privacy
Children’s rights groups call out TikTok’s ‘design discrimination’
Research examining default settings and terms & conditions offered to minors by social media giants TikTok, WhatsApp and Instagram across 14 different countries — including the U.S., Brazil, Indonesia and…
Congress probes period tracking apps and data brokers over abortion privacy concerns
The U.S. House Oversight Committee is probing a collection of period tracking apps and data brokers in light of emerging concerns about how private health data might be weaponized in…
Summer decision looms for Facebook’s EU-US data transfers
The wheels of privacy enforcement are slowly turning against Facebook in Europe — where its lead data protection regulator, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), has taken a key procedural step…
The U.K. government has tabled an amendment to the Online Safety Bill that could put it on a collision course with end-to-end encryption. It’s proposing to give the incoming internet…
Google will start erasing location data for abortion clinic visits
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to strip federal abortion rights in the U.S., many people are questioning how the apps they use every day might suddenly be…
Featured Article
How did a rental startup I’d never heard of leak my home address?
I consider myself a fairly privacy-conscious person, going out of my way to evade online tracking and, for the most part, avoiding spam mail. But when I found myself staring at my home address on the website of a company I had never heard of, I knew somewhere I had gone wrong. A few days…
Google’s ‘deceptive’ account sign-up process targeted with GDPR complaints
Consumer rights groups in Europe have filed a new series of privacy complaints against Google — accusing the advertising giant of deceptive design around the account creation process that they…
An independent review of UK legislation has concluded the country urgently needs new laws to govern the use of biometric technologies and called for the government to come forward with…
Democrats ‘exploring’ legislation to protect data in reproductive health apps
U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday that Democrats are considering the introduction of legislation that could protect the abortion rights of citizens. Notably, her letter addressed to…
India will give VPN providers and cloud service operators an additional three months to comply with new rules that require they maintain names and addresses of their customers and their…
Consumers swap period tracking apps in search of increased privacy following Roe v. Wade ruling
Consumers are ditching their current period tracking apps in favor of what they perceive to be safer options in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision that…
Uh oh! European carriers are trying to get into ‘personalized’ ad targeting
As Google works on reconfiguring its adtech stack to move away from cookie-based ad targeting to something else that’s not yet fixed but which it claims will be better for…
WhatsApp now lets you hide your profile picture and ‘Last seen’ status from specific people
WhatsApp announced this week that it’s rolling out the ability for users to select who from their contact list can see their profile photo, about and “Last seen” status. Prior…
The U.K. government has published its final response to a data ‘reform’ consultation it kicked off last year, laying out how it intends to diverge from EU-based data protection rules.…
VPN firms are removing servers in India to avoid customer data sharing rule
NordVPN, one of the most popular VPN providers, is the latest to confirm that it will be removing its servers in India ahead of the nation enacting new strict guidelines…
Germany’s antitrust watchdog latest to probe Apple’s app privacy framework
A major privacy feature Apple launched last year, called App Tracking Transparency (ATT) — which requires third-party apps to request permission from iOS users to track their digital activity for…
Data governance startup Immuta lands $100M to pursue acquisitions
Immuta, a provider of data privacy and access controls services, today announced that it closed a $100 million Series E round at a $1 billion valuation, bringing the company’s total…
India withdraws warning on biometric ID sharing following online uproar
India has withdrawn a warning that asked users to not share photocopies of their national biometric ID following a widespread uproar from users on social media, many of whom pointed…
Meta consolidates its privacy policy to appease regulators
In an effort to make its notoriously dense user agreements less labyrinthine, Meta has rewritten and redesigned how that information is presented. The company insists that the changes are in…
DDG has a tracker blocking carve-out linked to Microsoft contract
DuckDuckGo, the self-styled “internet privacy company” — which, for years, has built a brand around a claim of non-tracking web search and, more recently, launched its own ‘private’ browser with…
If you can’t leave Facebook, know these Facebook privacy settings
Cybersecurity 101: Here’s how you can reclaim — or delete — your Facebook data.
Washington, DC’s AG is suing Mark Zuckerberg over Cambridge Analytica
The District of Columbia has just announced fresh litigation targeting Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, for his role in the Cambridge Analytica Facebook data misuse episode — alleging it has evidence…
The U.K.’s data protection watchdog has confirmed a penalty for the controversial facial recognition company, Clearview AI — announcing a fine of just over £7.5 million today for a string…
Meta’s recently crowned president of global affairs, Nick Clegg — who, in a former life, was literally the deputy prime minister of the U.K. — has been earning his keep…
Apple is doubling down on raising consumer awareness of privacy risks in a new ad campaign, unveiled today, which puts the spotlight on how the data broker industry trades in…
Spain slaps Google for frustrating the EU’s ‘right to be forgotten’
Here’s a rare sight: Google has been hit with a €10 million fine by Spain for serious breaches of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which found it…
Report spotlights vast scale of adtech’s ‘biggest data breach’
New data about the real-time-bidding (RTB) system’s use of web users’ info for tracking and ad targeting, released today by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), suggests Google and…
Twitter launches a new web game to make its privacy policy easier to understand
Twitter announced today that it has rolled out a new web video game to make it easier for users to understand its privacy policy. The goal of the game, which…
To understand what’s happening, but also what’s coming if synthetic data does get more broadly adopted, we talked to various CEOs and VCs over the last few months.
Featured Article
Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade: Should you delete your period-tracking app?
Experts say fears over period-tracking apps in a post-Roe vs. Wade world aren’t unfounded, but knowing which apps track you is only half of the battle.