data collection
Vizio smart TVs spied on millions of users without their consent
American company Vizio has decided to settle charges that it installed software on its smart TVs that collected viewing data of some 11 million users without their knowledge …
Meitu photo retouching app may be invading your privacy
Have you heard about Meitu, the photo retouching mobile app that turns people into more cutesy or beautiful versions of themselves? Chances are that even if you don’t …
Adobe quietly bundles data-collecting Chrome extension with latest Reader update
Chrome users who have installed the latest Adobe security updates have also been unknowingly saddled with a browser extension (“Adobe Acrobat”) that can collect some of their …
EU court: Site operators can log visitors’ IP address for protection against attacks
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled that the German government can collect and keep IP addresses of visitors to websites operated by German Federal …
Why digital hoarding poses serious financial and security risks
82 percent of IT decision makers admit they are hoarders of data and digital files, according to research conducted by Wakefield Research among 10,022 global office …
German Federal Intelligence Service violates laws, dodges supervision
The German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) has been illegally collecting data through mass surveillance tools, storing it in databases that should not exist, and has …
“I agree to these terms and conditions” is the biggest lie on the Internet
Two communications professors have proven what we all anecdotally knew to be true: the overwhelming majority of Internet users doesn’t read services’ terms of …
New Russian law to force service providers to decrypt encrypted comms
An extremely wide-ranging anti-terrorism law has been passed last week by the lower house of the Russian Federal Assembly (i.e. parliament), and it is widely expected to pass …
Review: The Architecture of Privacy
About the authors Courtney Bowman has been working in the data analytics space for the last decade. He joined Palantir Technologies in 2010 as an in-house Privacy and Civil …
Phone metadata can reveal sensitive info about individuals
Since Snowden revealed that the NSA collects from Verizon phone records of US citizens on a daily basis, those who support that kind of collection have been repeatedly …