Tag Archives: privacy

Google has been keeping tabs on what you buy through your Gmail inbox and storing them in a Google Account page that evidently no one knew about. This purchase tracking has gone on for several years before being discovered. In essence, this creates a list of your online shopping history that can stretch back five …

Facebook’s former security chief says Mark Zuckerberg has amassed too much power and should resign as chief executive officer of the social networking giant. “There’s a legit argument that he has too much power,” Alex Stamos said at the Collision Conference in Toronto on Tuesday. “He needs to give up some of that power. If I was him, I would …

The Tor Project’s leave-no-traces browser now is available for Android phones. The Tor Browser relies on a network of servers that send network requests over multiple intermediate links to hide who you really are when you visit a website. That can be useful if you don’t want to be tracked — whether you’re an activist trying to avoid government monitoring …

Facebook has all the photos you took at your girls’ weekend at the beach. That’s no surprise, because you posted them to your profile page. But Facebook has ways to get even more information about your getaway. The company isn’t just a social network. It’s an ad network too, and it follows you around on the internet and in real …

Carl Mazur, a photographer in Utah, freaked out when he saw an ad for Rokinon camera lenses pop up on Facebook. That’s because it appeared 20 minutes after Mazur’s chiropractor mentioned the brand to him during a visit. Mazur had heard stories about the social network eavesdropping on conversations through the mics on smartphones in order to deliver more precisely …

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: After you talk about something specific, an ad related to that very topic pops up on your Facebook feed. It’s uncanny, unsettling and, like most urban legends, nearly everyone has a variant of this story. Thanks to the wealth of data the mammoth social network already has on you — your location, network …

Google has big plans for the second half of 2019 that run from the home to the auto. At its just-concluded Google I/O developer conference, the tech giant unveiled the Google Nest Hub Max, talked about its plans for Lens and AR, showed a more personal side of Google Assistant, debuted cheaper Pixel 3A and 3A XL phones and revealed …

Every phone user has gone through some version of this: You see a pop-up from an app asking for your location information, but have no idea why. Perhaps you uneasily click “allow,” guessing that the app has good reason. Or you click “deny” and then wonder if the app will work correctly going forward. Now, Google is pushing app developers …

After being a dedicated Fitbit wearer, I decided to switch to an Apple Watch for its prettier display, superior design and extra features to continue my step-counting ways. But after spending so much time with a Fitbit, I was disappointed to discover that the Activity app deemphasizes step counts. I quickly grew accustomed to checking my current step count with …

Safari did it. Firefox did it. Brave did it. Now Google Chrome, too, is trying to curtail privacy problems posed by cookies — the small text files websites store that can track you online. “We’re changing how cookies work in Chrome, making them more private and secure by default,” said Tal Oppenheimer, a Chrome product manager speaking at the Google …