Privacy

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.

Wired tells the story of California detectives who tried to use facial recognition to identify a face made with machine learning and crime scene DNA by phenotyping company Parabon NanoLabs. That’s not a good idea, said Parabon’s director of bioinformatics, Ellen Greytak:

Not only did InMarket Media sell precise location data without asking users for their consent, the data broker didn’t inform the third-party apps using its SDK, the FTC found.

Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel wrote letters to nine major automakers, including GM, Toyota, Ford, and Tesla, to ask what kind of data they collect about their drivers and how they protect their privacy. Rosenworcel sent similar letters to Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, too.

The company has issued a response to the customers who are now suing it over last year’s breach. In a letter obtained by TechCrunch, the company says the hack “was not a result of 23andMe’s alleged failure to maintain reasonable security measures” and instead had to do with users’ failure to reset their passwords.

In August, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers denied Google’s attempt to end a class-action lawsuit filed in 2020 that claims it illegally invaded the privacy of millions by tracking browsing activity even with “incognito mode” activated in Chrome and other browsers.

The company says in its announcement that the app, which uses Nord’s WireGuard-based NordLynx VPN protocol, will let users watch shows they’re following while abroad and prevent ISPs from identifying and throttling streaming content.

The New York Times published an investigative piece on the slave labor behind some of those innocuous-seeming crypto scam texts and calls.

Hot off a recent Utah Supreme Court decision, legal blogger Orin Kerr lays out the legal conundrum around whether you can be legally compelled to provide a passcode or password (and how that’s actually slightly different from, but closely related to, having to unlock your phone):

A month after Meta announced new subscriptions that give users the choice between paying or giving their “consent” to being tracked and shown ads, the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) and 18 of its members have filed a complaint, Reuters reports. “People should not be asked to pay for protecting their privacy,” it says. A first step in what’s likely to be a long legal battle.