Digital rights

The European Union hit Meta, parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, with a history-changing order to suspend data transfers to the US on Monday. The order comes with a €1.2 billion fine—about $1.3 billion—the largest ever fine under Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The FTC Just Prescribed a Can of Whoop Ass on Health DataIn April, Meta told investors that the risk of an upcoming privacy decision in the EU could cost the company 10% of its global advertising revenue. The order gives Meta…

With all the viruses, phishing scams and other malware lurking on the internet, using a web browser can be risky business these days. But one firm thinks it could make your web surfing much safer without adding any hassle. A company named SquareX has just raised $6 million to develop an extension that would create virtual sandboxes within your web browser. Any time you’re tempted to open a file or click a link that comes from an unknown sender or could potentially pose a threat, SquareX’s extension would step in and…

One of the best VPN deals available right now is courtesy of our favorite service — NordVPN. Sign up to any of its packages today and you get three extra months bundled in for free with up to 59% off the usual price. That means you can sign up for the NordVPN Complete package for two years for $180 instead of paying $447. A seriously good deal for anyone who wants to keep their browsing activity secure and private, here’s what else you need to know about it. Why you should sign up for NordVPN NordVPN is one of the…

ChatGPT introduced a new privacy feature on Tuesday to protect users’ information. The new feature will allow users to turn off their chat history and disable its ability to use their data to train and improve the AI models.Generating Video Via Text? | Future TechTo make the settings change so your chat history is no longer being stored, log into your ChatGPT account and click on the three dots next to your email address near the bottom-left corner of the screen. You then click Settings, another window will pop up where…

Security researchers have publicly revealed findings in a study that uncovered that more than half of the enterprise routers sold secondhand to online resellers, such as eBay, had not been factory reset and wiped of their data. This means the devices still contained sensitive company information from their previous owners when they were resold. Researchers from the security firm ESET plan to showcase their study at the RSA security conference in San Francisco next week, but told Wired that they were able to uncover…

Italy, the first country in the world to ban ChatGPT, said OpenAI could restore access to the chatbot if it adopts a series of measures to protect data privacy, including allowing users to correct or delete the incorrect things ChatGPT says about them.The FTC Just Prescribed a Can of Whoop Ass on Health DataIn a news announcement on Wednesday, the Italian Data Protection Authority, known as the Garante, stressed that OpenAI needed to be more transparent about its data collection processes and inform users about their data…

ChatGPT is very simple to get started on. It’s free to sign up for, and you can either use your own email address or log in with your Google or Microsoft account. But you may have noticed that ChatGPT also asks for your phone number. Given all the concern over whether ChatGPT is safe to use, that may have thrown you for a loop, which begs the question — why does ChatGPT need your number after all? Hatice Baran / Unsplash Why ChatGPT requires a phone number Like many things you sign up for online, ChatGPT…

A self-professed novice has reportedly created a powerful data-mining malware using just ChatGPT prompts, all within a span of a few hours. Aaron Mulgrew, a Forcepoint security researcher, recently shared how he created zero-day malware exclusively on OpenAI’s generative chatbot. While OpenAI has protections against anyone attempting to ask ChatGPT to write malicious code, Mulgrew found a loophole by prompting the chatbot to create separate lines of the malicious code, function by function. After compiling…

Next year, Google will get rid of third-party cookies, the tracking tool marketers and data hogs have used to follow you around the web since 1994. To replace the cookie, Google has an offering for the world. It’s called “Privacy Sandbox,” a set of proposed changes to Chrome and Android which—according to the company—will establish a targeted advertising system that’s much better for your privacy. This could fundamentally transform how any company makes money on the internet, and just about everyone, whether they love…

The IRS-authorized tax preparation software service eFile.com recently suffered a JavaScript malware attack in the middle of tax season, according to BleepingComputer. The nefarious JavaScript file has been identified as popper.js and has been observed by eFile.com users as well as by security researchers. The malware is believed to have surfaced on the service around mid-March and has interacted with “almost every page of eFile.com, at least up until April 1st,” the publication added. Encountering this…