Privacy News | TechCrunch

Meta found to have exposed info on North Korean defectors to advertisers

Natasha Lomas — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 15:30:05 +0000

Meta has added another privacy sanction to its extensive collection: South Korea’s data protection agency fined the social media giant around $15.7 million for processing sensitive user data and passing it to advertisers without a proper legal basis, Reuters reports. Seoul’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) found Facebook’s parent collected information from about 980,000 users, […]

UK revives plan to reform data protection rules with an eye on boosting the economy

Natasha Lomas — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 13:53:27 +0000

A new data bill from the U.K. Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) aims to revive several measures that failed to pass under the prior government, while rowing back on some controversial post-Brexit reforms proposed by conservative ministers. The government reckons the “Data (Use and Access) Bill” (DUA) stands to boost the U.K. economy […]

LinkedIn fined $335 million in EU for tracking ads privacy breaches

Natasha Lomas — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 10:11:47 +0000

Bad news for LinkedIn in Europe, where the Microsoft-owned social network has been reprimanded and fined €310 million for privacy violations related to its tracking ads business. The administrative penalties, which are worth around $335 million at current exchange rates, have been issued by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) under the European Union’s General Data […]

Pinterest faces EU privacy complaint over tracking ads

Natasha Lomas — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 05:00:00 +0000

When it comes to privacy nightmares, Pinterest is unlikely to be the first social app that springs to mind. But the visual discovery engine’s use of tracking ads is the target of the latest complaint from European privacy rights nonprofit noyb, which accuses it of breaching the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by failing […]

DuckDuckGo will be making more early-stage investments in privacy-focused startups

Paul Sawers — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 15:41:48 +0000

DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search alternative to Google, wants to put money into startups that have a similar focus on privacy. The company says that it’s actively seeking startups looking for investment, or startups that might be interested in partnering up or being acquired. In a blog post today, the company name-checked its SVP of finance, […]

‘Chat control’: The EU’s controversial CSAM-scanning legal proposal explained

Natasha Lomas — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 14:00:00 +0000

The European Union has a longstanding reputation for strong privacy laws. But a legislative plan to combat child abuse — which the bloc formally presented back in May 2022 — is threatening to downgrade the privacy and security of hundreds of millions of regional messaging app users. The European Commission, the EU legislative body that […]

Antitrust challenge to Facebook’s ‘superprofiling’ finally wraps in Germany — with Meta agreeing to data limits

Natasha Lomas — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 15:07:41 +0000

A multi-year competition challenge to Facebook (aka Meta), which saw Germany’s antitrust authority become a pioneering champion for privacy rights in 2019 after it sought to block the social media giant’s ‘superprofiling’ of users on the grounds that consentless cross-site tracking of users is an “exploitative abuse” of Facebook’s monopoly position, finally concluded Thursday with […]

The Internet Archive slammed by DDoS attack and data breach

Connie Loizos — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 05:19:29 +0000

The Internet Archive, the nonprofit organization that digitizes and archives materials like web pages, came under attack Wednesday. Several users – including over at The Verge – confronted a pop-up when visiting the site, reading, “Have you ever felt like the Internet Archive runs on sticks and is constantly on the verge of suffering a […]

Meta faces data retention limits on its EU ad business after top court ruling

Natasha Lomas — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 11:08:30 +0000

The European Union’s top court has sided with a privacy challenge to Meta’s data retention policies. It ruled on Friday that social networks, such as Facebook, cannot keep using people’s information for ad targeting indefinitely. The judgement could have major implications on the way Meta and other ad-funded social networks operate in the region. Limits […]

Ray-Ban Meta + facial recognition = Terminator vision for doxxing

Brian Heater — Wed, 02 Oct 2024 18:04:02 +0000

Any piece of popular consumer electronics will eventually be hacked, often to prove a point.

A hidden microphone on a San Francisco street pole is spotting ‘bops’ in the wild

Maxwell Zeff — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 20:14:04 +0000

In San Francisco’s Mission district, good music is all around you. That’s why, high up on a street pole at an undisclosed location in the Mission, Riley Walz installed a solar-powered box containing an old Android phone running the song identifying service, Shazam, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The so called “Bop […]

We are skeptical of VPN providers, and you should be, too

Zack Whittaker — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 15:59:00 +0000

You cannot and and should not trust either free or paid-for VPN providers. Here's why.

Meta fined $101.5M for 2019 breach that exposed hundreds of millions of Facebook passwords

Natasha Lomas — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 12:32:06 +0000

Reset your clocks: Meta has been hit with yet another privacy penalty in Europe. On Friday, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) announced a reprimand and a €91 million fine — around $101.5 million at current exchange rates — after concluding a multiyear investigation into a 2019 security breach by Facebook’s parent company. The DPC opened […]

The Tor Project merges with Tails, a Linux-based portable OS focused on privacy

Paul Sawers — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 12:19:57 +0000

The Tor Project is merging operations with Tails, a portable Linux-based operating system focused on preserving user privacy and anonymity.

Mozilla hit with privacy complaint in EU over Firefox tracking tech

Natasha Lomas — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 12:17:45 +0000

Mozilla, the nonprofit that develops the Firefox web browser, has been hit with a complaint by European Union privacy rights group noyb, which accuses it of violating the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by tracking Firefox users by default without their permission. It’s unusual to see a privacy complaint targeting Mozilla, an organization which […]

Google’s revised ad targeting plan triggers fresh competition concerns in UK

Natasha Lomas — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 11:09:28 +0000

What is going on with Google’s long-touted migration to an alternative adtech stack (aka its Privacy Sandbox proposal)? What indeed. The entire multiyear endeavor to reshape the commercial web looks dangerously close to being killed off after the latest intervention by the U.K.’s antitrust regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). This comes on top […]

LinkedIn has stopped grabbing UK users’ data for AI

Natasha Lomas — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 15:14:44 +0000

The U.K.’s data protection watchdog has confirmed that Microsoft-owned LinkedIn has stopped processing user data for AI model training for now. Stephen Almond, executive director of regulatory risk for the Information Commissioner’s Office, wrote in a statement on Friday: “We are pleased that LinkedIn has reflected on the concerns we raised about its approach to training […]

FTC report on predatory social media data hoarding hints at future regulations

Devin Coldewey — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 20:48:57 +0000

A new FTC report on how social media and streaming sites collect and monetize their hoards of user data doesn’t really feature a lot of surprises for anyone who’s followed the space. It’s more helpful to consider this part of a paper trail the agency is laying down in order to justify new regulations in […]

Discord launches end-to-end encrypted voice and video chats

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 19:44:50 +0000

Discord will now offer audio and video calls that even the company won't be able to listen in on.

UK’s privacy watchdog takes credit for rise of ‘consent or pay’

Natasha Lomas — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 23:01:00 +0000

The U.K.’s data protection watchdog claims a crackdown on websites that don’t ask for consent from visitors to track and profile their activity for ad targeting is bearing fruit. However it’s admitted some of the changes driven by the intervention have seen sites adopting a controversial type of paywall that demands users pay a fee […]