Privacy

India mandates pre-installation of government cyber safety app on all smartphones.

23 common tech myths: Busted once and for all.

The #UK has ordered #Apple to insert a backdoor into their encryption for a second time, #Microsoft has removed yet more workarounds to avoid creating an account in #Windows11, #Amazon adds #FacialRecognition technology to their #Ring doorbell cameras, and more.

The #Signal App gets only a 9 out of 10 for #Privacy protection, and it's not just because it requires a phone number.

"Using unique passwords for every web login means that if your account information ends up in a data breach, it won’t give bad actors an easy way to unlock your other accounts. Since it’s impossible for all of us to remember a unique password for every login we have, most people will want to use a password manager, which generates and stores those passwords for you.

"The company behind the Proton Mail email service, Proton, describes itself as a “neutral and safe haven for your personal data, committed to defending your freedom.”

"To put it bluntly, the path currently being taken towards agentic AI leads to an elimination of privacy and security at the application layer. It will not be possible for apps like Signal—the messaging app whose foundation I run—to continue to provide strong privacy guarantees, built on robust and openly validated encryption, if device-makers and OS developers insist on puncturing the metaphoric blood-brain barrier between apps and the OS. Feeding your sensitive Signal messages into an undifferentiated data slurry connected to cloud servers in service of their AI-agent aspirations is a dangerous abdication of responsibility.

"Members of the Department of Government Efficiency uploaded a copy of a crucial Social Security database in June to a vulnerable cloud server, putting the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans at risk of being leaked or hacked, according to a whistle-blower complaint filed by the Social Security Administration’s chief data officer.

"The change comes in response to the planned revision of the Ordinance on the Surveillance of Correspondence by Post and Telecommunications (OSCPT), introduced by the Swiss Federal Council in January 2025. As previously reported by CyberInsider, the proposal would compel telecom and “derived communication service” providers (FSCDs) to impose mandatory user identification once they reach 5,000 users, retain this data for six months after service ends, and, where encryption keys are held, decrypt communications on request. Larger providers with more than one million users or CHF 100 million in annual revenue would face round-the-clock compliance obligations and real-time interception capabilities.

"In general, no matter what features you use, WhatsApp cannot read your messages due to a technology called “end-to-end encryption”, or E2EE. Knowles described it as acting like the message is locked. “Your messages are locked, or encrypted, on your phone and only unlocked, or decrypted, when they reach the person you’re talking to,” she said.