Open Source Code – The Future of User Privacy
Will we see more and more open source software in the future, or is this a passing trend that will die off eventually? According to survey data, open source is…
Privacy
How can we protect privacy during a crisis like Covid-19, when “health surveillance” is on the rise around the world?
A couple of weeks ago, this blog looked at the use of smartphones to track people so that contact tracing can be carried out to slow the spread of Covid-19.…
Telecoms across Europe are sharing phone location data with governments as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic
A telecommunications lobbying group, the GSMA, has confirmed that several telecom companies in Europe are providing mobile phone location data with the European Union as a way to track the…
Taiwan is using a phone location “electronic fence” to help police track quarantined individuals
The government in Taiwan has rolled out an “electronic fence” to keep quarantined individuals in their homes. The “electronic fence” uses mobile phone data to notify police if the cell…
Unpatched bug in iOS 13.3.1 and later stops VPNs from encrypting all connections
An ongoing security vulnerability in iPhones and iPads is keeping VPN applications from doing their job. For iOS versions 13.3.1 and later, this bug remains unpatched and has been rated…
Coronavirus delays the passage of the world’s most important new privacy law
For obvious and justified reasons, the coronavirus pandemic dominates the news currently. One of the latest developments is that India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has put his entire country on…
Poland’s COVID-19 “selfie app” raises privacy questions – will everyone eventually be tracked?
People in Poland under a mandatory 14-day quarantine have an interesting way to prove that they are following the quarantine. Usually, such mandatory quarantines are checked on by local authorities…
Site to Site (Commercial) VPN vs Remote Access (Personal) VPN
A VPN is a virtual private network that connects two or more devices via an encrypted tunnel. VPNs are set up using different VPN protocols which include OpenVPN PPTP, L2TP,…
Toronto, Canada is now using phone location data to track if people are congregating
This past Monday, Toronto Mayor Tory announced at a virtual TechTO meetup that the government has been receiving location data from wireless carriers and telecommunication companies in the area to…
As Covid-19 spreads around the globe, so does the idea of using smartphones to track everyone to help contact tracing
It seems extraordinary that it was only a month ago that this blog wrote about the new coronavirus, also called Covid-19. At that time, it was not yet clear whether…
Police forces around the world continue to push for routine – and real-time – facial recognition capabilities
Facial recognition crops up on this blog more than most technologies. That's in part because the underlying AI is advancing rapidly, boosting the ability of low-cost systems to match faces…
Mozilla does not respect user requests to stop tracking telemetry data
A Firefox system add-on called telemetry-coverage may still be sending your IP address data to Mozilla even if you explicitly turn off telemetry data - which has privacy implications most…
KrØØk WiFi vulnerability affected WiFi encryption on over a billion devices
A vulnerability in Broadcom and Cypress WiFi chips makes it possible for attackers on your local WiFi network to decrypt your WPA2 encrypted internet traffic. The vuln, known as the…
This is where workplace surveillance leads: towards algorithmic, automated management
A couple of years ago, Privacy News Online wrote about a new kind of surveillance, taking place in the workplace. The aim of these systems back then was to keep…
New study quantifies how much Americans value their private information: about $3.50
A new study by the Technology Policy Institute (TPI) has identified how much money a Facebook user would want to be paid in exchange for having their contact information shared…