privacy

Facebook released a statement this morning about a privacy investigation of Facebook app developers. This is what Facebook calls their "ongoing App Developer Investigation" in which they've begun taking a closer look at apps with access to "large amounts of information." This is part of the overarching privacy disaster going on at Facebook since March of 2018. Today Facebook said this investigation is "part of our response to the episode involving Cambridge Analytica."

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Google revealed many things at I/O 2019 last May but, as typical, not all of them have materialized just yet. Of course, those may still happen in due time, and it seems that Google is indeed taking its sweet time for others. It was still back in May when Google announced a privacy feature for Maps but it seems that it will still be quite a while before Google Maps' incognito mode rolls out to all.

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The Capitol's war on tech companies is heating up. The U.S.' biggest corporations - Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple - were all told to hand in information as part of an ongoing antitrust investigation. They're calling for greater transparency in their data collection practices – and to investigate the possibility of corrupt practices to cripple competition.

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Facebook was always about friends. But now it’s also about love. The social media giants have launched Facebook Dating in the U.S., their answer to Tinder, Coffee Meets Bagel, Bumble and other dating apps. The new feature brings together Facebook’s networking infrastructure and data to help find matches that suit you.

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Few phones can claim to be running a "full" version of Linux. Even fewer could boast of having reached the consumer market at all. That extremely short list includes the OpenMoko and the Nokia N900 and N9. By the end of the month, they will be joined by Purism's Librem 5 whose origins and development, not to mention the drama behind them, could fill pages. The journey isn't over yet, however, as the process to get those privacy-respecting phones into users' hands is going to be a story in itself, spread out across batches all the way to the second quarter of 2020.

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iOS isn't Google's preferred mobile platform but, in order to keep users from going outside of its ecosystem, it naturally has to play ball. That doesn't mean, however, that all its mobile apps are created equal and, ironically, sometimes Android apps lag behind their iOS counterparts. Gmail for iOS, however, is different and it has, for years, lacked one important functionality. Fortunately, it has finally caught up and Gmail on your iPhone will no longer automatically load external images unless you say it's OK.

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Mozilla previously put third-party and cross-site tracking on notice and now it is finally flipping the switch. Starting with today's release, Firefox will have its Enhanced Tracking Protection turned on by default. Additionally, it will also be blocking cryptominers by default so that hackers won't be able to make money off your CPU cycles and battery life. Ironically, it won't yet do the same for sites that try to track your computer based on certain "fingerprints".

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Today Facebook released an off switch for facial recognition in their social media system. Today, a Facebook representative by the name of Srinivas Narayanan, Applied Research Lead, Facebook AI said that Facebook has "only used face recognition technology to automatically suggest tags for your friends in photos."

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AI and machine learning have crept into almost every part of modern technology and products but one of its most whimsical applications is face-swapping. Dubbed "deepfakes", these programs can almost convincingly stitch your face on someone else's. One such app named ZAO became an overnight sensation in China because of how impressively convincing its end results were. That, however, quickly gave way to fear and concern once it became evident how the technology could be misused for criminal acts.

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Apple is overhauling how it deals with Siri recordings, pledging to do away with human assessment of Siri requests after users voiced privacy concerns that their conversations with the assistant could be overheard for quality testing. The iOS and macOS assistant has been caught up in ongoing controversies around all of the major virtual assistants the past few weeks, with privacy advocates warning that human assessment and intervention is far more prevalent than many users might assume.

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The past weeks have been filled with news about smart assistants not just accidentally listening to conversations but those utterances being heard by complete strangers. That, however, it turns out wasn't just limited to the likes of Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa. Even the likes of Microsoft Skype has been subjected to the same treatment so it's no surprise that even the Xbox One console is now reported to have been accidentally recording conversations for human ears to hear without the owner's knowledge.

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Web browsers, particularly Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, have lately taken stronger actions against unscrupulous, not to mention potentially illegal, tracking by websites and third parties. Curiously silent is one browser maker who has painted itself as the champion of privacy in the modern digital and tech world. Apple, however, was simply waiting for the right moment to announce its own new policy against the misuse of tracking and cookies. But while it might be the harshest and strictest policy among web browsers, it could also be one of those that breaks the Internet the most for users.

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