The first large-scale, crowdsourced study that monitors how Meta tracks people across the internet By: Surya Mattu, Angie Waller, Simon Fondrie-Teitler, and Micha Gorelick Introduction Have you ever shopped for a product online only to see the item appear ad nauseam in your Facebook or Instagram feeds? This is often the result of the Meta...
Tag: Privacy
Browser cookies make people more cautious online, study finds
Website cookies are online surveillance tools, and the commercial and government entities that use them would prefer people not read those notifications too closely. People who do read the notifications carefully will find that they have the option to say no to some or all cookies. The problem is, without careful attention those notifications become...
Here’s Why Being GDPR-compliant is Important For Your Business
Starting a business is tough, but maintaining it is another difficulty level. As such, ensuring that your business is compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR is extremely important. But first of all, what is GDPR, and why should your business comply with it? In a nutshell, it’s a regulation that both EU...
Apple blocks Email Tracking – What does this mean for you?
Working in marketing makes you more concerned about privacy than anything else. Are you aware that marketers are tracking each time you open an email newsletter and find out where you were at the time? Apple made it impossible to track this information in September 2021, causing a little panic among marketers. As a built-in...
Apple’s App Tracking Transparency may not be strong enough
Apple introduced App Tracking Transparency last year which prohibits app developers from tracking users' activity across different apps without their explicit consent. Privacy advocates applauded the initiative. Facebook warned that it would bring down targeted advertising companies. Research published last week shows that App Tracking Transparency does not always prevent the collection of surreptitious personal...
Smart devices spy on you – 2 computer scientists explain how the Internet of Things can violate your privacy
Have you ever felt a creeping sensation that someone’s watching you? Then you turn around and you don’t see anything out of the ordinary. Depending on where you were, though, you might not have been completely imagining it. There are billions of things sensing you every day. They are everywhere, hidden in plain sight –...
Your sense of privacy evolved over millennia – that puts you at risk today but could improve technology tomorrow
Many people think of privacy as a modern invention, an anomaly made possible by the rise of urbanization. If that were the case, then acquiescing to the current erosion of privacy might not be particularly alarming. As calls for Congress to protect privacy increase, it’s important to understand its nature. In a policy brief in...
Massive online surveillance by PenLink: Google is ‘best’, Apple ‘phenomenal’
A small Nebraska company called PenLink claims it does very good business with law enforcement agencies in the US and around the world. The company specializes in helping investigators monitor users of messenger services and social networks. Acting as an intermediate instance, they collect the data streams from Facebook, Google & Co. and passes them...
AirTags have serious Privacy Issues
When Apple released AirTags last spring, many marvelled at the effectiveness of the coin-shaped trackers in locating lost items. At the same time, many early reviewers raised concerns because the AirTag's remarkable accuracy makes it a powerful stalking tool. This was proven by several cases of stalking that got a larger media coverage. There is...
Irish regulator orders Meta to suspend data transfers to US
Meta, the Facebook owner, is under threat from Ireland's data regulator. They will order Meta to stop data transfers to the United States. This comes in the wake of a privacy case that has already seen threats from the social media giant to withdraw its websites from Europe. Helen Dixon, the Irish data protection commissioner,...
