who treats it as a companion cannot. Emotional attachment produces longer sessions, repeat engagement, dependency, and vast amounts of deeply personal data.

Statistics from the 2025 holiday shopping season clearly show that AI is playing a huge role in how people shop. But new research from retail payment platform Adyen found that many consumers are ready for AI to become their personal shopper. Just over half-51%-said they're open to letting AI take over the entire shopping process, including making final purchases. Millennials are the most willing to let agents do their shopping, with nearly three in five saying they are ready for such a shift.

UX is entering a new era. At the centre of every design conversation in 2026 lies a singular force: Artificial Intelligence. It is now so pervasive that even five-year-olds can explain its utility, while the AI natives of the new Beta generation are coming of age in a world where a conversational digital collaborator is not a feature but a baseline reality.

Identifying the best global expansion strategies isn't the only step AI companies should take to accelerate business growth and reach new audiences. It may be easier than ever to reach buyers on the other side of the world, but doing so brings its own set of challenges and hiccups. For starters, AI regulations differ by region, meaning that you have to know and abide by the rules in different regions.

Santa Cruz first signed its contract with Flock in 2024. Over the past several months, controversy around and opposition to the company has spread as reports about the use of the cameras' data has emerged. Demands to cease the use of Flock cameras grew when Santa Cruz police Chief Bernie Escalante confirmed that the city's Flock data had been accessed by out-of-state agencies.

Korea's data protection watchdog on Wednesday told e-commerce giant Coupang to stop publishing its own findings about a data breach that compromised the personal information of millions of users, warning that unverified statements could mislead users and undermine an ongoing official investigation. The Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) said Coupang had disclosed information on its app and website that authorities have not confirmed through a formal probe.

For an annual fee of roughly $200,000 SANDAG grants immigration enforcement agencies, including Customs and Border Protection (CBP), access to the database, which is known as ARJIS. The database contains information from every law enforcement agency in San Diego County - which includes traffic citations, arrest records, field interviews, a local jail census and some driver license records. Local police agencies have shared data with their federal counterparts through ARJIS for decades.

OpenAI and training data company Handshake AI are asking third-party contractors to upload real work that they did in past and current jobs, according to a report in Wired. This appears to be part of a larger strategy across AI companies that are hiring contractors to generate high-quality training data in the hopes that this will eventually allow their models to automate more white-collar work.

California isn't the only state to enact stronger consumer privacy laws in recent years, but its Delete Requests and Opt-Out Platform (DROP) is the first of its kind. The tool is live now, though brokers won't begin processing submissions until August. Here's what to do now if you live in California-and some options for removing your information from data brokers if you don't.

The AI assistant has access to the most powerful models and strict security controls, but controversy after controversy has brought Grok into disrepute. How suitable is the solution for business use? The new business versions of Grok offer access to xAI's most advanced models: Grok 3, Grok 4, and Grok 4 Heavy. The setup is similar in every way to the business propositions of ChatGPT and Claude. Grok Business costs

Do you have what could be described as unusual living arrangements? Perhaps you live in communal housing, or a commune or with extended family. Maybe you have been living with friends for years and have no intention of changing this. We'd like to hear from you. Can you tell us how your unusual living arrangement came about? What do you like about it? What are the downsides? Would you recommend it? Share your experience

Earlier this month, Strava, the popular fitness-tracking app, released its annual "Year in Sport" wrap-up-a cutesy, animated series of graphics summarizing each user's athletic achievements. But this year, for the first time, Strava made this feature available only to users with subscriptions ($80 per year), rather than making it free to everyone, as it had been historically since the review's debut in 2016.

Whenever I hear about consumer data tracking, my half-century-old brain dredges up that Hall and Oates hit called "Private Eyes" with the refrain "they're watching you." I don't mean to incite Big Brother paranoia; I know I'm not being spied on everywhere I go, especially not in the seclusion of my home. But while using streaming devices, you can almost guarantee that your entertainment and advertisement preferences are being tracked.

"AI is reshaping the fabric of DevSecOps in telecommunications," the report reads. "Telcos are under intense pressure to modernize network infrastructure and offer profitable digital services. They're expected to transform into software-driven technology companies, yet still ensure security, reliability, and customer trust as they adopt AI and work to accelerate innovation. This balancing act - between speed, security, and new skill sets - is defining a pivotal moment for the next era of DevSecOps in telecommunications."