Featured: Privacy News Online – Week of March 12th, 2021 China’s Sharp Eyes CCTV surveillance program redefines the Neighborhood Watch China has over 200 million CCTV cameras across the country, but there just aren’t that many police officers to keep an eye on all of them. The Sharp Eyes Project is a government program to … Continue reading “Privacy News Online | Weekly Review: March 12, 2021”
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Brave Browser, the secure and private browser launched by Brendan Eich in 2018, has recently announced the acquisition of Tailcat and the release of their Google Search alternative: Brave Search. Google Chrome is the most used web browser in the world with 70% market share. Similarly, Google Search is the most used search engine in the world with a whopping 92% market share. Brave bought Tailcat from Cliqz – a holding of Hubert … Continue reading “Brave Browser announces Brave Search: a privacy conscious alternative to Google”
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Featured: Privacy News Online – Week of February 12th, 2021 Police served warrant on Google to identify George Floyd protestors Police used a type of warrant known as a geofence warrant to ask Google for information on all accounts that were close to a particular store in a twenty minute window around when the store … Continue reading “Privacy News Online | Weekly Review: February 12, 2021”
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In the aftermath of the George Floyd Protests, Police served Google with a geofence warrant to identify suspects in crimes committed during the protests. Minneapolis Police say that the looting and property damage started at one AutoZone in southern Minneapolis. To find out more, Police sent a warrant to Google to receive information on all … Continue reading “Police used geofence warrant to make Google to identify George Floyd protestors”
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This blog has been pointing out for years the fundamental incompatibility between privacy and the current online advertising model. Today, most Web sites seek to gather as much personal information about visitors as possible, and then sell advertisers access based on people’s data. Until recently, there has been little effort to change that system. The … Continue reading “Time to get rid of pervasive online ad tracking once and for all: the alternative is simple, effective, and fully respects privacy”
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Featured: Privacy News Online – Week of February 5th, 2021 UK Police Chief falsely claims that end to end encrypted messaging “puts lives at risk” The Detective Chief Superintendent in charge of the Uinted Kingdom’s online anti terrorism unit doesn’t want Facebook to add end to end encryption to its Messenger app or Instagram. The … Continue reading “Privacy News Online | Weekly Review: February 5, 2021”
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Google will be updating its in house iOS apps to avoid scaring users with a tracking permission prompt. Apple’s iOS14 privacy upgrades – specifically Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) initiative will force apps to get express permission to be tracked for advertising purposes from app users via a tracking permission prompt. Instead of showing this … Continue reading “Google doesn’t want your permission to track you on iOS”
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The GDPR is a powerful, far-reaching piece of legislation, but one whose full potential the EU data protection authorities have so far failed to realize. Research from DLA Piper shows that fines totalling 272.5 million euros (about $332.4 million) have been imposed since the GDPR came into operation in May 2018. Given the size of … Continue reading “Is the GDPR finally going to get some teeth?”
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For three and half years now, Privacy News Online has been warning about the huge, and largely ignored, danger of micro-targeted ads and real-time bidding (RTB). The approach sounds plausible. Advertisers bid in real time to place ads on sites that are tailored to the person who is loading a Web page. But the price … Continue reading “Today’s online advertising not only seriously harms privacy, but is seriously broken in other ways; we need to fix it”
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Featured: Privacy News Online – Week of December 18th, 2020 WhatsApp calls Apple’s new privacy nutrition labels for iOS 14 anti-competitive Facebook’s WhatsApp messenger has taken a public stance against Apple’s new privacy nutrition labels. WhatsApp provided the requested privacy information to Apple by the required deadline, but the messaging company also took to the … Continue reading “Privacy News Online | Weekly Review: December 18, 2020”
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