Privacy News | TechCrunch

A new startup from Figure’s founder is licensing NASA tech in a bid to curb school shootings

Brian Heater — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 14:55:00 +0000

Cover says what sets it apart is the underlying technology it employs, which has been exclusively licensed from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

EU member states remain divided on controversial CSAM-scanning plan — but for how long?

Natasha Lomas — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 16:28:53 +0000

Opponents also contend the EU plan will fail at its claimed aim of protecting children, suggesting law enforcement will instead be swamped by millions of false positives.

Stop playing games with online security, Signal president warns EU lawmakers

Natasha Lomas — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 12:56:23 +0000

A controversial European Union legislative proposal to scan the private messages of citizens in a bid to detect child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is a risk to the future of web security, Meredith Whittaker warned in a public blog post Monday. She’s the president of the not-for-profit foundation behind the end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) messaging app […]

Privacy app maker Proton transitions to nonprofit foundation structure

Paul Sawers — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 11:34:06 +0000

The newly setup Proton Foundation will serve as the main shareholder to the existing corporate entity that is Proton AG, which will continue as a for-profit company under the auspices of the Foundation.

iOS 18 cracks down on apps asking for full address book access

Sarah Perez — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 19:05:14 +0000

To give users more control over the contacts an app can and cannot access, the permissions screen has two stages.

LinkedIn to limit targeted ads in EU after complaint over sensitive data use

Paul Sawers — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 16:45:08 +0000

LinkedIn has confirmed it will no longer allow advertisers to target users based on data gleaned from their participation in LinkedIn Groups. The move comes more than three months after a collective of civil society groups filed a complaint with the European Commission (EC) over a potential violation of the Digital Services Act (DSA). The […]

Worldcoin faces pivotal EU privacy decision within weeks

Natasha Lomas — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 16:24:32 +0000

The next few weeks could be pivotal for Worldcoin, the controversial eyeball-scanning crypto venture co-founded by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, whose operations remain almost entirely shuttered in the European Union following a series of privacy complaints — including in France, Germany, Portugal and Spain. The only EU market where Worldcoin is still scanning eyeballs according to […]

Microsoft hit with EU privacy complaints over schools’ use of 365 Education suite

Natasha Lomas — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 09:16:46 +0000

Microsoft’s education-focused flavor of its cloud productivity suite, Microsoft 365 Education, is facing investigation in the European Union. Privacy rights nonprofit noyb has just lodged two complaints with Austria’s data protection authority. The complaints examine the use of Microsoft’s cloud software by schools. The first one focuses on transparency and legal basis issues. noyb says […]

Spain bans Meta from launching election features on Facebook, Instagram over privacy fears

Natasha Lomas — Fri, 31 May 2024 10:52:42 +0000

Meta has been banned from launching features on Facebook and Instagram that would have collected data on voters in Spain using the social networks ahead of next month’s European Elections. The local data protection authority, the AEPD, has used emergency powers to protect local users’ privacy. Meta confirmed to TechCrunch it has complied with the […]

EU’s ChatGPT taskforce offers first look at detangling the AI chatbot’s privacy compliance

Natasha Lomas — Mon, 27 May 2024 16:01:03 +0000

A data protection taskforce that’s spent over a year considering how the European Union’s data protection rulebook applies to OpenAI’s viral chatbot, ChatGPT, reported preliminary conclusions Friday. The top-line takeaway is that the working group of privacy enforcers remains undecided on crux legal issues, such as the lawfulness and fairness of OpenAI’s processing. The issue […]

Signal’s Meredith Whittaker on the Telegram security clash and the ‘edgelords’ at OpenAI

Mike Butcher — Fri, 24 May 2024 12:45:59 +0000

Among other things, Whittaker is concerned about the concentration of power in the five main social media platforms.

Jolla debuts privacy-focused AI hardware

Natasha Lomas — Mon, 20 May 2024 15:30:00 +0000

Jolla has taken the official wraps off the first version of its personal server-based AI assistant in the making. The reborn startup is building a privacy-focused AI device — aka the Jolla Mind2, which TechCrunch exclusively revealed at MWC back in February. At a livestreamed launch event Monday, it also kicked off preorders, with the […]

Flock Safety’s solar-powered cameras could make surveillance more widespread

Haje Jan Kamps — Thu, 16 May 2024 14:29:00 +0000

Flock Safety is a multibillion-dollar startup that’s got eyes everywhere. As of Wednesday, with the company’s new Solar Condor cameras, those eyes are solar-powered and use wireless 5G networks to make them all that much easier to install. Adding solar power to the mix means that the company’s mission to blanket the country with cameras […]

Google’s call-scanning AI could dial up censorship by default, privacy experts warn

Natasha Lomas — Wed, 15 May 2024 17:25:10 +0000

A feature Google demoed at its I/O confab yesterday, using its generative AI technology to scan voice calls in real time for conversational patterns associated with financial scams, has sent a collective shiver down the spines of privacy and security experts who are warning the feature represents the thin end of the wedge. They warn […]

Apple touts stopping $1.8B in App Store fraud last year in latest pitch to developers

Natasha Lomas — Tue, 14 May 2024 17:00:00 +0000

Apple released new data about anti-fraud measures related to its operation of the iOS App Store on Tuesday morning, trumpeting a claim that it stopped over $7 billion in “potentially fraudulent transactions” across the four years between 2020 and 2023. More than $1.8 billion of that total was stopped in 2023, per Apple, which is […]

UnitedHealth data breach should be a wake-up call for the UK and NHS

Paul Sawers — Fri, 03 May 2024 15:43:09 +0000

The ransomware attack that has engulfed U.S. health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group and its tech subsidiary Change Healthcare is a data privacy nightmare for millions of U.S. patients, with CEO Andrew Witty confirming this week that it may impact as much as one-third of the country. But it should also serve as a wake-up call […]

ChatGPT’s ‘hallucination’ problem hit with another privacy complaint in EU

Natasha Lomas — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 05:00:51 +0000

OpenAI is facing another privacy complaint in the European Union. This one, which has been filed by privacy rights nonprofit noyb on behalf of an individual complainant, targets the inability of its AI chatbot ChatGPT to correct misinformation it generates about individuals. The tendency of GenAI tools to produce information that’s plain wrong has been […]

Meta could face further squeeze on surveillance ads model in EU

Natasha Lomas — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 11:43:07 +0000

Meta’s tracking ads business could be facing further legal blows in the European Union: An influential adviser to the bloc’s top court affirmed Thursday that the region’s privacy laws limit how long people’s data can be used for targeted advertising. In the non-legally binding opinion, Advocate General Athanasios Rantos said use of personal data for […]

Security bugs in popular phone-tracking app iSharing exposed users’ precise locations

Zack Whittaker — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 14:01:35 +0000

The location-sharing app iSharing, which has 35 million users, fixed vulnerabilities that exposed users' personal information and precise location data.

Mozilla finds that most dating apps are not great guardians of user data

Ivan Mehta — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 09:45:05 +0000

Dating apps are not following great privacy practices and are collecting more data than ever in order to woo Gen Z users, a new study by Mozilla pointed out. Researchers reviewed dating apps in terms of privacy in 2021. In the latest report, they noted that dating apps have become more data-hungry and intrusive. The organization […]