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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…

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…

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,”…

Google Just Disabled Cookies for 30 Million Chrome Users. Here’s How to Tell If You’re One of Them.But me love cookies!Photo: VIAVAL TOURS / Shutterstock.com (Shutterstock)Mr. Tweet Fumbles Super Bowl TweetToday marks the first of many upcoming moments of silence in Google’s years-long plan to kill cookies. As of this morning, the Chrome web browser disabled cookies for 1% of its users, about 30 million people. By the end of the year, cookies will be gone in Chrome forever—sort of.- Thomas Germain Read MoreMeet ‘Link…

What happens when a company loses a bunch of user data? Typically, they apologize and sheepishly beg for forgiveness. Not so with 23andMe. The popular genomics company, which suffered a pretty terrible data breach last year, has instead opted to tell pissed off customers that they probably should’ve picked a better password if they didn’t want their data boosted. The FTC Just Prescribed a Can of Whoop Ass on Health DataTo clarify, 23andMe is currently being sued—or, more accurately, legally attacked—by a large number of…

Facebook recently rolled out a new “Link History” setting that creates a special repository of all the links you click on in the Facebook mobile app. Users can opt-out, but Link History is turned on by default, and the data is used for targeted ads. As lawmakers introduce tech regulations and Apple and Google beef up privacy restrictions, Meta is doubling down and searching for new ways to preserve its data harvesting empire.Russian Court Says Meta Is "Extremist Organization"The company pitches Link History as a useful…

On Thursday, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee voted forward a bill that would force tech companies to report web users to the Drug Enforcement Agency if they suspected them of engaging in criminal drug activity. The controversial Cooper Davis Act, named so after a Kansas teenager who died of a fentanyl overdose in 2021, has rankled privacy advocates, who see the proposed legislation as a gateway to broad internet surveillance efforts by the federal government. Proponents of the bill say it would help crack down on…

Congress released a highly anticipated report on Wednesday detailing how major tax prep companies and big tech firms like Google and Meta, parent of Facebook and Instagram, “recklessly” shared the sensitive tax data of tens of millions of Americans without proper safeguards. The senators cited evidence from their report in a fiery letter to the IRS, FTC, DOJ, and Treasury Inspector General, whom they urged to fully investigate the matter and to prosecute companies found to have violated tax laws.Is Google's New $1,800…

Meta has unveiled a suite of new safety tools intended to give parents more oversight of their teen’s activity on Messenger and Instagram DMs. Starting today, parents and guardians can view how much time their teen spends on Messenger, receive updates on changes to their contact lists and privacy settings, and receive a notification if their teen decides to block another user. Parents can also now review which types of users—friends, friends of friends, or no one—can message their teens, though they can’t change that…