#privacy

#privacy

Contact import has always been the most effective way to find people you know on a social app, but it's also been poorly implemented or abused by platforms. Even with encryption, phone numbers have been leaked or brute-forced, sold to spammers, or used by platforms for dubious purposes. We weren't willing to accept that risk, so we developed a fundamentally more secure approach that protects your data.

ACR in its simplest terms is an uninvited, invisible digital invader. This software can capture screenshots of a user's television display every 500 milliseconds, monitor viewing activity in real time, and transmit that information back to the company without the user's knowledge or consent. The companies then sell that consumer information to target ads across platforms for a profit. This technology puts users' privacy and sensitive information, such as passwords, bank information, and other personal information at risk.

Shoshana Zuboff (New England, U.S., 1951) joins the video call from her home in Maine, in the northeastern United States, on the border with Canada, where the cold is relentless at this time of year. She sips tea to warm her throat and apologizes for being late; her schedule is so packed these days that it was impossible to find an opportunity to do this interview in person.

I tend to use different search engines for different purposes. For example, when I want better privacy, I use DuckDuckGo. When shopping, I might use Amazon, and if I need AI, I might opt for Perplexity. In other words, multiple configured search engines are necessary. For most browsers, you configure individual search engines. Some browsers even allow you to configure a search engine such that it'll be used by first typing a keyword in the address bar (such as duck for DuckDuckGo).

As someone with a child in the US, this new Trump threat to scrutinise tourists' social media is concerning. Providing my user name would be OK the authorities would get sick of scrolling through chicken pics before they found anything critical of their Glorious Leader but what if I have to hand over my phone at the border, as has happened to some travellers already?

My friend recently told me a story over drinks that I haven't been able to get out of my head. Her two friends, let's call them Alice and Bob, were something of a lynchpin couple in her friend group. They'd been dating for a few years and moved in together almost immediately. Everyone knew them as an item that did pretty much everything together. Alice and Bob were more like AliceandBob, really.

EU needs to find its backbone and tell the US president to take his National Security Strategy and shove it

The identities of French spies are among the Republic's most closely-guarded secrets. Revealing them is even a criminal offense. Yet, with just a little technical know-how, one can track down the home addresses of certain agents, and thereby discover their identities, daily routines and even those of their loved ones, all of which represent risks to their safety and that of their families and their agencies.

Retro, a friend-focused, photo-sharing app with roughly a million users, is adding a new feature that lets you time-travel through your old photo memories from your phone's Camera Roll. While the app today offers a way to share photos of what's happening during your week with a private group of friends, or create shared albums, this latest addition, dubbed "Rewind," is private to you - unless you choose to share the photos with others.

Privacy advocates have always argued that Google is an advertising company that just happens to build a browser. Most of us shrugged that off because, well, Chrome is fast, familiar, and hard to abandon. But Manifest V3 really does change the landscape. Google frames it as a technical upgrade for security and performance. Yet the underlying mechanics point to a different goal: reducing user control in ways that closely align with an ad-driven business model.

When you talk about kids and new cutting-edge technology that's not very well understood, the question is: How much are the kids being experimented on?

It applies to the powers of data collection by the Customs and Border Police (CBP). If the proposed changes are adopted after the 60-day consultation, then millions of travellers to the U.S. will be forced to use a U.S. government mobile phone app, submit their social media from the last five years and email addresses used in the last ten years, including of family members. They're also proposing the collection of DNA.

"The business is changing, and I just started Instagramming them. It went from tons of people trying to get this photo to, I put it on there, and I'm not gonna get chased around as much," she said. "What I learned from somebody who is much more famous than me, is that the more you put the photos up, the lower the bounty is and the less harassment you get."

Traditionally, your browser treats cookies like a single, massive community bucket. If you visit Facebook, they drop a cookie in the bucket. If you then visit a completely unrelated tech site that uses Facebook's tracking pixels, Facebook can reach into that shared bucket, see the cookie they left there earlier, and recognize you. They now know you like those AirPods and link that data to your profile. Now, multiply this by thousands of data brokers, and you have the modern surveillance economy.

"Authoritarian" moves by Donald Trump's administration to ask travellers, including from Ireland, to hand over five years of social media history have been branded "a massive overreach" that would damage relations with the US.

The next time someone visits the US, customs may ask to see their passport, their Facebook feed, and all of their Instagram posts. The United States maintains a list of 42 countries whose citizens are allowed to enter without a visa, but visitors from those nations may soon have to provide five years' worth of their social media history in order to gain entry.

If you want a cheap gift that feels expensive, the Echo Spot is a great pick. The versatile smart display can handle dozens of everyday tasks, and right now it's back at its all-time low of $44.99 ($35 off) at Amazon, Target, and Best Buy. That actually beats its Black Friday and Cyber Monday pricing and marks the first time it's dropped this low since Prime Day.

A stalkerware maker who was banned from the surveillance industry after a data breach that exposed the personal information of its customers, as well as the people they were spying on, will not be able to go back to selling the invasive software, according the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. The FTC denied a request to cancel that ban made by Scott Zuckerman, the founder of consumer spyware company Support King and its subsidiaries SpyFone and OneClickMonitor.

When someone loses weight, it often becomes a public event. People notice, comment, and-almost reflexively-ask how. The question implies that whatever method they used is worth knowing, replicating, or admiring. It positions weight loss as an achievement, a moral victory, a signal of discipline or virtue. But what if it isn't? What if their weight loss came from illness, grief, stress, or depression? What if it involved a medication that finally brought balance to their body chemistry-or, conversely, an eating disorder or unhealthy behaviors?

The government surveils you every time you drive through San Jose, collecting a trove of highly revealing data that police search thousands of times per month without ever seeking a warrant. It's an unchecked police power, an end run around judicial oversight and a blatant privacy invasion. It's also a violation of the California Constitution. That's why we at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, with ACLU of Northern California, have sued the city, its police chief and its mayor.

the Indian government is reviewing a proposal by the telecom industry to require smartphone companies to keep satellite location tracking enabled at all times for better tracking. The report states the Indian government, for years, has been concerned about its agencies not getting precise locations when legal requests are made to telecom operators during investigations, and that's because the telecom firms are limited to using cellular tower data.

There are two main components of your Discord Checkpoint 2025. The first is a recap of your usage and interactions on the platform. Here's some of what your Discord Checkpoint 2025 will show you: How many messages you sent How many minutes in voice chat you spent How many emojis you posted What other Discord users you spent the most time with The servers you used the most

Health data represents one of the most valuable types of personal data available to companies, whether this be for the training of AI (it is worth noting that the AI health care market is estimated to reach a value of around $187bn by 2030, the development of digital health technology (such as wearables, estimated to be valued at around $76bn by 2030)

Next is the ability to attach files in the new search bar for AI to translate, summarize, or explain. This includes support for PDFs and images. To attach a file, open the Ask AI interface, tap the "+" icon, and select a document or photo from your Android device. You can also click a picture with the device's camera and upload it directly.

"With the launch of Proton Sheets, we are not just closing the productivity gap - we are reclaiming data sovereignty for businesses and individuals alike," said Anant Vijay Singh, Head of Product at Proton Drive. "The reality today is that most spreadsheet tools come from Big Tech giants whose entire business models are built on exploiting user data. Now, with AI woven deeply into these platforms, the risks have escalated exponentially."