Security News
A Hamilton Beach Smart Coffee Maker that could eavesdrop, an Amazon Halo fitness tracker that measures the tone of your voice, and a robot-building kit that puts your kid's privacy at risk are among the 37 creepiest holiday gifts of 2020 according to Mozilla. The guide includes a "Best Of" category, which singles out products that get privacy and security right, while a "Privacy Not Included" warning icon alerts consumers when a product has especially problematic privacy practices.
After years of complaints about over-permissioned apps that collect, use and share private user information, Apple will be making developer privacy policies more transparent for consumers. Starting Dec. 8, iOS and macOS developers will be required to provide detailed information about how their apps collect information, which data they collect and what it will be used for, according to an Apple post on its developer support page.
Inventor of the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee, is having another crack at fixing the internet's biggest problems with the launch of a new enterprise server. The Inrupt Enterprise Solid Server is the first product from a company the inventor started two years ago in response to the problem of personal data online, where tech giants like Facebook and Google build vast databases on user's profiles and sell them to advertisers to make massive profits.
Inventor of the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee, is having another crack at fixing the internet's biggest problems with the launch of a new enterprise server. The Inrupt Enterprise Solid Server is the first product from a company the inventor started two years ago in response to the problem of personal data online, where tech giants like Facebook and Google build vast databases on user's profiles and sell them to advertisers to make massive profits.
SEE: TechRepublic Premium editorial calendar: IT policies, checklists, toolkits, and research for download. The proposition has ardent supporters and detractors on both sides of the online privacy debate, with some saying it was needed to fill loopholes in the landmark California Consumer Privacy Act and others bashing it for not going far enough or reinforcing dangerous practices. Carmen Balber, executive director of Consumer Watchdog, added in another statement that said "Prop 24 enshrines Californians' privacy rights and safeguards them from legislative assault, adds groundbreaking new protections for sensitive information like our race, sexual orientation and location, and creates a European-style privacy agency to protect our rights."
California voters have backed an initiative expanding a data privacy law criticized by rights watchdogs as having worrying "Loopholes" for firms such as Google and Facebook. The California Consumer Privacy Act become law at the start of this year, the toughest of its kind in the US. Like the European Data Protection Regulation, applied in the European Union since May 2018, the California law guarantees rights regarding control of online data.
Two years ago, California became the first state to pass a sweeping digital privacy law seen as the strongest of its kind in the United States. If approved, Proposition 24 would update a 2018 law that gave Californians the right to know what information companies collect about them online, the right to get that data deleted and the right to opt out of the sale of their personal information.
Ensure apps can only access the photos and albums that you designate by using the new limited photos picker in iOS 14. iOS 14 introduced a substantial change to privacy controls around the access of photos and photo albums: Apple is allowing users to choose exactly which photos that apps can access instead of allowing them to be granted full access or no access to the photo library.
Brave Browser, the privacy-focused web browser, announced today that it grew in usage by over 130% in its first year of the release of its 'Stable' version. On November 13th, 2019, Brave Browser released its first Stable version after it had already accumulated 8.7 million monthly active users and 3 million daily active users during its Beta period.
Google insists it doesn't use reCAPTCHA data for personalized adverts, and says as much in the reCAPTCHA terms of service. Google's reCAPTCHA terms of service state that the service sends device and application data to the company.