Internet privacy

FBI Director Christopher Wray speaks during a news conference, Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2022, in Omaha, Nebraska.Photo: Chris Machian (AP)Two top Democrats in the House of Representatives have issued requests to a host of federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, demanding details of alleged purchases of Americans’ personal data. The lawmakers accuse the seven federal agencies of using commercial dealings with data brokers and so-called location aggregators to sidestep warrant…

FTC Chair Lina Khan is a big critic of big tech, and she’s stretching her agency’s regulatory power to try and take on the industry’s data gathering practices.Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call (AP)Despite years of tech companies tracking users, gathering data on their online activities and selling it for profit, few government entities have done anything tangible to halt the hoarding of people’s online information. But it looks like the Federal Trade Commission is putting on its bright orange vest, thinking it could become…

Gizmodo is 20 years old! To celebrate the anniversary, we’re looking back at some of the most significant ways our lives have been thrown for a loop by our digital tools.The year was 1998. Robert Dean, a labor lawyer based in Washington D.C., was out shopping for some lingerie. His life was about to be turned upside down by a chance encounter with an old classmate. He’d come into possession of some sensitive surveillance material desperately sought after by rogue government agents, footage that would prove radioactive to…

WhatsApp will begin rolling out the new features this month. Photo: Karl-Josef Hildenbrand (AP)WhatsApp will be rolling out a number of new privacy features that allow its users to be a lot more discreet with their online chats. The new features include exiting a group chat without notifying its members, hiding your online status, and preventing other users from screenshotting ‘view once’ messages. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the new features via a brief Facebook post on Tuesday. “We’ll keep building new ways to…

A San Diego Police Department officer looks on as activists hold signs and protest the California lockdown due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on May 01, 2020 in San Diego, California.Photo: Sean M. Haffey (Getty Images)San Diego is joining a growing list of cities taking official action against the unregulated use of emergent police surveillance technologies.Community-led efforts to address potential civil liberties violations, spurred by the deployment of more 3,000 police cameras across the city, finally paid…

Image: Christopher Furlong (Getty Images)Migrants convicted of a crime in the U.K. may soon have to submit five daily facial recognition scans via a smartwatch as part of sweeping new surveillance practices under consideration by the country’s Home Office and Ministry of Justice. Privacy advocates say the always-on surveillance wearable is cruel, unnecessary, and based on technology plagued by inaccuracy and bias.Spoilers of the Week: August 5thA 2021 data protection impact assessment document acquired by The Guardian…

The coupon Stephanie Lucas received in the mail she said was addressed to her daughter, even though she isn’t pregnant.Photo: Stephanie LucasStephanie Lucas, a California-based UX designer, was at home Saturday morning when she read Gizmodo’s investigation into dozens of companies selling data on millions of Americans labeled “actively pregnant” or “shopping for maternity products.” Things got weird she went out to pick up her mail later that day. Shuffling through her letters, she found a literal example of what she had…

This map based on Facebook users’ data shows zip codes where users are more and less likely to have friendships with users outside their economic class. Image: MetaNew research measuring over 21 billion Facebook friendships seemingly confirms something you probably already inherently knew: having rich friends helps.Researchers at Harvard’s Opportunity Insights used a massive Facebook dataset based on over 72 million users to analyze the ways certain types of social conditions impact economic mobility in a pair of papers…

Adam Schiff, Chair of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. Photo: Brandon Bell (Getty Images)Members of Congress—you know, the people who can’t seem to do anything—are taking their considerable talents to the fight against digital threats. On Wednesday, the House Intelligence Committee held a public hearing to address the threat of “commercial cyber surveillance,” otherwise known as the spyware industry. Experts and victims told lawmakers to blacklist abusive spyware makers from doing business in the U.S., thereby…

A Facebook newsfeed page is displayed on a smartphone.Photo: Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP (Getty Images)How “forgotten” are your deleted internet posts anyway?That question has come under renewed scrutiny this week thanks to a new lawsuit filed by a fired Meta employee who claims the company set up a “protocol” to pull up certain users’ deleted posts and hand them over to law enforcement. If the former employee’s claims ring true, the practice could call into question Meta’s previous communications about how it accesses…