Tech

Uber asked contractor to allow video surveillance in employee homes, bedrooms

Enlarge (credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images ) For years, employers have used surveillance to keep tabs on their employees on the job. Cameras have watched as workers moved cash in and out of registers, GPS has reported on the movements of employees driving company vehicles, and software has been monitoring people’s work email . Now, with […]

Tech

Apple says it will refuse gov’t demands to expand photo-scanning beyond CSAM

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Yuichiro Chino) Apple today said it will refuse any government demands to expand its new photo-scanning technology beyond the current plan of using it only to detect CSAM (child sexual abuse material). Apple has faced days of criticism from security experts, privacy advocates, and privacy-minded users over the plan it […]

Tech

The privacy battle Apple isn’t fighting

Enlarge (credit: Elena Lacey, Getty Images) For at least a decade, privacy advocates dreamed of a universal, legally enforceable “do not track” setting. Now, at least in the most populous state in the US, that dream has become a reality. So why isn’t Apple—a company that increasingly uses privacy as a selling point—helping its customers […]

Tech

Google Play gets mandatory app privacy labels in April 2022

Scroll down on a Google Play app listing and you’ll soon see this new privacy section. [credit: Google ] In iOS 14, Apple added a “privacy” section to the app store, requiring app developers to list the data they collect and how they use it. Google—which was one of the biggest targets of Apple’s personal […]

Tech

Venmo gets more private—but it’s still not fully safe

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Venmo, the popular mobile payment service, has redesigned its app. That’s normally news you could safely ignore, but this announcement is worth a closer look. In addition to making some navigational tweaks and adding new purchase protections, the PayPal-owned platform is finally shutting down its global social feed, where the application […]

Tech

Catholic priest quits after “anonymized” data revealed alleged use of Grindr

Enlarge (credit: Pascal Deloche/Getty Images) In what appears to be a first, a public figure has been ousted after de-anonymized mobile phone location data was publicly reported, revealing sensitive and previously private details about his life. Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill was general secretary of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (UCCB), effectively the highest-ranking priest in […]

Entertainment Health

Shailene Woodley Explains Why — And HOW — She & Aaron Rodgers Kept Their Relationship Secret!

Shailene Woodley and Aaron Rodgers are the masters of keeping a secret! As you may know, the couple pretty much kept their romance on the down-low throughout the pandemic. So when the Green Bay Packers quarterback announced his surprise engagement during his MVP acceptance speech at the NFL Honors back in February, the news came […]

Tech

Pornhub sued for allegedly serving “under-age, non-consensual” videos

Enlarge / A Pornhub logo at the company’s booth during the 2018 AVN Adult Expo on January 25, 2018, in Las Vegas, Nevada. (credit: Getty Images | Gabe Ginsberg ) Pornhub was sued yesterday by 34 women alleging that the site hosted videos without their consent and profited from other nonconsensual content involving rape, child […]

Tech

Apple and Google’s AI wizardry promises privacy—at a cost

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Since the dawn of the iPhone, many of the smarts in smartphones have come from elsewhere: the corporate computers known as the cloud. Mobile apps sent user data cloudward for useful tasks like transcribing speech or suggesting message replies. Now Apple and Google say smartphones are smart enough to do some […]