Articles about Privacy

AI is just about everywhere now. Its ubiquity makes it nearly impossible to avoid, and Microsoft is just one of the big tech firms to have thrown everything at artificial intelligence.

As well as adding AI to Windows 11 with Copilot, Microsoft has also brought a generous dose of it to its Edge browser courtesy of Bing Chat. What users of this feature may not be aware of is that their browsing data is being used to personalize Copilot, meaning that a huge amount of potentially revealing information is being shared with the artificial intelligence tool.

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Today, Global Encryption Day 2023, marks the perfect opportunity to reflect on what has been a highly challenging year for the technology.

Encryption acts as a fundamental safeguard of data privacy, securing data both during transmission and while at rest. It often serves as a primary defense against hackers and is indispensable in preventing unauthorized access to sensitive information. With the risk of reputational damage and massive fines for those who are breached, it is essential for any organizations looking to ensure regulatory compliance.  

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Let’s talk about the personal information that belongs to you, your personal personal information. What is your level of tolerance for the amount of data collected about you? Are you willing to provide your email to get a 15 percent discount? What if it’s 50 percent? What if it’s your phone number, too? These are all questions that we are faced with almost everyday and everyone has a different opinion.

One of the biggest problems is knowing what you are signing up for, and what personal information may have already been obtained. When you first visit a site, cookies and other technologies can automatically collect your IP address, set trackers, and more. Once you enter your personal information into other places, you may unwittingly allow yourself to receive direct marketing, allow the business to sell your information, or allow it to be shared with others for purposes you were not anticipating. 

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One web browser spying on another? Surely not! However, if you are using both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, Microsoft's browser could be grabbing all of your browsing history from Chrome every time you launch it.

If you decided to jump from Firefox to Chrome, from Edge to Firefox, from Opera to Edge or any other combination, you will probably have taken advantage of the option to import browsing history, saved passwords and so on. But you likely don’t want this cross-browser communication to continue indefinitely. Here’s how to check whether this sneaky data swapping is happening in the background and how to stop it if it is.

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Your browsing history can be very revealing; there are countless reasons for not wanting a list of the sites you have visited to be seen by others. While it can be hard to maintain complete privacy, there are steps you can take on a local basis -- such as simply deleting your browsing history.

It is easy to see the deletion of browsing history as using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, and for a very long time it was very much an "all or nothing" approach. Over time, Google and others introduced options to limit how much browsing history should be deleted, and now Chrome users are being offered even more fine-grained controls.

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Lots of apps are potentially transmitting and saving user data without express permission and this has led some administrations to consider bans.

In May, Montana passed the first bill to ban TikTok statewide due to data concerns, and India has banned 60 apps, including TikTok, claiming they were transmitting user data back to China.

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A new survey of over 3,000 digital testing professionals reveals concerns about bias, copyright issues and privacy.

The study from testing specialist Applause shows that 90 percent of respondents expressed concern, with 25 percent 'very concerned' that bias may affect the accuracy, tone or relevance of the content produced by AI.

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Transatlantic data flows underpin more than $7 trillion in cross-border trade and investment per year, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. The recently announced EU-US Data Privacy Framework (TADPF), in place as of July 10 2023, is expected to further promote opportunity and economic fruitfulness on both sides of the Atlantic.

However, many are rightfully questioning the staying power of this latest version of the TADPF. Will it be third-time lucky or Groundhog Day all over again? Against this backdrop of uncertainty, many companies must evaluate their short- and long-term regulatory resilience.

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Data privacy regulation, GDPR, has been in force for five years but it will soon be superseded by UK GDPR. The Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, now wending its way through parliament, will see organisations move to a UK equivalent following the country's withdrawal from the EU. But what will the change mean in practice?

We spoke to Jon Fielding, managing director of EMEA at Apricorn, to find out how UK GDPR will affect businesses and how they handle and protect data.

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Today's online world relies on monetizing information. Sensitive data is sourced through search engines, web browsers, and app developers and can be used to target marketing and more.

If you're concerned about how your data is used you might be interested in the launch by Myntex of Renati. This is a security-focused, Android-based mobile operating system for Pixel devices designed to disrupt data collection.

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A new survey of over 1,000 Americans reveals that people are deeply concerned about their personal data, believe their data is priceless, want a national privacy law, and are pessimistic about the rise of AI and personal data.

The study for PrivacyHawk, conducted by Propeller Research, shows 45 percent are very or extremely concerned about their personal data being exploited, breached, or exposed. Over 94 percent are generally concerned. Only 5.7 percent of the US population is not concerned at all about their personal data risk.

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Despite an overall decline in the number of healthcare data breaches, the first half of this year has seen a record number of individuals have their information exposed.

The latest Healthcare Data Cyber Breach Report from security-as-a-service provider Critical Insight shows individual records compromised in data breaches increased by 31 percent in the first half of 2023 compared to the second half of 2022.

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New research reveals a high proportion of vulnerable public cloud, mobile and web applications exposing sensitive data, including unsecured APIs and personal identifiable information (PII).

The study from CyCognito, based on analysis of 3.5 million assets across its enterprise customer base, finds 74 percent of assets with PII are vulnerable to at least one known major exploit, and one in 10 have at least one easily exploitable issue.

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New analysis of more than 13 billion files stored in public cloud environments reveals that more than 30 percent of cloud data assets contain sensitive information.

The study by Dig Security shows personal identifiable information (PII) is the most common sensitive data type that organizations save. In a sample data set of a billion records, more than 10 million social security numbers were found -- the sixth most common type of sensitive information -- followed by almost three million credit card numbers, the seventh most common type.

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You've probably had your dog or your cat microchipped, but how would you feel if your employer wanted to microchip you?

A survey of 5,000 senior decision makers in the finance sector reveals that 47 percent of leaders believe employee microchips and other human technology implants to be in workplace use by 2030.

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