If you are a user of Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant you’re familiar with “false alarms”. You just utter a completely innocent phrase and suddenly one of these voice assistants springs into action. This can be funny sometimes, but has become quite a privacy issue. Researches managed to produce a list of more than 1.000 […]
Tag Archives: Privacy
WhatsApp Phone Numbers Pop Up in Google Search Results — But is it a Bug? | Threatpost
The WhatsApp feature “Click to Chat” exposes mobile phone numbers on the web and Google’s search engine is able to index them. You can try it using the search string site:wa.me “+43” The phone numbers are simply as part of an URL string (https://wa.me/<phone_number>) and available in plaintext. Facebook claims that this not a bug: […]
Jitsi for the win
Everybody seems to make video calls all the time these days. The usage of Zoom has skyrocketed and so have the privacy issues with this videoconferencing app. As alternative we recommend Jitsi. It’s open source (yay!), it uses a good level of encryption (yay!) and you can install it on your own server (yay!). And […]
Over 500,000 Zoom accounts sold on hacker forums, the dark web
More than 500.000 Zoom accounts have emerged for sale on the dark web and hacker forums, according to a new report by BleepingComputer. Zoom has become a very popular videoconferencing app in recent weeks when the number of people working from home has grown. With the growing popularity, concerns about the app’s security have also […]
Clearview AI’s Facial Recognition Tech Is Being Used By The Justice Department, ICE, And The FBI
Clearview’s facial recognition AI is not only used by law enforcement; there is a large number of private companies that have Clearview accounts, like Kohl’s and Walmart and banks like Wells Fargo and Bank of America. While most of these companies have no formal contracts with Clearview and appear to have used Clearview’s software on […]
The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It – The New York Times
How do you feel about the end of privacy on public places? In public transport? When you can identfy every stranger that passes by? When every stranger can indentify you without your knowledge? While this might be still a bit away, the NY Times reports that a start-up called Clearview AI is using a massive […]
Opinion | How to Track President Trump – The New York Times
Shocking article how easy it is to track anybody, including Donald Trump. A dataset with more than 50 billion location pings from the phones of more than 12 million Americans was used by NY Times. It contained the traces of a Secret Service agent that accompanied Donald Trump. The agent’s home was also clearly identifiable […]
The Fantasy of Opting Out | The MIT Press Reader
In a world where the cost of opting out is getting constantly higher, the pressure of not to opt out is mounting. Almost every platform tells users that by opting out from cookies, link and click tracking, personal information, etc. they won’t be able to fully benefit from the platform (services). Some platforms even go […]
Credit card privacy matters: Apple Card vs. Chase Amazon Prime Rewards Visa – The Washington Post
It started with a banana. Chilling article on how your personal data is collected, cross-referenced and used for all kind of purposes. However, recent data scandals were eye-opening to a broader public and people are starting to take notice how privacy affects our daily lives in often unforeseen ways. Therefore businesses should pay close attention, […]
Apple contractors ‘regularly hear confidential details’ on Siri recordings | The Guardian
Apple has positioned itself as company that respects the privacy of their users. However, as The Guardian reports, Apple’s contractors have access to a certain percentage of all Siri-recordings. They regularly listen to confidential conversations of users, like drug deals, discussions about medical details and to even people having sex. Source: Apple contractors ‘regularly hear […]