Mental Health Apps Are Not As Private As You Think
Mental health apps have been in demand for a while now, but since the pandemic, their popularity grew by over 500%. I downloaded and used a few myself — mainly…
Cybersecurity
Google’s Radar Chip: Real-Time Biometric Data Collection
Digital surveillance comes in many forms. The traditional kind, where governments spy on you as you move around the Internet, is the easiest to take measures against. A good VPN…
Phishing, Smishing & Vishing: What You Need to Know & How to Protect Yourself
My career is about to take off — at least it is if I was to believe the number of companies looking at my LinkedIn profile over the past few…
#NoPlaceToHide…for Stupid Ideas Like Backdooring End-To-End Encryption and Undermining Privacy
Government attempts to weaken cryptography to allow general surveillance are not new: they date back at least to the 1993 Clipper chip. Similarly, claims that children will be harmed by…
How to Hide from Facial Recognition Software with Fawkes
I recently wrote about constructing a fake persona to hide your identity online. I’ll admit that for most people, it’s a lot of trouble to go through. In most cases,…
Tails OS: The Amnesic Operating System That Covers Your Tracks
If you've ever done something super sneaky and prayed that no one would ever find out, you're in a similar position to Edward Snowden when he leaked highly classified information…
5 Really Wrong Myths About US-Based VPNs [Digital Privacy]
VPNs based in the United States frequently get unwarranted criticism, claiming that, by nature of them being based in the US, they are somehow “less secure” or “less private” than VPNs based…
Top Security Experts Warn: Client-side Scanning “Tears at the Heart of Privacy of Individual Citizens”
A couple of months ago, this blog wrote about Apple's Expanded Protections for Children, which turned out to mean client-side scanning (CSS). That is, code on your smartphone would be…
Hacking the World – Part 4: The Cost and Future of Hacking (Plus: Safety Tips)
We finish our four-part Hacking the World series with two key questions: how much does hacking cost per year and what’s coming next? It’s not a surprise that hacks cost…
Do We Really Want Amazon’s Internet-Connected Autonomous Surveillance Robots Wandering Around our Homes?
It might seem strange that Amazon has figured so many times on this blog, what with its facial recognition service, eavesdropping Alexa devices, Ring home surveillance, and Halo wearable device.…