privacy

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Proctoring Apps For Schools is Mass Surveillance for Kids

Andrew Orr ·

In an op-ed for Teen Vogue, writers from Fight For The Future argue that test proctoring apps that many schools use is mass surveillance of minors.

Remote proctoring software is, essentially, spyware that students are forced to install, typically as a browser plug-in or a computer program. Invasive features like keystroke logging, screen recording, network traffic monitoring, and video and audio recording are common. Many of the programs also collect tons of biometric data through eye-movement tracking and facial recognition.

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Facebook Moves to Cancel its Facial Recognition System

Andrew Orr ·

Facebook announced it will cancel its facial recognition system responsible for cataloging its billion-strong user base.

Our technology will no longer automatically recognize if people’s faces appear in Memories, photos or videos. People will no longer be able to turn on face recognition for suggested tagging or see a suggested tag with their name in photos and videos they may appear in. We’ll still encourage people to tag posts manually, to help you and your friends know who is in a photo or video. This change will also impact Automatic Alt Text (AAT), a technology used to create image descriptions for people who are blind or visually impaired. AAT currently identifies people in about 4% of photos.

The above quote is probably the only useful part of the self-congratulatory update.

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Blockchains Aren't as Private as You Think, But They Could Be

Andrew Orr ·

Cybersecurity expert Mashael Al Sabah was recently featured on MIT’s Business Lab podcast. She talks about privacy issues with blockchain technology and how they can be fixed. You can listen to the podcast with the link below (direct link on Apple Podcasts), and.or read the podcast transcript.

A lot of people think that they are completely anonymous when they use Bitcoin, and this gives them a false sense of security. In our research, what we did is that we crawled social media, like there’s popular forum for Bitcoin users called Bitcointalk.org, and we crawled Twitter as well for Bitcoin addresses that users attributed to themselves. In some forums, people share their Bitcoin addressees along with their profile information. So, now you have the public profile information, which includes usernames, emails, age, gender, city.

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iMessages are End-To-End Encrypted But iCloud Backups Are Not

Andrew Orr ·

For Lifehacker, Jake Peterson wrote a reminder that under certain circumstances, Apple can theoretically access your iMessages.

Here’s the tricky thing; Messages in iCloud is end-to-end encrypted, just as you’d expect—that’s why there’s no way to access your messages on the web, such as by logging in to icloud.com. There’s one big problem, though: your iCloud Backup isn’t end-to-end encrypted—and Apple stores the key to unlock your encrypted messages within that backup.

Messages in iCloud has been a thing for a few years now, but you can turn it off.

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Mozilla Adds Facebook Messenger, Houseparty, and WeChat to 'Privacy Not Included' Guide

Andrew Orr ·

In a review of the privacy features of 21 popular video call apps, Mozilla said Apple’s FaceTime is safe, while WeChat, Houseparty, and Facebook Messenger are not.

Says Jen Caltrider, *Privacy Not Included Lead at Mozilla: Video call apps are now a routine part of millions of people’s lives. And even when the pandemic recedes, that won’t change. In this new world, people deserve to know if the apps they’re using everyday respect their privacy — or if they’re snooping on them. While video call apps may feel more intimate than social media platforms, there’s still a ton of data being collected, stored, and shared. For that reason, users should assume that anything they say on a video call app could be made public.

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Here's How Much Your Car Knows About You

Andrew Orr ·

Jon Callas, the Electric Frontier Foundation’s director of technology projects, explained what data newer cars, especially Tesla, collect from you.

“All of these things are at least theoretically able to be logged,” cautioned Callas. “And there is a port that you can connect something to — and there’s lots of hardware and software that you can connect to your car and get all sorts of telemetry information about how the car is running — and just like there are people who hack their computers there are people who hack their cars.”

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PrivacyTools Website Rebrands as Privacy Guides (Update)

Andrew Orr ·

PrivacyTools.io is a website I’ve long used to learn about different types of private software. The team announced that it will rebrand as Privacy Guides.

Our work maintaining PrivacyTools has been extremely difficult of late without access to key assets such as the domain and without the participation of its founder.

This name change is the first step in this process of regaining our independence as a community. Eventually, we plan on creating a new legal organization designed around the community to ensure our long-term sustainability. This will take some careful planning and time to get right, but we’re confident we can prevent this from ever happening again, and keep us independent of any one team member.

Update: It appears there is some contention or intra-politics. The official PrivacyTools Twitter account said it is a project split, not a rebrand.

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Here are Steps to Take to Protect Your Privacy on Apple Devices

Andrew Orr ·

Macinstruct published a brief guide on protecting your privacy on Apple devices as a response to Apple’s CSAM detection plans.

We’re now encouraging readers to protect their privacy by disabling certain Apple features. In situations where privacy is a hard requirement, it may be necessary to consider using non-Apple hardware and software. This article provides an overview of our recommendations and your options.

It’s a decent guide except for the recommendation to disable iMessage in favor of SMS. iMessage is end-to-end encrypted, SMS is not. My advice for iMessage privacy is to prevent Messages from storing content in iCloud. When that happens, Apple has the capability to decrypt texts. On an iPhone or iPad, go to Settings > Profile Name > iCloud, and turn off the toggle for Messages. Then go to Settings > Messages > Keep Messages. Change it to auto-delete old messages after 30 days. Or, use a private messenger such as Signal.