• Nov 26, 2018 |
• Jayson Q. |
• General Privacy News, Guides,

How to remove your voice search history from Amazon, Google or Siri

Many people report strange targeted adverts showing up after a specific conversation with someone. The general consensus is that our mobile devices and smart tech is monitoring us, which is possible as everything seems to contain a microphone now… even television remotes. Often these microphones are constantly listening for a certain keyword; “Okay Google”, “Hey … Continue reading “How to remove your voice search history from Amazon, Google or Siri”

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• Nov 21, 2018 |
• Derek Zimmer |
• Cybersecurity, General Privacy News, Surveillance,

The Internet of Things is Surveillance

The IOT is back in the news again this week. A judge has ordered Amazon to turn over audio data from an Alexa device related to a murder investigation. There’s a few interesting things raised by this warrant. The investigators believe that Alexa may have captured audio of the attack itself and uploaded it to … Continue reading “The Internet of Things is Surveillance”

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• Oct 13, 2018 |
• Glyn Moody |
• Cybersecurity, General Privacy News, Surveillance,

Amazon hopes to blanket your home and car with listening, eavesdropping Alexa devices

Last year, Privacy News Online noted that there was a new frontier for digital privacy: home devices that understand spoken commands. Recent research from Canalys confirms that the market continues to grow strongly, admittedly from a small base: The worldwide smart speaker market grew 187% in Q2 2018, with shipments reaching 16.8 million units. Google … Continue reading “Amazon hopes to blanket your home and car with listening, eavesdropping Alexa devices”

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• Aug 11, 2018 |
• Glyn Moody |
• General Privacy News, Governments,

US politicians discover personally the pitfalls of facial recognition: is it time to ban it completely?

For all the theoretical concerns about the limitations of facial recognition systems, there’s nothing like personal experience to hammer the point home. That was confirmed recently when the ACLU ran an interesting experiment using Amazon’s cloud-based Rekognition system, which Privacy News Online discussed a couple of months back: Using Rekognition, we built a face database … Continue reading “US politicians discover personally the pitfalls of facial recognition: is it time to ban it completely?”

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• Jul 21, 2018 |
• Glyn Moody |
• General Privacy News, Governments, Surveillance,

Should Facial Recognition Technologies Be Regulated by the Government? Microsoft Says ‘Yes’

Facial recognition technology represents one of the most serious threats to privacy. That’s for two principal reasons. Perhaps the most important is that it is almost impossible to change our faces: serious plastic surgery apart, there are few effective techniques to disguise our bodily appearance. Masks may hide our features, but are too cumbersome – … Continue reading “Should Facial Recognition Technologies Be Regulated by the Government? Microsoft Says ‘Yes’”

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• Jul 6, 2018 |
• Glyn Moody |
• General Privacy News, Governments,

The Next Frontier in Threats to your Privacy: Voice Recognition

Privacy News Online has been tracking the increasing use of facial recognition technologies for some time. Concerns about their wider deployment are growing. But the surveillance world does not stand still. While people focus their attention on facial recognition, a new form of tracking is being rolled out: voice recognition – detecting who is speaking, … Continue reading “The Next Frontier in Threats to your Privacy: Voice Recognition”

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• May 28, 2018 |
• Glyn Moody |
• Cybersecurity, General Privacy News, Governments, Surveillance,

In China’s footsteps: Amazon and US schools normalize automatic facial recognition and constant surveillance

Amazon has developed a powerful cloud-based facial recognition system called “Rekognition”, which has major implications for privacy. It is already being used by multiple US police forces to carry out surveillance and make arrests, the ACLU has learned. Amazon claims that Rekognition offers real-time face matching across tens of millions of individuals held in a … Continue reading “In China’s footsteps: Amazon and US schools normalize automatic facial recognition and constant surveillance”

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• Sep 13, 2017 |
• Glyn Moody |
• General Privacy News, Governments,

Another threat to your privacy: the way you write

The ‘creator’ of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, has been identified. That, at least, is the claim in a recent article by Alexander Muse on Medium. But don’t get too excited. The article not only fails to name him/her/them, Muse admits he doesn’t know, either. All he will say is that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) … Continue reading “Another threat to your privacy: the way you write”

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• Aug 31, 2017 |
• Glyn Moody |
• Cybersecurity, Encryption, General Privacy News, Surveillance,

Even encrypted data streams from the Internet of Things are leaking sensitive information; here’s what we can do

As the Internet of Things (IoT) begins to enter the mainstream, concerns about the impact such “smart” devices will have on users’ privacy are growing. Many of the problems are obvious, but so far largely anecdotal. That makes a new paper from four researchers at Princeton University particularly valuable, because they analyze in detail how … Continue reading “Even encrypted data streams from the Internet of Things are leaking sensitive information; here’s what we can do”

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• Aug 25, 2017 |
• Glyn Moody |
• Copyright, Cybersecurity, General Privacy News, Governments, Surveillance,

Welcome to the Internet of listening, eavesdropping, spying things

There’s a new frontier for digital privacy: home devices that understand spoken commands. That’s impressive and convenient, but it comes with definite risks, as Rick Falkvinge pointed out earlier this week. The product sites of the main players in the so-called “smart speaker” sector – Amazon, Apple, and Google – offer plenty of upbeat advertising … Continue reading “Welcome to the Internet of listening, eavesdropping, spying things”

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