Privacy

Google’s plan to end support for third-party cookies in the Chrome browser and its Chromium engine is under investigation by the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). The antitrust regulator said today that it’s launched a probe under Chapter II of the U.K.’s Comp

Spyware maker NSO Group used real phone location data on thousands of unsuspecting people when it demonstrated its new COVID-19 contact-tracing system to governments and journalists, researchers have concluded. NSO, a private intelligence company best known for developing and selling governments a

A coalition of companies have filed an amicus brief in support of a legal case brought by WhatsApp against Israeli intelligence firm NSO Group, accusing the company of using an undisclosed vulnerability in the messaging app to hack into at least 1,400 devices, some of which were owned by journalis

After reading a review of Amazon's new fitness tracker, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar penned an open letter. “Recent reports have raised concerns about the Halo's access to this extensive personal and private health information,” the lawmaker wrote to U.S. Department of Health and Hum

Microsoft-owned GitHub today announced that it is doing away with all non-essential cookies on its platform. Thanks to this, starting today, GitHub.com and its subdomains wl not feature a cookie banner anymore, either. That’s one less cookie banner you’ll have to click away to get your

Europe has greenlit Google’s $2.1BN acquisition of fitness wearable maker Fitbit, applying a number of conditions intended to shrink competition concerns over letting it gobble a major cache of health and wellness data following months of regulatory scrutiny of the deal. While Google announce

In November, Californians voted to pass Proposition 24, a ballot measure that imposes new regulations on the collection of data by businesses. As part of the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), individuals will now have the right to opt out of the sharing and sale of their personal information, w

BigID has been on the investment fast track, raising $94 million over three rounds that started in January 2018. Today, that investment train kept rolling as the company announced a $70 million Series D on a valuation of $1 billion. Salesforce Ventures and Tiger Global co-led the round with partici

Facebook is to follow Google’s lead and move millions of UK users out of the jurisdiction of EU privacy laws to the US (which has no such comprehensive data protection framework) next year under a looming Brexit-related change to its T&Cs, Reuters reported yesterday. Confirming the switch

The FTC is ordering the companies behind many of the largest social and video platforms to explain how they use the treasure troves of data they harvest from users. Amazon, TikTok owner ByteDance, Facebook, WhatsApp, Discord, Reddit, Snap, Twitter and YouTube were all sent the order, with a deadlin

Another batch of complaints has been filed with European Union data protection agencies urging enforcement action against the adtech industry's abuse of internet users' information to target ads. The complaints argue that behavioural ads are both harmful and unlawful. Earlie

France’s data protection agency, the CNIL, has slapped Google and Amazon with fines for dropping tracking cookies without consent. Google has been hit with a total of €100 million ($120 million) for dropping cookies on Google.fr and Amazon €35 million (~$42 million) for doing so on the Am

EU lawmakers have just unveiled a wide-ranging counter-terrorism agenda as they set out plans to beef up regional security. The plan touches on some key tech topics — the most keenly watched of which is encryption. Here, concerns have been mounting that the bloc could be movin

A third-party contacts app you’re not using may be handing out your home address to its users. In November, former Yahoo CEO and Google veteran Marissa Mayer and co-founder Enrique Muñoz Torres introduced their newly rebranded startup Sunshine, and its first product, Sunshine Contacts. The n