Tag Archives: privacy

Microsoft has revealed that humans could be listening to “short snippets” of voice conversations on its audio services like Skype and virtual assistant Cortana, Motherboard reported Wednesday. Microsoft confirmed the report saying the disclosure came in an update to its privacy statement. The news comes a week after Motherboard reported that Microsoft contractors listen to recordings …

A data breach to Capital One servers in March exposed the personal information of nearly 106 million of the bank’s customers and applicants. The hack, which included US and Canadian customers of the banking and credit card company, followed the settlement reached between Equifax and the Federal Trade Commission concerning a hack in 2017 that affected 147 million customers. According …

Do you hate robocalls enough to let an app give your data to third parties in exchange for blocking the spam? Researchers found that’s exactly what’s happening to millions of people using the most popular robocall-blocking apps.  Robocalls have become an epidemic, as lawmakers and phone carriers seek to stomp out the massive number of spam calls sent per day. …

Instagram has kicked a marketing startup off its platform after determining it improperly collected user data. The Facebook-owned social network took the action on Hyp3r after finding the startup scraped public data such as users’ physical locations, profile information and photos to serve better targeted ads. Instagram sent a cease-and-desist letter to the San Francisco-based company on Wednesday after learning …

Microsoft contractors listen to recordings of some Skype conversations to help improve its translation feature, Motherboard reported Wednesday. Skype’s website does state it “collects and uses” conversations that utilize the translation feature in order to improve products and services, but according to Motherboard it doesn’t specify that this includes human review. Microsoft’s practice with Skype appears similar that of Apple, Amazon and …

Things haven’t been looking great for Android users’ privacy recently. After Google purged 50 malicious apps from its Play store with upward of 25 million downloads a couple of years back, another 200 Android apps were found infected with malware in March, followed by July’s discovery of 1,000-plus Android apps harvesting data even after you deny permissions and a Chrome …

Facebook, Twitter and Google aren’t prepared for deepfakes ahead of the US presidential election, a top Congressman said after the tech giants sent letters last week about how they deal with high-tech doctored videos and other kinds of media manipulation. The companies “have begun thinking seriously” about the challenges, said Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, but it’s their responsibility …

Apple’s reputation for respecting privacy was called into question last week with news that contractors listen to Siri recordings. That sparked an understandable clamor for better control over voice data collected by the digital assistant. If you own an Apple product, you might want the option to delete your recordings from the company’s database.  Here’s the rub: Apple can’t delete …

Apple is suspending its Siri grading process globally while it conducts a review. The move comes after a report last week in  The Guardian said a team of contractors around the world listens to a random, small subset of the recordings Siri hears after people push its activation button or say “Hey Siri,” to check the voice assistant’s accuracy and response. Apple …

Liking tweets and retweeting them are fine ways to support your favorite Twitter personalities. But you know what’s better? Cash. And now the Brave browser lets you put your money where your mouse is.  Brave has built a Twitter tipping system into the newest version of the ad-blocking browser, released Thursday for Windows, MacOS and Linux. The online gratuity service, …