#privacy

#privacy

The revelation stems from a data-sharing agreement signed last April by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, which allows U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to submit names and addresses of immigrants inside the U.S. illegally to the IRS for cross-verification against tax records. A declaration filed Wednesday by IRS Chief Risk and Control Officer Dottie Romo stated that the IRS was only able to verify roughly 47,000 of the 1.28 million names ICE requested.

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.

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,

The "Results about you" tool already allows users to remove Search results containing their phone number, email address, or home address, and it can now also be used to request the removal of results that include information such as a driver's license, passport, or Social Security number, the company said in the update Tuesday. You can access the tool in the Google app by tapping your Google account photo and selecting "Results about you."

BrowserCoPilot is designed to make your workflows easier and faster - and completely customized to you, your prompts, and your writing style. One useful example? Integrate the program directly to your inbox, and let it create one-click emails that use your phrasing and tone, and that gather context from your conversations. Or, write directly in the browser to revise or analyze documents using your saved prompts - or upload images and PDFs to interact with directly.

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.

Instagram introduced the Close Friends feature for Instagram Stories back in November 2018, and last September, we learned that WhatsApp was developing that same feature for its users. Now we've learnt that WhatsApp is also working on a Custom Lists feature for status updates, giving its users more privacy control. This revelation comes from the folks at WABetaInfo, who discovered this under-development Custom Lists feature in beta version 2.26.5.11 of WhatsApp for Android.

It seems that Amy is no fan of (or incapable of accessing) Occam's razor. Your story-the ostensible truth-makes at least a little more sense than the one Amy concocted, in which her husband cheated carelessly), but it is frustrating that when presented a wholly plausible story by multiple sources, Amy is opting for the one she wrote. You should consider that this might be above your pay grade.

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.

He said supermarket staff were unable to explain why he was being told to leave, and would only direct him to a QR code leading to the website of the firm Facewatch, which the retailer has hired to run facial recognition in some of its stores. He said when he contacted Facewatch, he was told to send in a picture of himself and a photograph of his passport before the firm confirmed it had no record of him on its database.

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.