Privacy

Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) and House Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Oregon) announced a new, national data privacy bill called The American Privacy Rights Act (PDF) today.

Facebook’s “In App Panel” program ran from 2016 to 2019 using Onavo’s technology as a man-in-the-middle attack to decrypt secured Snapchat traffic. Court documents unsealed as part of an ongoing class-action antitrust lawsuit show how the program came together.

A decade ago, San Jose broke up “The Jungle,” reportedly the biggest homeless encampment in the US; the feds estimate San Jose still has the highest proportions of unsheltered homeless and homeless youth. It’s not unusual to see a sidestreet filled with sunbaked RVs, or tents lining a creek or underpass.

TechCrunch’s Zack Whittaker has been pushing the company for answers, now that the massive cache of customer data is circulating once again. But although a known hacker claimed responsibility in 2021, AT&T still claims its systems weren’t breached at all — and yet it wouldn’t give Whittaker any other explanation for where the data came from.

Kids are big business for brands looking to partner with influencers — and yet, Illinois is the only state in the US where kids appearing in sponcon are entitled to a cut of earnings.

A driver’s insurance rate went up based on a 130-page report detailing his Chevy Bolt’s drives over six months, shared by GM with data broker LexisNexis through the OnStar Smart Driver program, reports The New York Times.

That’s according to WABetaInfo, which spotted that a new “end-to-end encrypted” indicator that appears briefly at the top of chat threads was under development in late January. Yesterday, the outlet reported that the test is now rolling out to beta testers.

The privacy-focused Brave browser launched its AI assistant, Leo, last year on the desktop, and now it’s available for Android, following other mobile AI-connected browsers like Edge and Arc (only on iOS).

The Washington Post describes how law enforcers have gotten companies like Google to hand over data associated with push notifications. Investigators use the code to track down child predators, even through encrypted apps, per the Post, but law enforcement around the world could use the tactic to track down activists and others too.

State Attorney General Aaron Darnell Ford filed last week to stop Meta from offering end-to-end encryption to children as a matter of “extreme urgency,” claiming E2EE keeps police from protecting kids from predators.

Alessandro Paluzzi, who discovers a lot of Instagram features before they’re announced, posted an update on something he’d spotted in the app months ago: the ability to see where your friends are on a map. Snap’s Snap Map is similar, as are features built into Android and iOS.

A student at the University of Waterloo in Canada asked that in a post showing a vending machine error message that revealed a facial recognition app had failed.

So said TSA executive director of checkpoint tech Melissa Conley of airports’ use of facial recognition, in a New York Times story today.

Although you can currently “Chat Lock” sensitive WhatsApp conversations to put them in a password- or biometrics-protected folder, the same protection doesn’t carry across to other devices you’ve got linked to your account.

The slyly named “LassPass” has earned five stars on Apple’s App Store with just five reviews in total, noted Bleeping Computer — more evidence on how easily ratings can be manipulated. Apple has since removed the app.

Ars Technica reports that a federal judge won’t dismiss the case against Kochava. The lawsuit alleges that the app analytics firm lets advertisers track customers’ names, addresses, and specific geolocation information.

The State Department can restrict visas to individuals linked to the illegal use of commercial spyware, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced. The new policy covers investors and heads of companies, as well as those acting on behalf of governments that carry out illegal surveillance.