A new lawsuit claims that Google secretly monitors the internet activity of children. The lawsuit, which was filed by the State of New Mexico, follows a $170 million settlement paid by Google over claims that it collects personal information from children on YouTube.
The University of California, Los Angeles, announced this week that they will not be moving forward with a plan to use facial recognition technology on campus. The decision comes ahead of a planned day of protests by students and advocacy groups that focus on privacy rights.
Google has reportedly pulled over 500 malicious Chrome extensions from its Web Store, with some active on the site for over a year. The extensions used the computers of millions of people to commit ad fraud and steal data.
A recent report alleges that the infamous app used in the Iowa Caucuses lacked key digital safeguards and could have been hacked using basic methods. The app’s developer, Shadow, continues to maintain that “the integrity of the vote in Iowa was not compromised in any way.”
In a recent interview, Hoan Ton-That, the CEO of controversial facial recognition firm Clearview AI, stated that he has a First Amendment right to scrape billions of online photos to add to his firm’s giant database.
A new report claims that teenagers have discovered how to use group accounts to flood Facebook’s Instagram platform with user data that can’t be linked to any one person.
Google announced this week that its data backup service, Google Takeout, experienced a technical issue that resulted in the leaking of thousands of private user videos.
A software engineer for e-commerce giant Amazon has called for the immediate shutdown of the company’s Ring security camera business, stating the privacy issues the company has faced are “not fixable.”
The Twitter accounts of 15 NFL teams have been hacked ahead of the Super Bowl this weekend. The accounts were allegedly masterminded by a Saudi Arabia-based hacker group.
The University of Missouri (Mizzou) is forcing students to download a tracking app to their cellphones so that university officials can keep track of which students attend class, and which ones do not. Mizzou officials claim that they are tracking students for their own good.
A recent report from the MIT Technology Review claims that Amazon Alexa home assistant devices may actually be listening in on people’s daily lives even when not given commands.
Italy’s competition watchdog has reportedly launched proceedings against social media giant Facebook for non-compliance with previous requests relating to improper commercial practices in the site’s treatment of user data.
A data breach in THSuite, a point-of-sale system for the cannabis industry, has exposed the personal data of over 30,000 individuals.
Hospitals have reportedly granted Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, and Google access to detailed patient information as part of deals to process millions of medical records.
A recent report from the cybersecurity team at vpnMentor has revealed that a porn site has suffered a massive data breach, exposing the personal data of 4,000 adult cam models — including scans of passports and driver’s licenses, and model releases disclosing addresses, phone numbers, and other private information.
A recent report from the Norwegian Consumer Council alleges that dating and fertility apps are some of the biggest offenders when it comes to sharing private user data with ad firms.
A recent bad code update on Facebook allowed anyone to see which accounts posted Facebook Pages, including those of celebrities and politicians. Among the pages exposed by the bug was teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, whose posts are often authored by her father Svante Thunberg or Adarsh Prathap, an Indian climate change activist.
A recent report alleges that Microsoft contractors in China listened in on Skype conversations and Cortana recordings with “no security measures” taken to protect the audio clips.
Silicon Valley tech giant Google has suspended the integration of some of its hardware and services with Chinese company Xiaomi after a user who connected a Xiaomi camera to his Google Home Hub revealed that he was able to see into other users’ homes, including sleeping children.
2019 will go into the books as a bad year for data privacy, as sensitive personal details of many millions of users were leaked, breached, or left wide open by the Silicon Valley Masters of the Universe. Breitbart News has collected some of the biggest data breaches of the year.
Chinese-owned video app TikTok is reportedly searching for a new headquarters outside of China as the company attempts to shake its Chinese image.
Major U.S. retailers including Walmart and Home Depot are reportedly planning to comply with California’s new data privacy law that requires companies to disclose to consumers how they collect and share personal information. Retailers plan to give consumers a “do not sell my info” option.
American colleges and universities are using students’ smartphones to track surveil students on campus. Many students have opted into surveillance programs after being encouraged by their professors.
A digital security researcher claims to have discovered a bug in Twitter’s Android app that allowed him to link 17 million phone numbers to users accounts. By uploading phone numbers to twitter, the security expert was matched to the user accounts associated with the phone numbers.
A data breach based on malware in the payment system of iconic east coast convenience store chain Wawa that struck “potentially all” of its locations may have compromised the payment details of a large number of customers. Wawa leadership apologized to customers for the breach in a letter over the weekend.
A massive data leak from Facebook has exposed the names, personal IDs, and phone numbers of 267 million users — most of them American — on the dark web, according to reports.
Social media giants are fighting back against a new privacy law in India that would force companies like Google and Facebook to tighten their policies on user data privacy.
Facebook has admitted that it still tracks its users’ location even when “location services” on a device is turned off.
Credit card giant Visa is warning its cardholders that cyber criminals are targeting gas pumps in order to steal personal credit card data.
Google has reportedly handed over 1,500 private phone locations to the federal government as part of a “geofencing” request tied to a criminal arson investigation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
A recent report alleges that a number of “smart toys” have glaring security vulnerabilities that could place children at risk. In some cases, weak bluetooth security could allow strangers to digitally eavesdrop on children as they play.
Reports have begun flooding in of Amazon Ring camera systems being hacked over the past few days, with the hackers hurling racial abuse at owners, interacting with their children, and even demanding ransom payments.
Silicon Valley tech giant Apple is being accused of monitoring a former executive’s private messages in order to build a breach of contract case against him.
TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is facing accusations that it violated child privacy laws and improperly collected data on young users, according to a new lawsuit.
A security expert claims that the iPhone 11 Pro may still track users’ locations even after having its location services disabled. Apple’s response is that the company “does “not see any actual security implications.”
The FBI applied for a search warrant to compel Sony to share private data on a Playstation 4 user who was allegedly brokering cocaine distribution deals using the Playstation’s in-game chat functionality, according to a new report.
Tech giants including Google and Facebook engage in extensive “one-way mirror” surveillance of their users, sharing the data they collect with third parties via a complex and unregulated system that puts private information at risk, according to a newly published study by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
A new lawsuit alleges that social media app TikTok sent “vast quantities” of data on American users to China.
Tech giant Google is facing yet another E.U. antitrust investigation just months after being fined $1.7 billion for violations. This investigation focuses on the company’s “collection and use of data” from users.
The editor of the Mozilla Foundation’s Internet Health Report recently published a blog post on the website of the UK consumer association Which? that questions how privacy-focused the smart devices being pushed by the Masters of the Universe are.
