Internet privacy

X owner Elon Musk is dreaming of a world where people ditch their cell phones and instead make audio and video calls on the social media platform. Musk’s vision has elicited nearly collective horror from users of his platform—as well as potential risks to their IP addresses.Is USB-C Finally Coming To iPhone?X began rolling out the audio and video calling feature, which was previously restricted to paid users, to everyone last week. However, hawk-eyed sleuths quickly noticed that the feature was automatically turned on,…

Apple has rolled out an update to iMessage encryption, the likes of which includes post-quantum protections that the company calls the “most significant cryptographic security upgrade” in the messenger’s history. The M3 MacBook Pro: Made Dark for HalloweenIn a blog post published Wednesday, Apple announced the arrival of PQ3, a new encryption protocol designed to seriously upgrade the messenger’s security. Since its launch in 2011, iMessage has offered end-to-end encryption—which is a nice thing to have if you want to…

Photo: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg (Getty Images)For those who care about digital privacy, few apps are more beloved than Signal. For years, the end-to-end encrypted messenger has offered some of the best privacy protections on the web. Strong encryption, zero subscription fees, and virtually no data collection? What’s not to like? The FTC Just Prescribed a Can of Whoop Ass on Health DataThat said, there’s always been one little flaw with the messenger’s privacy protections: Unless you get pretty creative, Signal forces you…

Lonely on Valentine’s Day? AI can help. At least, that’s what a number of companies hawking “romantic” chatbots will tell you. But as your robot love story unfolds, there’s a tradeoff you may not realize you’re making. According to a new study from Mozilla’s *Privacy Not Included project, AI girlfriends and boyfriends harvest shockingly personal information, and almost all of them sell or share the data they collect. Like It or Not, Your Doctor Will Use AI | AI Unlocked“To be perfectly blunt, AI girlfriends and boyfriends…

Photo: Wachiwit (Shutterstock)Facebook users reported hearing a bizarre chirping sound while using the social media platform on mobile devices on Tuesday. In fact, many people thought it was something they did wrong or a setting they accidentally changed. But it’s not your fault, according to the company.Russian Court Says Meta Is "Extremist Organization"“Hearing a chirping noise while scrolling through your Facebook Feed on your iPhone? It’s not you, it’s us! And it’s an unfortunate technical error that we’re in the…

Have you got a secret you don’t want anyone to know? Don’t tell any of humanity’s fancy new AI-powered assistants because the companies behind these new tools are probably keeping your data a lot longer than you think.Google’s Antitrust Case Is the Best Thing That Ever Happened to AIGoogle’s Gemini, the AI assistant formerly known as Bard, has received rave reviews, with many people hailing it as heads above OpenAI’s ChatGPT. But if you plan on using Gemini, it might be a good idea to give the privacy policy a quick…

The incognito or private mode found in most web browsers is back in the news, with Google updating its disclaimer to give users a better idea of exactly how this feature works. Whether you use Chrome or one of the alternatives, the feature works in the same way—and it doesn’t cover your tracks quite as well as you might have thought.If you’re going to use incognito mode, you’ll want to know exactly what is and isn’t logged while browsing to avoid any nasty surprises. Here, we’ve laid out all the details, which should give…

Have you ever talked about a product, and then suddenly got an ad for it on your phone? We’ve all been there, and then skeptically looked over our shoulders for the advertiser lurking in the shadow. But there’s no one there, so we all simply conclude that our phone must be listening to our conversations. You wouldn’t be crazy for thinking that, but it is flat-out wrong. Your phone is not listening to you.Meta's Apparent Firing GoofThe myth that your phone’s microphone is constantly on, and is listening to your…

Ring, Amazon’s home surveillance company, announced it would stop letting police departments request video from your doorstep in a blog post Wednesday. The company has historically shared tons of footage with law enforcement, and Amazon came under fire for reportedly handing a full day’s worth of Ring footage to local authorities in March, despite the homeowner’s wishes to not help in prosecuting his neighbor.Top 5 Shopping Tips for Amazon Prime Day“This week, we are also sunsetting the Request for Assistance (RFA) tool,”…

Tired of dealing with popups begging you to accept cookies? Blame the EU. In 2018, Europe unleashed a groundbreaking privacy law called the GDPR that, among a billion other things, makes websites ask permission before tracking you with cookies. A lot of companies switched their whole systems over rather than building special European versions of their websites. It’s a privacy improvement, but the downside is the web bombarding everyone on the planet with cookie popups. EU regulators know this sucks, but now they’ve got…