Some photographers who contributed photos to the Flickr photo-sharing site were surprised IBM used those same photos in a million-image collection to train AI face-recognition systems — but perhaps they shouldn’t have been. The Flickr photos had been shared under a Creative Commons license, a framework under which people can loosen restrictions on photos, text, video or …
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Firefox Send lets you share 1GB files with no strings attached
In 2017, Mozilla experimented with a service that let you transfer 1GB files by sharing a web address with the recipient. Firefox Send is now out of testing and boasts a magnified 2.5GB file-size limit if you log into your Firefox account. Firefox Send is handy for those moments when you need to share video, audio or photo files that can …
Read More »Police bust man for allegedly selling 1 million Netflix, Spotify passwords
An Australian man has been arrested after allegedly raking in an estimated AU$300,000 ($211,000) selling stolen login details online. The man was allegedly behind the website WickedGen.com, which boasted that it had 120,000 users and sold Netflix, Spotify and Hulu logins stolen from almost 1 million accounts. Working on a tip-off from the FBI, Australian Federal Police arrested the 21-year-old …
Read More »Brave now can pay you 70 percent of its browser ad revenue
Brave has connected its browser ad technology to your wallet so you can get paid for seeing those ads. The browser startup, led by former Mozilla Chief Executive Brendan Eich, blocks conventional website ads by default. But in January, it started testing ads that appear as notification pop-ups for those who activate the system. Now that test has expanded so …
Read More »Twitter beefs up reporting feature to protect personal information
Twitter is updating the process for reporting tweets that share personal information, allowing users to specify what type of content violates their privacy. The update was announced Thursday in a Twitter Safety channel tweet that included a GIF demonstrating the process step-by-step. Users will now have the option to specify whether a tweet reveals their contact information, home or physical …
Read More »Google tool lets any AI app learn without taking all your data
A new computing tool developed by Google will let developers build AI-powered apps that respect your privacy. Google on Wednesday released TensorFlow Federated, open-source software that incorporates federated learning, an AI training system. It works by using data that’s spread out across a lot of devices, such as smartphones and tablets, to teach itself new tricks. But rather than send …
Read More »Facebook expects encrypted messaging to outpace the News Feed
Facebook, which has been under fire over privacy concerns, is doubling down on private messaging. “I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won’t stick around forever,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post Wednesday. “This …
Read More »Some popular Android apps are still sending your data to Facebook
UK watchdog group Privacy International on Tuesday said while a few Android apps have stopped sharing data with Facebook, many haven’t. In December, Privacy International and German mobile security company Mobilsicher both published reports that many popular apps were automatically sharing user data with Facebook, even if those users don’t have Facebook accounts or were logged out of the Facebook …
Read More »Google Photos sharing to Android TVs shut down over privacy bug
Google has temporarily disabled Google Photo sharing to Android TVs while it investigates a privacy bug. The issue, discovered by Twitter user Prashanth, let hundreds of users’ accounts be visible to other users, Android Police reported on Monday. On Tuesday Google confirmed it had shut down the feature while it looked into the problem. “We take our users’ privacy extremely …
Read More »Apple investors debate political diversity at annual shareholder meeting
Should Apple have more “ideological diversity” on its board? That was the question facing CEO Tim Cook, along with Apple’s board and investors, at the company’s annual shareholder meeting Friday, when activist Justin Danhof pushed a proposal aimed at increasing such diversity on the company’s board of directors. “Diversity is not what someone looks like, it’s the sum of what …
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