#privacy

#privacy

Are people turning away from social media? But that tide might be finally, yet slowly, turning. My Gen Z students have recently been the ones telling me about social media "cleanses", whereby they take a break from it all for a prescribed duration, and "grayscaling" their socials (whereby color images turn to black and white, making them less eye-candy-esque-and all around having better cellphone etiquette such as putting it away during class and turning it off at night.

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.

Microsoft has made OneDrive agents generally available, allowing users to query multiple documents simultaneously through Copilot instead of just one at a time. Users can select up to 20 files and create an agent, saved as a .agent file in OneDrive. Rather than teasing information out of individual documents, Microsoft says users can make cross-document queries, including "What decisions have we made so far?" and "What risks keep coming up?" The agent then generates a response based on the documents' content.

Transphobic billionaire author J.K. Rowling has encouraged random people in the United Kingdom to photograph people in women's restrooms just in case they are transgender. Her advice is likely to result in the public harassment of cisgender women who don't fit people's preconceived notions of how a cis woman "should" look - such harassment has occurred many times in the past.

France may take additional steps to prevent minors from accessing social media platforms. As its government advances a proposed ban on social media use for anyone under age 15, some leaders are already looking to add further restrictions. During an appearance on public broadcast service Franceinfo, Minister Delegate for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Affairs Anne Le Hénanff said VPNs might be the next target.

For months, the federal government has faltered in its attempt to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the bipartisan bill signed by President Donald Trump that mandated the full release of the Justice Department's enormous trove of documents and media related to its investigation of Jeffrey Epstein. The Trump administration blew past the congressionally mandated deadline and is staggering its Epstein releases, dropping millions of pages in batches that have included some problematic redactions along with the expected disturbing revelations.

No doubt a response to the extreme digital connectivity of the world, but small and secret hotels have never felt more appealing than right now. The ultimate antidote to the 'see and be seen' scene. Extreme exclusivity is the name of the game here - where there's no waiting times for check-in, no scrounging around for a sun lounger, and staff greet you like family.

In this new season, I'm asking how the Trump White House is rewriting the rules of U.S. politics, and talking to Americans whose lives have been changed as a result. Today's episode examines the destruction of the civil service: the removal of professionals, and their replacement with loyalists. I've seen this kind of transformation before, in other failing democracies. Everyone suffers from the degradation of public services.

On a recent two-week trip to Japan with my fiancé - six cities, six hotels - every stay was gorgeous and perfectly appointed. We wanted for nothing. Except, in most cases, a proper bathroom door. Instead, we spent the better part of two weeks making accidental eye contact through frosted glass and translucent panels while one of us was otherwise occupied. A design choice, apparently. A test of intimacy, definitely.

AI in search is hard to avoid these days. Google's AI Overviews are everywhere (even in your inbox), and Microsoft has incorporated a Copilot chat option on Bing.com. Results are mixed, and hallucinations are still a problem. Large language models can help you dig deeper into a topic by asking follow-up questions, but on DuckDuckGo, it's clear that web users aren't interested.

can conceal online activity that local or national governments deem illegal - up to and including, say, circumventing ID checks for age verification. Consumers aren't helped by the sheer amount of duds sold in app stores right next to the best VPNs, especially when they're purposefully exploiting moments that have people rushing to shore up their online anonymity. If you've almost decided to start using a VPN, you may be wondering if the services you're looking at are actually safe.

While we are waiting for the final decision from Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia, I want to present some thoughts on the least resolved of the case's many issues, the hard parts the judge will be pondering. Actually, one hard part: trust. But I need to tell you a little about the case to make the trust issue clear.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is asking companies to provide information about "commercial Big Data and Ad Tech" products that would "directly support investigations activities," according to a request for information posted on Friday in the Federal Register, the US government's official journal for agency notices, rulemaking, and other public filings. The posting says that ICE is "working with increasing volumes of criminal, civil, and regulatory, administrative documentation from numerous internal and external sources."

You should do nothing. Absolutely nothing. Seeing as your childhood best friend's husband couldn't be bothered to hide his meds from his relatively new roommate - that would be you - we can safely assume he isn't hiding them from his husband. So, you can rest assured your childhood best friend knows what's up and you don't have a duty to warn him.

The federal government is demanding a black box operation on our soil,

Microsoft is under scrutiny after it emerged that the company shared encryption keys with US law enforcement, an uncommon move that has alarmed privacy experts and reignited the debate over who truly controls encrypted data. According to Forbes staffer Thomas Brewster, Microsoft provided the FBI with BitLocker recovery keys that allowed investigators to unlock data on three encrypted laptops. The request came through a valid search warrant issued in a federal investigation in Guam into alleged fraud in the island's COVID-19 unemployment assistance program.

A federal judge has voided a Department of Justice (DOJ) subpoena requiring Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C. to hand over private information on young patients receiving gender-affirming care (GAC). The ruling is just the latest roadblock in the DOJ's quest to end GAC for trans youth; however, the hospital stopped offering GAC last July in response to the current presidential administration's threats to defund institutions that offer such care.

In AI Mode, Personal Intelligence lets you connect Gmail and Google Photos to get AI results that are personalized based on your emails and photos. This is available for Google AI Pro and Google AI Ultra subscribers in English in the US, and it's opt-in as a Labs feature. To turn it on, go to Google Search, tap your profile, choose Search personalization, select Connected Content Apps, and then connect Workspace and Google Photos.