By Sue Treiman

A grassroots website is reigniting its campaign against the so-called “biggest lie on the internet” — the assumption that people actually read and agree to the “terms of service” and the privacy policies they accept.

The ToSDR site — “Terms of Service; Didn’t Read” — was conceived at a 2011 European open software conference to warn consumers that what they didn’t know (and didn’t read) could hurt them.

Grassroots activists wanted to educate consumers about the policy “traps” frequently hidden within provisions they tended to overlook.

By Rifki Aria Nugraha

Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) technology could bring challenges to individual privacy, cybersecurity expert Pablo Ballarin Usieto told Digital Privacy News.

“If this data is not properly processed, the malicious can retrieve very valuable information about the person,” Usieto, co-founder of the Balusian cybersecurity firm in Spain, said of the technology.

It relies on devices that read a user’s brain activities, retrieving information from them.

The technology is premature, Usieto explained, and any mishandling could lead to abuse of confidential data regarding an individual’s health, personal preferences and emotions.

By Jason Collins

Public universities are using Facebook filters to censor and block student speech, raising critical First Amendment questions, experts tell Digital Privacy News.

The “blocklists” limit student comments on Facebook when accounts are accessed via university networks. The institutions’ filters flag certain words, automatically hiding the comments that contain them.

“State universities are preemptively censoring large swaths of protected speech and altering the public discourse with just a few clicks of the mouse — and Facebook gives them all the tools they need to do it,” Robert Shibley, director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), told Digital Privacy News.

By Robert Bateman

In the wake of worldwide protests over police brutality, three major technology giants have announced significant changes to their development and sale of facial-recognition technology — but privacy advocates told Digital Privacy News that the changes amounted to little more than public posturing.

The announcements began June 8, when IBM Corp. told Congress that it would stop offering general-purpose facial-recognition software, citing a desire to “help advance this nation’s pursuit of equity and justice.”

Two days later, Amazon followed, saying in a blog post that it was “implementing a one-year moratorium” on police use of its facial software. 

Then, in a June 12 interview with The Washington Post, Microsoft Corp. President Brad Smith said the company would not offer facial-recognition software to U.S. police departments until federal regulation was in place.

But privacy campaigners were cautiously welcoming these changes. They told Digital Privacy News that the efforts did not go far enough, while others remained cynical about the companies’ motivations.

By Sheryl Nance-Nash

You have your Fitbit, Apple Watch or whatever wearable serves as a personal trainer of sorts. Kudos for your quest for fitness.

You have good intentions, but others see opportunity in that band on your wrist: It’s loaded with data. 

“Don’t be naïve and think that a simple fitness application isn’t harmless, or at least, doesn’t pose any risks,” Paul Howard, investigative coordinator with the Smith Investigation Agency, told Digital Privacy News. The Ontario-based company specializes in internet scams.

“We live in a greedy world,” Howard added. “People make a lot of money gathering information.”

Truth is, the line is blurred when it comes to privacy.