privacy

Facebook’s smart speaker may still be MIA but if this latest insider leak is true, it will skip that product entirely. Instead, it will jump directly into the smart display market with a product that, according to sources, will be called “Portal”. The company delayed the product’s debut and incorporated one unplanned privacy feature due to recent scandals, but it remains to be seen whether a device dedicated mostly to video chat will actually sell despite or in spite of Facebook’s brand.

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All major browser have one form of “Do Not Track” privacy mode or another. Some users, however, may not be so trusting of companies who have a vested interest in keeping track of users, for one reason or another. For some, even Mozilla’s Firefox falls under that category. Few web browsers achieve that degree of fame and infamy as Tor’s own web browser. And now it has finally come on Android, though in an unfinished alpha version.

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Apple often boasts of its human curation of apps that go into its Mac and iOS App Stores as the best way to prevent the likes of Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal from happening. It also sings praises of the efficacy and accuracy of this method over automated systems like Google’s. Those arguments, however, may have just fallen flat on their faces when a number of popular, top-grossing apps on the Mac App Store have been reported to be behaving like spyware. Including those from a company that’s supposed to be protecting users from malware.

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Very few crowdfunded projects have ever shipped on time. That’s especially true for ones that promise to create a device that has never existed yet so far. So it’s not exactly surprising when Purism, after a long status report, revealed they were now looking at an April 2019 launch date for the Librem 5. Despite that unforeseen setback, the company is confident that it’s still on track to deliver what will be the industry’s first non-Android, fully Linux, fully free and open source software, privacy and security respecting user-friendly smartphone.

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Google has just recently taken on some heat about how it was handling, or rather misrepresenting, its location tracking options. “No” doesn’t always mean “no”, as far as the turning location tracking off. Privacy advocates, however, may have something bigger to worry about. Because according to sources familiar with the matter, Google and Mastercard inked a deal that could link online ads with what people buy in stores, allowing Google to offer advertisers deeper insight into how effective their digital ads really are.

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Yahoo is back from the dead and it’s as bad a boy as ever. Actually, it didn’t really die but just got swallowed up by new management: Oath. But now under Verizon’s ownership, the now irrelevant Internet giant has even more reason to lust after its customers’ data. And despite numerous hacking scandals and profitability problems, Yahoo just keeps on using the same futile tactics to make a buck. Like scanning users’ emails when no other email service in the US does.

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T-Mobile customers are the victim of yet another hack, this one following a major breach the wireless carrier revealed in late 2015. According to the Uncarrier, its team found an "unauthorized access" of its system exposing some information about its customers. T-Mobile put an end to that access, but it wasn't in time to prevent things like names, phone numbers, and email addresses from being left vulnerable.

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The Department of Justice wants Facebook to give it access to encrypted voice chats as part of a criminal probe, according to a new report. The issue revolves around Messenger and its encrypted chats feature, which users can manually enable for specific conversations. The DOJ is reportedly seeking access to voice conservations made with the app.

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Twitch has sent out an alert notifying users of a bug that left some private messages exposed. The company says it has fixed the bug, but that "a small percentage" of messages were visible in the archives of other users, making them accessible to whomever happened to see them. The bug resulted from Twitch's recent removal of Messages.

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Most people take for granted that, almost by default, their smartphones send their location to manufacturers and app developers unless they explicitly say no. Sometimes, however, “no” doesn’t actually always mean no. That’s the rather sticky situation that Google has suddenly found itself in after Associated Press launched an investigation on how the tech giant keeps on tracking your location even after you turn certain settings off. Now Google is updating its policy not to change the feature but to just let people know what it really does.

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Niantic has announced a new feature that enables parents to control their child's personal data. Called Niantic Kids Parent Portal, this feature is scheduled to arrive in Pokemon GO's latest update, as well as in future Niantic games, giving parents a way to review and approval game permissions, among other things.

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Mozilla has always presented Firefox as the champion of open source and privacy on the Web, at least in contrast to the likes of Google Chrome. That doesn’t mean it hadn’t had a few missteps along the way, like its controversial “Sponsored Tiles”. It’s walking on thin ice again with its new “Firefox Advance” Test Pilot experiment that uses a smidgen of machine learning to recommend sites related to what you’ve been browsing. Fortunately, it is, at least for now, still an experiment you don’t even have to use.

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