The Fediverse: Decentralized Social Media for Human Beings
For the last two decades, social media has been the arena into which thoughts are thrown — open to inspection by friends, family, colleagues, and the wider world. Facebook and…
Drawing the Line: Are Smart Cities Compatible with Human Rights and Privacy?
PIA blog followed Google's Sidewalk Labs project in Toronto for some years, until the plan to create a futuristic smart city was dropped in 2020. The principal problem with the…
The Ultimate Privacy Betrayal: Personal DNA Used for Undisclosed Purposes, without Permission
As this blog has reported, one of the biggest threats to privacy is surveillance advertising. It works by tracking everything people do online — which sites they visit, what they…
Interview With Chris Mayers – Citrix
PIA recently sat down with Chris Mayers, Senior Principal Security Engineer at Citrix and asked him about his company’s Virtual Apps and Desktops offering. Private Internet Access: What do you…
Clearview AI Offers to Eliminate Public Anonymity and Destroy Privacy around the World for a Mere $50 Million
PIA blog first wrote about the facial recognition start-up Clearview AI two years ago, when news about its huge database of three billion facial images appeared. Its main market is…
Interview With Simon Davis – RoboForm Password Manager
RoboForm has been a leader in the password management world for over 20 years. They build exceptional products and have a strong commitment to protecting user privacy. We interviewed RoboForm’s…
Interview With Aleksey Lapshin – ANY.RUN
With many thanks to ANY.RUN’s CEO Aleksey Lapshin, Private Internet Access learned all about how residential VPNs are becoming more important nowadays. Private Internet Access: What motivated you to start…
Mainstream Brain-Computer Interfaces Are Coming — Just Ask Synchron, Neuralink, Paradromics, and HackerBCI
Back in 2019, the PIA blog looked at the emerging world of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). Given their potential to take direct readings of what we are thinking, they clearly have…
Interview With Jonathan Pettersson – AxCrypt
AxCrypt is a software that enables you to easily encrypt files and folders. It's essential when you are sharing your computer with multiple users and want to maintain your privacy.…
Gambling with Our Privacy: New Report Shows the Reality of Surveillance Advertising
This blog has written many times about the risks to privacy of surveillance advertising. Nonetheless, it can be hard to appreciate what that might mean in real life. A new…
Private Internet Access Releases Updated Transparency Report in Q1 2022
We have just updated our Transparency Report, detailing the requests we've received from state, federal, and foreign law enforcement. The requests were as follows: Court order: 9Warrant: 6Subpoena: 6 Since…
Interview With Eugene Shablygin – WWPass
Private Internet Access recently interviewed Eugene Shablygin, CEO of WWPass. We asked him about his company’s information storage technology and how users can log in seamlessly without passwords. Private Internet…
Google’s Surveillance Advertising Model under Attack on Both Sides of the Atlantic for Its Deep Privacy Problems
PIA blog has just written about a major problem for Google: a decision by the Austrian Data Protection Authority that the continuing use of Google Analytics violates the EU's GDPR…
Interview With Narendra Sahoo – VISTA InfoSec
VISTA InfoSec is a vendor-neutral company providing Risk Compliance and Information Security Advisory Services to organizations for the past 16 years. Narendra Sahoo, the CEO of VISTA InfoSec, shared some…
#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…