CBS News reports: Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a civil lawsuit accusing the privacy-minded company of deploying its virtual assistant Siri to eavesdrop on people using its iPhone and other trendy devices. The proposed settlement filed Tuesday in an Oakland, California, federal court would resolve a 5-year-old lawsuit revolving around allegations…
Author: Dissent
Biden administration finalizes rule to block sale of Americans’ bulk data to adversaries
Joe Warminsky reports: Companies will no longer be able to sell sensitive data about Americans to countries such as Russia, China and Iran under regulations set to take effect in early 2025. The rule, proposed under an executive order in late February and finalized Friday, is intended to address the “urgent and extraordinary national security threat” created…
Secret Service Admits It Didn’t Check if People Really Consented to Being Tracked
Joseph Cox reports: The Secret Service never actually checked whether people gave proper consent to be tracked by a mobile phone location monitoring tool, despite claiming the data was collected with peoples’ permission, the agency admitted in an email obtained by 404 Media. The email undermines the Secret Service’s and other U.S. federal agencies’ justification…
Massive VW Group Data Leak Exposed 800,000 EV Owners’ Movements, From Homes To Brothels
Thanos Pappas reports: Many people worry about hackers stealing their personal data, but sometimes, the worst breaches come not from shadowy cybercriminals but straight from the companies we trust. According to a new report from Germany, the VW Group stored sensitive information for 800,000 electric vehicles from various brands on a poorly secured Amazon cloud—essentially leaving…