Americans have wanted a federal privacy law for years but intensive lobbying by the tech industry and general incompetence by our federal legislators has repeatedly thwarted that desire. Well, in 2024, it’s possible that we may finally get a strong federal privacy law. The FTC Just Prescribed a Can of Whoop Ass on Health Data … Read more
Photo: Caitlin McGarry / Gizmodo Even if some of us have no idea what online cookies are, we accept a ton of them every day. Not only are they a privacy concern, but they also take up memory on your device. Can This iPad Replace Your Laptop? Refer to this helpful guide for a detailed … Read more
Apple has rolled out an update to iMessage encryption, the likes of which includes post-quantum protections that the company calls the “most significant cryptographic security upgrade” in the messenger’s history. The M3 MacBook Pro: Made Dark for Halloween In a blog post published Wednesday, Apple announced the arrival of PQ3, a new encryption protocol designed to … Read more
Photo: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg (Getty Images) For those who care about digital privacy, few apps are more beloved than Signal. For years, the end-to-end encrypted messenger has offered some of the best privacy protections on the web. Strong encryption, zero subscription fees, and virtually no data collection? What’s not to like? The FTC Just Prescribed a … Read more
Lonely on Valentine’s Day? AI can help. At least, that’s what a number of companies hawking “romantic” chatbots will tell you. But as your robot love story unfolds, there’s a tradeoff you may not realize you’re making. According to a new study from Mozilla’s *Privacy Not Included project, AI girlfriends and boyfriends harvest shockingly personal … Read more
Photo: Wachiwit (Shutterstock) Facebook users reported hearing a bizarre chirping sound while using the social media platform on mobile devices on Tuesday. In fact, many people thought it was something they did wrong or a setting they accidentally changed. But it’s not your fault, according to the company. Russian Court Says Meta Is “Extremist Organization” … Read more
Ring, Amazon’s home surveillance company, will stop letting police departments request video footage directly from users in its app, the company said in a blog post on Wednesday. However, that doesn’t change the massive amount of footage the company, itself, shares with law enforcement. Ring has historically shared tons of footage with cops, and Amazon … Read more
One week ago today, Google disabled tracking cookies for 30 million Chrome users, amounting to just 1% of the 3 billion people who use the internet’s most popular browser. By the end of the year, Google will block these cookies entirely and replace them with a new tracking system that’s a bit more private called … Read more
Google Just Disabled Cookies for 30 Million Chrome Users. Here’s How to Tell If You’re One of Them. But me love cookies!Photo: VIAVAL TOURS / Shutterstock.com (Shutterstock) Mr. Tweet Fumbles Super Bowl Tweet Today marks the first of many upcoming moments of silence in Google’s years-long plan to kill cookies. As of this morning, the … Read more
Today marks the first of many upcoming moments of silence in Google’s years-long plan to kill cookies. As of this morning, the Chrome web browser disabled cookies for 1% of its users, about 30 million people. By the end of the year, cookies will be gone in Chrome forever—sort of. No Google AI Search, I … Read more