#privacy
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Google now says it may use your Gmail and Photos data to target ads
Google has updated its privacy policy so that, if you turn on personalized AI features, the contents of your mail, drive, and photos may be used to serve personalized ads.
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Quad9 to Leave France After Refusing a Court Order to Block Domains
The Swiss nonprofit DNS resolver Quad9 will stop serving French users on November 24, after a court sided with the company beIN and ordered it to block certain domains — a demand Quad9 says it cannot reconcile with its mission.
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Court Rules OPM's Data Disclosure to DOGE Was Unlawful
A federal court in New York has ruled that the U.S. Office of Personnel Management broke the law when it opened the personal records of millions of federal employees to DOGE agents.
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Norway slaps Microsoft ad unit with $9.6M fine over Grindr data
Norway's data protection authority has issued its largest-ever fine — 92 million kroner — to Xandr for unlawfully sharing sensitive data of Grindr users with thousands of advertisers.
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AI Tool Finds the Exact House From a Single Interior Photo
Raven, formerly GeoSpy, lets police identify the specific home where an interior photo was taken, pulling data from Airbnb, Zillow and Vrbo.
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Apple Unveils Reference Image, a Verified Photography System
Apple has released Reference Image, a system that confirms a photo is exactly as an iPhone captured it — without revealing the specific device or the photographer behind it.
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Psiphon Ready to Leave Canada Over Lawful-Access Bill
Psiphon, a maker of censorship-circumvention tools, says it will leave Canada if Bill C-22 passes, forcing providers to secretly build surveillance capabilities for police and intelligence services.
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RemoveMacAI strips Apple Intelligence from macOS 27 with one command
macOS 27 no longer offers a single switch for Apple Intelligence, and its downloaded models linger on disk even after the features are off. RemoveMacAI promises to reclaim that space — reversibly.
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Sanders files bill to bar the federal government from using Flock
Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed banning federal agencies from using automatic license plate readers and from tapping the data those readers collect.
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The Connected Car as a Surveillance Platform
Researchers at Northeastern University and Consumer Reports examined how much modern cars spy on their drivers — and who ends up with the data.
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No Warrant Needed: US Agents Can Search Your Phone at the Border
An immigration advocate is suing border agents who demanded his cell phone — a reminder that the "border exemption" to your rights is very real.
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San Francisco Keeps Its License-Plate Cameras, Offering Only Weak Safeguards
EFF has criticized the city's decision to retain its automated license-plate reader network, arguing that the new rules do nothing to remove the core danger — the surveillance itself.
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Google fined €403 million over location data violations
Ireland's Data Protection Commission has fined Google €403 million for multiple GDPR violations in how it handled users' location data.
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Comcast Routers Learned to Spot Motion in Your Home — and to Share It
Comcast has turned its Wi-Fi routers into motion sensors, but, as Bruce Schneier points out, the terms of service hide a clause about handing that data to third parties.
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X Corp. Shuts Down Nitter: The Project Receives a Cease and Desist Notice
After letters from X Corp.'s lawyers, the repository of Nitter — a free alternative web interface for Twitter/X — has been switched to archive mode. Along with it, the XCancel redirect service has ceased operating.
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The Free Software Foundation Comes Out Against the GUARD Act and Age-Verification Laws
The Free Software Foundation has launched a campaign against the U.S. GUARD Act and similar age-verification laws being enacted around the world.
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428 Million TikTok Records: The Breach the Company Won't Acknowledge
A hacker going by the alias Often9 has put up for sale a database of 428 million TikTok accounts, obtained, he claims, through a vulnerability in an internal API. TikTok maintains there was no breach, and that the posted data was already publicly available anyway.