Privacy News Online | Weekly Review: July 3, 2020
Featured: Privacy News Online – Week of July 3rd, 2020
Andrew Yang unveils Data Dividend Project to make tech companies pay for your personal information
A new project started by Andrew Yang is floating the idea of making tech companies pay users for the personal information given up. Most of the time, we are giving companies this personal information for free as part of the terms and conditions we agree to. The Data Dividend Project would allow users to collect a dividend instead and is being touted as a potential way forward towards universal basic income. What do you think – is putting a price on privacy good, or bad? Let us know in the comments.
The Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act shows that politicians still don’t understand encryption
The new bill is called the Lawful Access to Encryption bill and was proposed by Senator Graham. Like the name suggests, the bill would force companies to maintain encryption backdoors for government use. The thing is, that’s not how encryption works. If you build a backdoor – anyone could theoretically use it and the encryption is no longer secure. Some experts think that this bill was introduced as a way of making another anti-encryption bill – the EARN IT Act – seem better in comparison.
TikTok seems to be copying and pasting your clipboard with every keystroke
The new Apple privacy features have already caught a privacy violator red-handed! While trying out iOS 14, Jeremy Burge discovered that the TikTok app was checking on his clipboard contents with every keystroke. What’s worse, TikTok was first caught doing this back in March and promised to stop within a few weeks. Spying on what you copy and paste is just another item on the long list of TikTok privacy violations that are coming to light. Now that they’ve been caught again, TikTok stated to The Telegraph that they will stop finally spying on clipboard contents… We’ll see if that actually happens.
Activists join together for a day of action against the EARN IT Act
Speaking of the EARN IT Act, privacy and freedom of speech activists alike flooded Senate Judiciary Committee members with calls this past week using a new tool and website created by Fight for the Future. Their message was simple: vote NO on the EARN IT Act. Calling politicians is an established way of making your voice heard and can be exercised any time of the year. Check out noEARNITAct.org for more information on the effort to fight against the government’s attacks on encryption.
More Privacy News This Week:
Apple unveils new privacy features at WWDC 2020
Apple unveiled new privacy features for iOS 14 and Mac OS Big Sur at WWDC and they’re a big hit. Mobile users will find that iOS apps now have “privacy labels” that let users know what permissions are used, while desktop users of Safari will be able to view privacy reports on the websites they visit. Especially on mobile, Apple users will get a better understanding of what data they’re giving up when using a particular app. A new feature called a “paste notification” will even let you know when an app pastes what you have copied to your clipboard.
Google promises to delete web browsing history and location data after 18 months
Alphabet Inc is tweaking Google’s privacy controls in response to growing pressure for the tech giant to respect user privacy. Google is changing the default data retention limits for personal information such as Youtube video viewing history, web browsing history and location data. Under the new rules, Google will delete Youtube history after three years and internet history and location data after a year and a half. If you don’t want Google to hold onto your information for that long, the time frame can be further limited in your settings.
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