Privacy news

Ubuntu is adding a new speech-to-text feature that lets you dictate to your desktop. The tool runs entirely on your local machine, ensuring your voice data remains private and doesn't get sent to the cloud.

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison made a striking comment about the societal impact of constant surveillance. He suggested widespread recording would compel citizens to be on their 'best behavior,' raising questions about privacy, freedom, and a monitored society.

DIY hardware communities focused on building 'cyberdecks' are rapidly growing in popularity. Enthusiasts are sharing their custom creations, such as solar-powered game emulators and pocket-sized e-readers, across social media, signaling a rising interest in personalized, user-controlled computing devices away from mainstream big tech.

DuckDuckGo is making its traditional, AI-free search engine more accessible. The move comes as the company reports a significant increase in traffic, suggesting a growing user preference for classic, link-based results over the AI-generated summaries now common on other platforms, highlighting a counter-trend in search.

Windows 11 is making it harder to use a local account, pushing users to sign in with a Microsoft account. This creates significant headaches for developers and IT teams who rely on local accounts for security and system management.

AI startup Shift is offering free home cleaning services. In exchange, the company will record its cleaners' actions to create a proprietary video dataset for training future household robots. Shift states the value of this data outweighs the cost of the service.

A new report reveals that multiple popular mobile browsers, including Microsoft Edge and Aloha, are collecting and sharing precise user location data with third-party companies. The findings highlight significant privacy risks for both individual users and corporate environments where data security is a primary concern.

Oura has confirmed it receives government requests for user data. The company has not yet released a transparency report detailing the number or nature of these requests, raising questions about its policies on user privacy and law enforcement cooperation.

New laws requiring age verification for social media are raising significant concerns. An analysis highlights the technical, privacy, and security risks, suggesting these measures could end online anonymity, centralize identity data, and fundamentally change how online services are built.

The European Union is exploring new regulations for smart glasses, citing major privacy concerns. This move could force tech companies to redesign products and rethink data handling, echoing the global impact of GDPR on the industry.

A user of the privacy-focused GrapheneOS was reportedly flagged to authorities simply for using the software. The incident raises serious questions about whether privacy-enhancing tools are now viewed as suspicious by default.

New research demonstrates a technique called "WiFi sensing," which uses standard Wi-Fi signals to identify people and monitor physical spaces. The method analyzes how signals are reflected and scattered by human bodies, effectively turning routers into surveillance devices without accessing cameras or other sensors.

The FCC is proposing a new rule that would require telecom companies to collect government-issued ID from all customers. This move aims to end anonymous "burner phones," creating significant privacy and data security challenges for businesses and users.

Massachusetts has passed a landmark privacy bill that makes it illegal to sell precise location data. The new law sets a high bar for data privacy and requires companies with users in the state to rethink their data monetization strategies.

South Korea will soon require online forums to scan every uploaded image using AI censorship tools. The law sets a significant global precedent for content moderation, raising concerns about costs, privacy, and platform architecture.

A new technique called FROST allows websites to monitor user activity by measuring tiny delays in solid-state drive (SSD) performance. This browser-based attack can track other open websites and applications, creating a significant privacy risk by using standard web APIs without special permissions.

The UK government has ordered tech companies to scan children's phones for explicit content by September. Privacy advocates warn this mandate threatens end-to-end encryption and could lead to widespread surveillance, creating significant compliance challenges for developers.

The FCC wants to force telecoms to collect government IDs and addresses for all phone users. This would eliminate anonymous "burner phones" and create major new privacy and security risks.

A new side-channel attack called FROST allows websites to track users across different sites without cookies. It exploits modern browser APIs to measure subtle interactions with a computer's solid-state drive (SSD), creating a unique fingerprint to identify visitors and monitor their browsing activity.

Indiana-based startup Slate Auto is developing a minimalist electric pickup truck with only 600 parts. The company is prioritizing user privacy and security by deliberately omitting an embedded modem, a stark contrast to the data-heavy, always-connected approach common in the automotive industry.

Following widespread criticism from the tech industry and privacy advocates, the Canadian government is amending its lawful access proposal, Bill C-22. The changes aim to protect encryption standards and provide clearer rules on how companies must handle and retain user metadata for law enforcement.

A new AI coding agent named Claw-Coder runs entirely on a local machine, addressing privacy and security concerns associated with cloud-based models. It uses Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and knowledge graphs to enhance the performance of smaller, local language models, offering a private alternative to tools like Codex.

California lawmakers are proposing an amendment to an upcoming age-verification law. The change would exempt most open-source operating systems, including major Linux distributions, following criticism from privacy advocates who warned the original rules would force decentralized projects to collect user data.

A journalist reportedly used publicly available facial recognition software to locate a long-sought fugitive. The individual, a member of Germany's Red Army Faction, had been hiding for decades before being identified and arrested, raising questions about the power and accessibility of AI tools.

The Federal Trade Commission has fined Cox Media and two marketing firms a total of $930,000. The companies claimed they could listen to user conversations through smartphones for ad targeting, a claim the FTC alleges was deceptive and unsubstantiated.

The FBI has issued a request to purchase access to a commercial, nationwide license plate reader database. This would provide the agency with real-time and historical location data on vehicles across the US, raising significant privacy concerns among civil liberties groups and the public.

The FBI is planning to spend up to $36 million for nationwide access to a commercial database of automated license plate reader (ALPR) data. This would enable the agency to query and track vehicle movements across the United States and its territories for law enforcement purposes.

The FBI has announced plans to purchase access to a nationwide network of license plate readers. The agency is seeking contracts with vendors who can provide "near real-time" data from cameras across the U.S. to track subjects for its Directorate of Intelligence.