Survey finds 85% of smartphone users believe they’re being spied on by a mobile app
A new survey by WhistleOut provides some numbers to back up a growing sentiment: That an app on your smartphone is spying on you right this second while you read…
General Privacy News
Top court rules again that EU laws may not require general and indiscriminate data retention, but then muddies the privacy waters
National governments in the EU are very keen for communication companies to store traffic and location data for all their users. They claim this is necessary to enable the authorities…
Representatives Garcia and Wagner introduce EARN IT Act to the House
The Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act (EARN IT Act) is now on the House of Representatives floor. The bill (full text) was submitted by Representatives Sylvia…
US official alleges big tech has started giving Hong Kong user data to China under new national security law
A senior US state official has alleged that big tech companies are already handing over Hong Kong user data to Chinese officials, The Guardian reports. Hong Kong has been drastically…
French bar owners arrested for offering free WiFi but not keeping logs
At least five bar owners in Grenoble, France have been arrested for providing WiFi at their businesses without keeping logs. The bar owners were arrested under a 2006 law that…
Private Internet Access Legacy VPN Network Sunset Announcement
We recently launched our NextGen VPN network of servers which is faster, better for streaming and has more locations to choose from. There is no change to our no log…
How Blacklight illuminates the murky world of ad tracking, key logging, canvas fingerprinting, Facebook pixels, and more
It is hardly news that we are being tracked as we visit Web sites, and move around the Internet. As this blog has reported, it's the basis of today's main…
Facebook faces lawsuit for spying on Instagram users with camera
Facebook is facing a lawsuit which alleges that the Instagram app spied on users through their cameras. Earlier this year, an update to iOS which included privacy warnings when an…
Web sites shared over 100 trillion pieces of our personal data last year: time to stop real-time bidding’s blatant disregard of privacy
Last week Privacy News Online wrote about developments in the long-running battle between the privacy campaigner Max Schrems and Facebook. One of the key issues there is the failure by…
Russia wants to outlaw TLS 1.3, ESNI, DNS over HTTPS, and DNS over TLS
The Russian Ministry of Digital Development, Communications, and Mass Media has released a draft law which outlines plans to outlaw TLS 1.3, ESNI, DNS over HTTPS, and DNS over TLS.…