Articles about Privacy

Last year there was a bit of controversy surrounding the iPhone 11 when it was discovered that even when users told the phone not to use location services, it would still continue to do so. Apple later offered an explanation in which they said that this was due to the use of the U1 ultra wideband chip that made its debut in the iPhone 11 models.

It is no secret that companies such as Microsoft have been outsourcing the analysis of recordings made through platforms such as Cortana. The analysis is meant to help the company better understand how to improve their services, although we imagine that not many people are too thrilled at the idea.

Over the years as we use more apps and online services, a lot of data about us is being collected. This is used for marketing purposes so that advertisers know what kind of ads to serve to us. If you’re not a fan of this, then you might want to consider making the shift to Mozilla’s Firefox browser.

Want to furnish your home with a home security camera? There are plenty of smart options these days, one of which being Nest which is one of the more popular models around. However, Nest cameras do not come cheap, which is why many were understandably excited when a couple of years ago, Wyze launched a $20 alternative.

Smart home devices are fantastic inventions. They let us remotely control our lights, doors, home appliances, and more. It can also be automated which could also potentially be great for energy savings. However, the problem with smart home devices is that because they’re connected to the internet, it means that they are also susceptible to hacks.

You would assume that because computers have no feelings that when it comes to biases, they might be immune to it. However, a computer is essentially a tool and it does what the people who program it tell it to, and as such, sometimes maybe by accident, developers can bake biasness into them.

Earlier this year, the city of San Francisco announced that they would be banning the use of facial recognition technology in public spaces. It was essentially a blanket ban, but the problem with this ban is that it also affected the way the public used their smartphones, especially the iPhone which uses facial recognition technology as a form of security.

hackEarlier this month, it was reported that browser extensions from Avast and AVG were found to be collecting data on users, more so than users were led to believe. Both Mozilla and Opera were quick to disable and/or remove them from the store, but for some reason, Google took no action, at least not on that day.

Whenever you install an Android app, it generally requests for certain permissions. However, what if you decide that you don’t want an app to have those permissions anymore? This guide will walk you through the steps of managing your app’s permissions.

While there are many mapping applications around, it’s hard to ignore the fact that Google Maps has to be one of the most-used platforms around at the moment. So much so that even Apple had to concede that Google Maps did a better job than Apple Maps when it was launched, going as far as recommending that users use it while the company fixed its issues.

In recent years with the rise in facial recognition systems, we’ve started to hear about how some governments are planning on introducing the technology to airports. This will be used for security purposes where suspects or wanted criminals can be spotted using these systems. It sounds good in theory, but maybe not so effective in real life.

While Safari might not necessarily be the most feature-rich browser, one of the things the company has done right is through a feature known as Intelligent Tracking Prevention, in which it would block cookies on the web from tracking users across multiple websites which in turn prevents advertisers from building a profile about you.

Just the other day, it was reported that there was an issue with the iPhone 11 handsets where it appeared that even when told not to share location of the user, it continued to do so. It sounded like a bug but when security researcher Brian Krebs asked Apple about it, he was told that this was “expected behavior”.

Companies like Avast and AVG are probably known to users as being the developers of security-based software like antiviruses. However, it seems that the browser extensions that these companies made have been accused of snooping on users who have installed their extensions.