privacy
US fines telcos $200M for sharing customer location data without consent
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission said on Monday that it is fining the four U.S. major wireless carriers around $200 million in total for “illegally” sharing and selling customers’ real-time…
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Security bugs in popular phone-tracking app iSharing exposed users’ precise locations
The location-sharing app iSharing, which has 35 million users, fixed vulnerabilities that exposed users’ personal information and precise location data.
Mozilla finds that most dating apps are not great guardians of user data
Dating apps are not following great privacy practices and are collecting more data than ever in order to woo Gen Z users, a new study by Mozilla pointed out. Researchers reviewed…
Cape dials up $61M from a16z and more for mobile service that doesn’t use personal data
“You can’t leak or sell what you don’t have,” according to the company’s website.
Indian government’s cloud spilled citizens’ personal data online for years
The Indian government has finally resolved a years-long cybersecurity issue that exposed reams of sensitive data about its citizens. A security researcher exclusively told TechCrunch he found at least hundreds…
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‘Reverse’ searches: The sneaky ways that police tap tech companies for your private data
Reverse searches cast a digital dragnet over a tech company’s store of user data to catch the information that police are looking for.
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AT&T resets account passcodes after millions of customer records leak online
A security researcher told TechCrunch that leaked AT&T customer data contained encrypted account passcodes that can be easily unscrambled.
Telegram has introduced a controversial new feature that grants users a free premium membership in exchange for allowing the instant messaging app to utilize their phone number as a relay…
DOT to investigate data security and privacy practices of top US airlines
The U.S. Department of Transportation announced its first industry-wide review of data security and privacy policies across the largest U.S. airlines. The DOT said in a press release Thursday that…
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Users say Glassdoor added real names to user profiles without their consent
One user said Glassdoor pulled her full name from an email and added it to her profile. Another user said it wasn’t clear how Glassdoor got his data.
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How to verify a data breach
Over the years, TechCrunch has extensively covered data breaches. In fact, some of our most-read stories have come from reporting on huge data breaches, such as revealing shoddy security practices at startups holding sensitive genetic information or disproving privacy claims by a popular messaging app. It’s not just our sensitive information that can spill online.…
French startup Nijta hopes to protect voice privacy in AI use cases
France-based startup Nijta, whose flagship product Voice Harbor anonymizes voices for AI, raised €2 million in funding from various sources, including deep tech VC fund Elaia.
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Four things we learned when US intelligence chiefs testified to Congress
Cyberattacks, regional conflict, weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, commercial spyware, AI, misinformation, disinformation, deepfakes and TikTok. These are just some of the top perceived threats that the United States faces, according to the U.S. government’s intelligence agency’s latest global risk assessment. The unclassified report published Monday — sanitized for public release — gave a frank…
After losing access to Twitter’s API, Block Party pivots to privacy
Block Party, a startup developed by software engineer and tech diversity advocate Tracy Chou, was among the victims of Twitter’s (now X’s) API changes earlier this year, forcing it to…
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Elon Musk switched on X calling by default: Here’s how to switch it off
In his quest to turn a simple and functioning Twitter app into X, the everything app that doesn’t do anything very well, Elon Musk launched audio and video calling on X last week — and this new feature is switched on by default, it leaks your IP address to anyone you talk with, and it’s…
A leaky database spilled 2FA codes for the world’s tech giants
A technology company that routes millions of SMS text messages across the world has secured an exposed database that was spilling one-time security codes that may have granted users’ access…
FTC bans antivirus giant Avast from selling its users’ browsing data to advertisers
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Thursday said it will ban the antivirus giant Avast from selling consumers’ web browsing data to advertisers after Avast claimed its products would prevent…
Signal now lets you keep your phone number private with the launch of usernames
Signal is launching usernames, the company announced today. Up until now, you have had to give someone your phone number to chat with them on Signal. Now you can create…
Women in AI: Rashida Richardson, senior counsel at Mastercard focusing on AI and privacy
To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch is launching a series of interviews focusing on remarkable women who’ve contributed…
Fertility tracker Glow fixes bug that exposed users’ personal data
A bug in the online forum for the fertility tracking app Glow exposed the personal data of around 25 million users, according to a security researcher. The bug exposed users’…
Apple pulled a fake app masquerading as password manager LastPass from the App Store
Apple has removed a fake app that was masquerading as password manager LastPass on the App Store. The illegitimate app was listed under an individual developer’s name (Parvati Patel) and…
Don’t type anything into Gemini, Google’s family of GenAI apps, that’s incriminating — or that you wouldn’t want someone else to see. That’s the PSA (of sorts) today from Google,…
Mozilla Monitor’s new service removes your personal info from data broker sites automatically
Mozilla today is introducing a new subscription service that will help people locate and remove their personal and sensitive information from data broker websites around the web. This includes the…
Court rules in favor of a web scraper, Bright Data, which Meta had used and then sued
Meta has lost a claim in its legal battle with an Israeli tech firm Bright Data, which it sued last year for scraping data from Facebook and Instagram via the…
Meta to let EU users deny cross-site tracking as Digital Markets Act bites
Meta has provided new details of how it plans to respond to incoming competition rules in the European Union that aim to tackle abusive behaviors by Big Tech by enforcing…
FTC bans another data broker from selling consumers’ location data
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has continued its crackdown on data brokers with a settlement banning data aggregation company InMarket from selling consumers’ precise location data. Texas-based InMarket, which debuted…
PSA: Anyone can tell if you are using WhatsApp on your computer
Anyone who knows your WhatsApp number can figure out if you are only using the mobile app, or its companion web or desktop apps, a security researcher found. Tal Be’ery,…
FTC bans X-Mode from selling phone location data, and orders firm to delete collected data
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has banned the data broker X-Mode Social from sharing or selling users’ sensitive location data, the federal regulator said Tuesday. The first of its kind…
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It’s not all doom and gloom: When cybersecurity gave us hope in 2023
A funny — but true — joke at TechCrunch is that the security desk might as well be called the Department of Bad News, since, well, have you seen what we’ve covered of late? There is a never-ending supply of devastating breaches, pervasive surveillance and dodgy startups flogging the downright dangerous. Sometimes though — albeit…
While today’s bigger news from the world of Meta’s messaging apps was the rollout of end-to-end encryption in Messenger, the company is also bringing another useful feature to its WhatsApp…
