How-To Geek: Proton Mail and Calendar Just Gained 38 New Improvements. “Members of the ‘Proton community’ should pat themselves on the back. Proton (perhaps still best known for its VPN) has updated its Mail and Calendar services with 38 new improvements, all of which were sourced from user requests and complaints.”
Platformer: Amazon’s Q has ‘severe hallucinations’ and leaks confidential data in public preview, employees warn. “Three days after Amazon announced its AI chatbot Q, some employees are sounding alarms about accuracy and privacy issues. Q is ‘experiencing severe hallucinations and leaking confidential data,’ including the location of AWS data centers, internal discount programs, and unreleased features, according to leaked documents obtained by Platformer. “
University of Kentucky: UK researcher developing anti-tracking and robocall-free architecture. “The project, supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), is led by Yang Xiao, Ph.D., assistant professor in Department of Computer Science in the UK Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering. Its goal is to develop an anti-tracking and robocall-free mobile access architecture to provide maximum privacy protection for mobile users.”
Vice: ChatGPT Can Reveal Personal Information From Real People, Google Researchers Show. “Previous work has already shown that image generators can be forced to generate examples from their training data—including copyrighted works—and an early OpenAI LLM produced contact information belonging to a researcher. But Google’s new research shows that ChatGPT, which is a massively popular consumer app with millions of users, can also be made to do this. Worryingly, some of the extracted training data contained identifying information from real people, including names, email addresses, and phone numbers.”
LiveScience: Smart glasses could boost privacy by swapping cameras for this 100-year-old technology. “Smart glasses of the future could swap out optical cameras for sonar, which uses sound to track the movements of its wearer, according to a new study. The sonar-based tech could improve accuracy and privacy, as well as make them cheaper to produce.”
Gothamist: 4M NYers’ data and medical records were exposed in a breach. Here’s how to protect against ID theft.. “At least 4 million New Yorkers’ private information could be at risk of identity theft after a data breach at a medical transcription company that works with hospitals in New York, state Attorney General Letitia James said Tuesday. The company, Nevada-based Perry Johnson & Associates, works with Northwell Health, which has hospitals and clinics across the five boroughs and Long Island, as well as Crouse Health in Syracuse. About 9 million patients nationwide are affected by the breach, according to the attorney general’s office.”
404 Media: Plex Users Fear New Feature Will Leak Porn Habits to Their Friends and Family . “Many Plex users were alarmed when they got a ‘week in review’ email last week that showed them what they and their friends had watched on the popular media server software. Some users are saying that their friends’ softcore porn habits are being revealed to them with the feature, while others are horrified by the potentially invasive nature feature more broadly.”
Rolling Stone: We Spied on Trump’s ‘Southern White House’ From Our Couches. “We didn’t have to risk life and limb, posing as the help and smuggling information out through a well-funded spy ring. All we had to do was sign up for an online service, enter the address of Mar-a-Lago, and click a button. Within a few minutes, we had a report profiling thousands of visitors to Trump’s club over the course of an entire year, including details like where they likely live and work, their ages, incomes, ethnicities, education levels, where they were immediately before visiting, and where they spent their time on the property once they got there.”
Rest of World: The end of anonymity on Chinese social media. “On October 31, Weibo, as well as several other major Chinese social media platforms including WeChat, Douyin, Zhihu, Xiaohongshu, and Kuaishou, announced that they now required popular users’ legal names to be made visible to the public. Weibo stated in a public post that the new rule would first apply to all users with over 1 million followers, then to those with over 500,000.”
WIRED: How to Make Your Web Searches More Secure and Private. “There are ways to increase your privacy on Google’s platforms, like using privacy-focused browsers, privacy-focused alternatives to Google Maps, auto-deleting your web history after a certain time period, or simply limiting the amount of data the company collects in the first place by opting out of features like web-based email and location awareness. (And you should know that using your browser’s incognito mode isn’t as sneaky as you think it is.) If you’re serious about getting off the data collection grid, there’s a bevy of other privacy focused search options at your disposal. So if you want to use a search engine that doesn’t keep track of your queries, serve your data to advertisers, or change your search results based on what it thinks you’ll like, you’ve got some options.”
Mashable: How TikTok became a place for tattletales. “We are all guilty of gossiping, perhaps during pillow talk with your partner, by the watercooler at work, or on the phone with your mum. If you say you have never gossiped, I don’t believe you. What happens when our private conversations are made public? In an age when people are filmed in public without their consent, the line between public and private is becoming increasingly blurred. But, how would you feel if a stranger recorded and posted these conversations online, inspiring an internet-wide manhunt against you?”
Associated Press: New York will automatically seal old criminal records under a new law signed by Gov. Hochul. “New Yorkers who complete their sentences and stay out of trouble for a certain period of time will have their criminal records automatically sealed under a long awaited bill signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday.”
Bleeping Computer: Google shares plans for blocking third-party cookies in Chrome. “Google has officially announced plans to gradually eliminate third-party cookies, a key aspect of its Privacy Sandbox initiative. This phased approach begins with a 1% user testing period early in 2024, leading to a more extensive phase-out in the third quarter of 2024.”
WIRED: Secretive White House Surveillance Program Gives Cops Access to Trillions of US Phone Records. “A little-known surveillance program tracks more than a trillion domestic phone records within the United States each year, according to a letter WIRED obtained that was sent by US senator Ron Wyden to the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Sunday, challenging the program’s legality.”
Techdirt: Unsealed FTC Complaint Shows Data Broker Kochava Hoovered Up Oceans Of Sensitive Data On Millions Of Americans. “According to the amended complaint, the scope of the data Kochava was casually collecting and monetizing is massive. It includes detailed movement data of consumers down to the meter, as they visited sensitive locations like hospitals, temporary shelters, abortion clinics and places of worship. Kochava then made it easy for advertisers to target consumers based on sensitive metrics.”
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