Google’s claim that it allows users to completely turn off all location tracking is completely false, according to research conducted by the Associated Press.
Whether you’re using an iPhone or Android device, the AP found that many Google services store your location data, even if you’ve used a privacy setting that is supposed to prevent Google from grabbing your data.
Android 9 Pie has landed on Google Pixel devices just a month before Apple rolls out iOS 12. Both come with a long list of new features and improvements, but is one better than the other?
Here’s how Android 9 and iOS 12 compare.
Whether it’s our phones, our fitness trackers, or even something as innocuous as a dating app, much of the technology we use on a regular basis tracks our physical location.
Knowing the potential security risk this poses, the Pentagon banned deployed military personnel from using tech with active location-tracking features.
Some of the most useful apps on iOS take system features and turn them up to 11. For a few years, the photos app has had basic markup tools but it’s felt underwhelming and lacked pro features. Annotable for iPhone and iPad adds pro-level annotation and markup tools to highlight or hide whatever you want in an image.
Android has, or is soon to get, an incognito mode for the YouTube app, which will stop watched videos from showing up in your YouTube history. Google will still know exactly what you watch, of course. It’s just a way of keeping embarrassing movies out of your watched videos list.
iOS may or may not be getting the same feature, but that doesn’t matter. By using iOS’ (and the Mac’s) built-in tools, you can already watch YouTube videos without them showing up in your YouTube history. It even stops YouTube from tracking your history via cookies.
The Commerce Dept. is reportedly talking to social networking companies and consumer advocates about rules to protect online privacy. Also included are possible protections for companies that have data breeches.
This is supposedly laying the groundwork for legislation that might be proposed this fall.
Did you know that your boss can read your private Slack chats? That’s right — whenever you switch to a direct messaging session to avoid Slack’s public chat thread, you might think you are chatting away from your boss’s prying ears, the virtual equivalent of a quick word in the stairwell.
However, that’s not the case. The boss can drop in and spy on your “private” chats at any time. Luckily, there’s a way to fix that, using a tool called Shhlack.
Did you know that you can hide photos in your iPhone’s Photos library? This lets you keep photographs away from prying eyes, while still having access to them yourself. And — ironically — it also makes it very easy to find all the embarrassing/explicit photos on somebody else’s iPhone.
Ever been discussing some product to your friends and then had an ad for it appear on your iPhone the next day? It’s happened enough that people want to know “Is my phone listening to me all the time?”
A group of computer scientists decided to test this phobia, which they dubbed panoptispy: the fear that everyone is being spied on.
A Paris fashion designer, known for quirky clothing and accessories that catch eyes, uses scrap material to keep prying eyes from using webcams to spy.
Arthur Lhermitte makes webcam covers from leather offcut from his patterns. The tiny dots of leather stick to laptop webcams and smartphone cameras with a micro-suction tape that leaves no residue on the lens.
Some believe Facebook is already using our smartphones to hear our private conversations. That’s not true, but the social network is certainly considering it.
Facebook has applied for a new patent that describes a method of tapping into our microphones to listen to our reactions to TV ads. It’s just as invasive as it sounds.
Whenever Apple CEO Tim Cook weighs in on a social issue, like his recent disparaging comments about U.S. immigration policy, there are always voices urging him to be quiet and concentrate on making great products.
Speaking at a forum in San Francisco this evening, Cook said that changing the world is in his job description.
Going online is full of risks, from data and identity thieves to government snoops and content restrictions. It’s especially risky if you enjoy torrenting or other peer-to-peer sharing. So for all these reasons and more, connecting via VPN is a must.
Maybe the most important new feature of iOS 12 is something that helps you to do less with your iPhone, not more.
If any other company had introduced Screen Time, the new system-wide toolset for limiting phone distractions, then it would (rightly) be dismissed as a gimmick, a sop to the increasing worries about phone addiction. But as is typical of Apple, Screen Time looks like it took a lot of work to get just right.
Screen Time may seem to be about combatting app addiction, and reducing the amount of time “wasted” on your iPhone. However, taken together with the new Do Not Disturb settings in iOS 12, it’s more about putting users back in control of their iPhones.
Following yesterday’s WWDC keynote, Tim Cook participated in an interview on CNN with Senior Technology Correspondent, Laurie Segall.
In a wide-ranging interview, Cook discussed everything from the threat of machines taking over to the “fundamental human right” of privacy to why he’s not interested in running for office. Here are the big takeaways:
Did you ever visit a website and find something annoying? The answer is, of course, yes. Ad-blockers and content blockers strip a lot of the junk from a page, but there may be other elements — videos, popups, hideous profile photos on forums, which just annoy you. Today, we’ll see how to get rid of those irritating elements with a single click, using Brett Terpstra’s Killzapper.
Apple is now giving users the opportunity to download a copy of all the data the company has collected from them. This includes App Store and iTunes activity, Apple ID account and device information, online and retail store activity, AppleCare support history, and more.
The tool is part of Apple’s new Data and Privacy website, which also allows users to correct any information Apple holds about them, and deactivate their account completely.
Twitter is testing a “Secret” messaging feature that will protect users’ private messages with end-to-end encryption. The feature has already been baked into the Twitter app for Android, but it hasn’t yet been activated inside a public release.
This week we look at the amazing new Bias Amp 2 for guitarists, which looks just awful on the big-screen iPad Pro, we see how the Newton email app has banished the “sent” mail folder, we check out the new privacy features in the Overcast podcast app, and find out how to duplicate our entire Instagram history on our own microblog.
Your entire DNS browsing history can be recorded by your ISP, and will soon be sold to anyone who wants it.
DNS is what sends you to the correct site when you browse the internet, but it is also non-encrypted, and reveals your entire browsing history. Your browser’s private mode does nothing, and the little green lock icon that denotes a secure connection doesn’t help either.
DNS is also slow. So, in order to fix both of these problems, you need to change your DNS provider to one that is both private, and fast. That’s Cloudflare’s new 1.1.1.1 service.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has taken exception to Apple CEO Tim Cook’s comments that Facebook doesn’t care about its customers because it sells their data to advertisers.
Zuck went on the defensive in one of his first interviews since news broke that Cambridge Analytica leaked the personal data of 50 million users. The interview touched a number of topics, but when asked specifically about Cook’s comments Zuckerberg unleashed a tangent on why Tim Cook is wrong.
Apple is giving developers new tools that will allow iPhone and iPad users to download and delete any personal information being stored in iCloud.
Developers received word of the new tools today which were created in order to help developers comply with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation that goes into effect this May. The new laws mean developers will be forced to comply anytime a customer requests to access manage, restrict or delete personal data.
Thanks to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, a backlash is brewing against the way tech giants like Facebook monetize data. This could result in government regulation, which has the potential to upend the business models of some of the world’s biggest companies.
Luckily, Apple is practically immune. Here’s why 2018’s biggest tech scandal could actually help the world’s biggest tech company.
Apple CEO Tim Cook threw some major shade at Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during an interview this morning discussing Apple’s stances on education and user privacy.
Facebook has come under fire over the last few days after it was discovered that data for millions of users was leaked to Cambridge Analytica. In his interview this morning, Tim Cook said that Facebook should have regulated its self, but its too late for that now.
Perhaps attempting to avoid its own Facebook-style privacy scandal, Apple has supposedly hit a road block in collaborating with the Indian government. The clash regards a government-approved anti-spam mobile app, which Apple was concerned violated user privacy.
And Indian regulators aren’t too happy about it!
