Do you realize that you're not always using your chosen mobile web browser or your network privacy features? Many mobile apps have their own in-app browser that can gather your data and even inject ad

On January 12th, 2025, the ShmooCon hacker conference held it's 20th and final gathering. I was lucky enough to be able to not only attend the final show but also to interview the founders, Heidi and

Artificial Intelligence is taking over. But I don't mean that in a Skynet kinda way. It's simply becoming ubiquitous because companies are insisting on inserting the technology into all their products

Debbie Reynolds (aka, The Data Diva) has been working in the privacy realm for many years, as a privacy consultant, speaker, advisor and podcaster. She and I have been running in the same circles on L

Tracking our faces and whereabouts is getting out of control. It's a mass surveillance infrastructure that keeps growing in Borg-like fashion. Facial recognition and license plate readers are prolifer

VPNs were not invented for privacy, despite the name - they were invented for security. Nevertheless, in recent years, they have been touted as privacy tools to thwart rampant and fanatical data gathe

There are way too many messenger apps today. It's a sad state of affairs and I don't see it getting better anytime soon. But the real problem (for me) is that almost all of the popular messenger apps

Almost exactly two years ago, "Five Eyes" intelligence agencies discovered a successful and ongoing cyber attack on critical US infrastructure by a state-sponsored actor based in China. This group, as

As we learned last week from Zach Edwards, our smartphones have a globally unique mobile ad ID, or MAID, that is automatically associated with everything we do on our phones... unless we take explicit

Data brokers are out of control. While we think of them gathering data in order to target us with ads, they can actually use the targeted ad system (real-time bidding) to collect vast quantities of pe