Tag Archives: privacy

For the most up-to-date news and information about the coronavirus pandemic, visit the WHO and CDC websites. Courtenay Brown, who puts together grocery orders for online shoppers, says she’s afraid of coming into work at her Amazon Fresh warehouse in New Jersey. “For me right now in the warehouse, it’s chaos, it’s terrifying,” she said, …

If you’re like me, maybe you didn’t even realize your laptop didn’t have a webcam built in until your first pandemic-era Zoom call from home. That’s right — it turns out that a lot of modern laptops skip the webcam entirely, or install such a terrible one that it’s barely usable. If you need to snag a webcam for this …

For the most up-to-date news and information about the coronavirus pandemic, visit the WHO and CDC websites. A group of US senators on Monday introduced a bill to regulate contact-tracing apps, aiming to protect user privacy as technology is used to track the spread of the novel coronavirus.  The proposal is called the Exposure Notification Privacy Act and seeks to …

For the most up-to-date news and information about the coronavirus pandemic, visit the WHO and CDC websites. Brave, a privacy-focused browser, is adding a videoconferencing feature called Brave Together to compete with services like Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet. Testing of the new feature has begun during a hot time for video chat as the coronavirus pandemic pushes work …

Last year, a former Apple contractor made waves by raising concerns about how the tech giant handled Siri voice assistant recordings, ultimately leading the tech giant to cease listening to them without your permission. Now the whistleblower is back, having sent a letter to European regulators asking them to investigate and potentially punish the company. “I am extremely concerned that …

Facebook’s new group video chat feature Messenger Rooms is now available, and is ready to compete with services like Zoom, Skype, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, as more people turn to video chat during coronavirus lockdowns and quarantines.  You can create a video chat room via Facebook or the Messenger app and invite up to 50 people to join a video call — even if they …

Web apps, websites that can be converted into standalone apps, are moving closer toward becoming first-class software citizens on Windows 10. Google coined the term progressive web app, or PWA, to describe websites that can assume the power and prominence of conventional native apps you’d download from an app store. For a taste of PWAs, visit coronavirus.app, which with most …

Google Chrome has begun locking down an important type of communication that can leak private information to internet service providers or others who can snoop your web browser’s network activity. Chrome 83, released Tuesday, incorporates a new technology called DNS over HTTPS. Google, Mozilla and other allies have been trying to secure your connections to websites with the HTTPS technology, …

To improve battery life, network usage and website speed, Chrome will delete ads that consume too many computing resources, Google said Thursday. Google will begin experimenting with the technology in coming months and plans to build it into Chrome in August, Google said in a blog post. The move will excise only the worst ad offenders, including those that consume …

For the most up-to-date news and information about the coronavirus pandemic, visit the WHO and CDC websites. The US Senate voted down an amendment to the USA Patriot Act on Wednesday that would create a tougher standard for government investigators to collect the web search and browsing histories of people in the states. The bipartisan amendment, proposed by Sen. Ron …