A US senator and a pair of consumer privacy groups sent letters Tuesday to the Federal Trade Commission expressing concern over YouTube‘s practices surrounding kids content. They called on the agency to take action against the Google-owned video site for any wrongdoing. Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, urged the FTC to “hold YouTube accountable for any …
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User data is big business for social media and other tech companies, but most people outside of those businesses don’t know how much that data is worth. New legislation aims to make tech companies disclose the dollar value of your personal information. Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, and Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, will introduce the …
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Your car knows a lot more about you than you think. It gathers all sorts of information, from where you’ve been to whom you’ve talked to and what music you like, and police are able to get all of that information without a warrant. A Georgia Supreme Court case could change that. The American Civil Liberties Union argued Wednesday that …
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If you’re worried about your privacy, there are precautions you can take like staying off social networks, using cash or watching out for certain apps. But when it comes to watching television, more and more you’re out of luck. Smart televisions collect a massive amount of data on viewers, through a technology called Automatic Content Recognition. It recognizes everything you’re …
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Apple CEO Tim Cook didn’t just try to inspire Stanford University graduates with his commencement speech on Sunday. He also took a few shots at Silicon Valley. Cook’s speech called out Silicon Valley, which he says traces its roots back to Stanford, for taking credit without accepting responsibility. He brought up data breaches, privacy violations and false promises of miracles. Although …
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Social media companies like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter weren’t anywhere near a US House hearing on deepfakes Thursday, but they were still the stars of the show. The hearing, which focused on how manipulated media like deepfakes could threaten democracy, repeatedly harped on the social networks’ role in the threat, with experts suggesting policies sure to give those companies pause. One crucial suggestion? …
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The US Public Broadcasting Service faces challenges beyond the Trump administration’s efforts to defund it. Paula Kerger, CEO of the nonprofit broadcaster, says PBS has now encountered an obstacle from Apple. Kerger said Tuesday that a new restriction from the iPhone maker will limit how PBS can work with third-party developers and will ultimately harm the PBS Kids app. She made the …
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Google isn’t trying to kill ad blockers. That’s the message in a pair of Google blog posts published Wednesday in response to criticism of the search giant’s plan to improve extensions in its Chrome web browser. “We are not preventing the development of ad blockers or stopping users from blocking ads,” said Devlin Cronin in a post on the Google …
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Deepfakes of world leaders may be easier to debunk ahead of the 2020 US presidential election with a new detection method. The rest of us are still out of luck, though. And the technique works only for a specific style of talking-head-style deepfake. Oh, and it’s only a matter of time before manipulators figure out how to dodge this kind of …
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Microsoft’s Edge browser will block ads that are deemed too intrusive, a new sign that browsers have begun competing to make the web better for you even if businesses might not like it. It’s a significant development for Microsoft’s new Chromium-based Edge, an overhauled app now available for Windows, MacOS, Android and iOS that’s based on Google’s open-source browser technology. …
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