Privacy

The IRS announced plans Monday to back away from a third-party facial recognition system that collects biometric data from U.S. taxpayers who want to log in to the agency’s online portal. The IRS says it will abandon the technology, built by a contractor called ID.me, in the coming weeks. The

What does Meta/Facebook’s favorite new phrase to bandy around in awkward earnings calls — as it warns of “regulatory headwinds” cutting into its future growth — actually mean when you unpack it? It’s starting to look like this breezy wording means the law is fina

Remember the backlash over that impossible-to-understand privacy policy update pushed out by WhatsApp last year? A consumer protection complaint over the messaging platform’s aggressive push to make users accept impenetrable terms changes related to its use of their data continues to rumble

After a number of stories in recent weeks have highlighted how Apple’s AirTags are being used for stalking purposes, the company has today updated its existing “Personal Safety User Guide” with new information on what consumers should do in the event they find an unknown AirTag in

Washington, DC, Texas, Washington state and Indiana announced the latest lawsuit against Big Tech Monday, alleging that Google deceived users by collecting their location data even when they believed that kind of tracking was disabled. “Google falsely led consumers to believe that changing th

German publishers are the latest to band together to try to derail or at least delay Google’s “Privacy Sandbox” plan to end support for tracking cookies in Chrome via a complaint to the European Commission. The Financial Times reports that hundreds of German publishers, advertiser

As the legal uncertainty in Europe clouding use of US cloud services cranks up, Google has responded by firing up its lobbying engines to call for US and European lawmakers to get a move on and come up a new rubberstamp to grease transatlantic data flows as usual as the bloc’s regulators fina

Over 30 civil society organizations, pro-privacy tech businesses and European startups are making a last-ditch pitch to try to convince EU lawmakers to put stricter limits on surveillance advertising as a major vote looms on an update to the bloc’s digital rules. The European Parliament will

A decision by Austria’s data protection watchdog upholding a complaint against a website related to its use of Google Analytics does not bode well for use of US cloud services in Europe. The decision raises a big red flag over routine use of tools that require transferring Europeans’ pe

The European Union’s chief data protection supervisor has sanctioned the European Parliament for a series of breaches of the bloc’s data protection rules. The decision sounds a loud warning to sites and services in the region about the need for due diligence of personal data flows and t

There has been a rather fervent acceleration in planned biometric data collection in recent months. If you're not worried about it, you should be. In fact, silly as it sounds, try being more worried about it than seems normal. After all, for-profit biometric data collection has undergone an ast

Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of the popular encrypted communications app Signal, announced today in a blog post that he is stepping down in a move that he says has been in the works for several months. While unexpected, the move seems tied in some way to the rise of MobileCoin, a cryptocurrency s

Chalk another one up for decentralized enforcement: France’s data protection watchdog has slapped headline-grabbing fines on Facebook and Google for faing to respect local (and pan-EU) cookie consent rules. Today, the CNIL said it’s fined Google €150M (~$170M) and Facebook €60M (~$6

Take the ability to connect to nearly all smart home devices, mix in some smart rules and sprinkle on a raft of security features and you’ve got a pretty decent idea of what Homey offers. Instead of beaming all your data to whoever your smart home provider is, Homey promises to keep your data