ICE and CBP’s Face-Recognition App Can’t Actually Verify Who People Are

ICE has used Mobile Fortify to identify immigrants and citizens alike over 100,000 times, by one estimate. It wasn't built to work like that—and only got approved after DHS abandoned its own privacy rules...

Privacy-Preserving Analytics for Smart Meter (AMI) Data: a Hybrid Approach to Comply with CPUC Privacy Regulations

Advanced Metering Infrastructure AMI data from smart electric and gas meters enables valuable insights for utilities and consumers, but also raises significant privacy concerns. In California, regulatory decisions CPUC D.11-07-056 and D.11-08-045 mandate strict privacy protections for customer...

Three privacy rules for 2025 (Lock and Code S06E02)

This week on the Lock and Code podcast… It’s Data Privacy Week right now, and that means, for the most part, that you’re going to see a lot of well-intentioned but clumsy information online about how to protect your data privacy. You’ll see articles about iPhone settings. You’ll hear acronyms for...

Indian Government Publishes Draft of Digital Personal Data Protection Bill 2022

The Indian government on Friday released a draft version of the much-awaited data protection regulation, making it the fourth such effort since it was first proposed in July 2018. The Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022, as it's called, aims to secure personal data, while also seeking...

France Fines Google, Facebook €210 Million Over Privacy Violating Tracking Cookies

The Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés CNIL, France's data protection watchdog, has slapped Facebook now Meta Platforms and Google with fines of €150 million $170 million and €60 million $68 million for violating E.U. privacy rules by failing to provide users with an easy opti...

Why Is Your Location Data No Longer Private?

The past month has seen one blockbuster revelation after another about how our mobile phone and broadband providers have been leaking highly sensitive customer information, including real-time location data and customer account details. In the wake of these consumer privacy debacles, many are lef...

What Will GDPR’s Impact Be On U.S. Consumer Privacy?

Will General Data Protection Regulation rules that go in effect on Friday impact the privacy of U.S. citizens? It depends who you ask, but the odds-on-favorite answer is “not by much.” The Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal in March led to a firehose of rebuke against social media platforms,...

Mozilla Tests DNS over HTTPS: Meets Some Privacy Pushback

The Mozilla Foundation is testing a new mechanism for securing domain name server traffic that uses the encrypted HTTPS channel. It is an attempt to speed up the internet, reduce the threat of man-in-the-middle attacks and keep prying eyes from monitoring what users do online. Starting in the nex...

Erosion of ISP Privacy Rules Sparks New Anti-Snooping Efforts

Since Congress voted to prevent the implementation of new ISP privacy protections there has been a committed and sometimes loud call for new rules. The fear is, without adequate safeguards in place, ISPs will be free to build detailed customer profiles that include names, addresses and online...

Trump Signs Repeal of ISP Privacy Rules

President Trump signed congressional legislation late Monday that repeals the Federal Communications Commission’s rules that would have prevented broadband ISPs from tracking and selling its customers’ online information. Despite opposition from civil liberties groups, democrats who voted against...

Verizon Rebuts Critics of Data-Collecting App

Verizon broke its silence today on what many believed would be a controversial rollout of an app made by Evie Labs called AppFlash, that had been identified by privacy advocates as spyware. The wireless carrier and broadband ISP defended itself Friday saying its critics were flat-out wrong. Veriz...

Trump's New FCC Chairman Lets ISPs Sell Your Private Data Without Your Consent

Bad News for privacy concerned people! It will be once again easier for Internet Service Providers ISPs to sell your personal data for marketing or advertisement purposes without taking your permission. Last October, the United States Federal Communications Commission FCC passed a set of privacy...

X (Formerly Twitter): Privacy Issue on protected tweets

Hello Twitter Security Team, Problem: Here is a privacy issue that break your privacy for protected tweets. Details: I have two accounts on twitter @dia2diab and @Dia2diabTest , from the first one i changed the settings of Tweet privacy to be "Protect my Tweets" and now if you access one of my...

Petition Seeks Removal of Alexander as NSA Director

It has been a rough few months for the National Security Agency, and specifically for its director, Gen. Keith Alexander. The leaks of details of NSA surveillance programs by former contractor Edward Snowden have taken over the news cycle this summer and put the agency’s business out in the open...

Popular Facebook Games Exposing User Data to Third Parties

Facebook privacy has been a recurring topic in the news. With the massive number of users on the site, the amount of personal data involved is enormous. Recently, it has been revealed that many popular third-party apps, mainly games like Farmville and Texas HoldEm Poker, are leaking the unique...

Using IE's Pre-set Privacy Rules

Alternatively, if you do not wish to receive warning dialogs when a site attempts to set a cookie, you can use Internet Explorer’s pre-set privacy rules. Click the Default button and then drag the slider up to High. Note that some web sites may fail to function properly with the High setting. In...