Don't let Santa steal your data!

Privacy

The approaching holidays offer plenty of opportunities for the surveillance industry to collect more data on us: Bad Santa: Amazon, Facebook top Mozilla's naughty list of privacy-crushing gifts for more detail, check here: How creepy is that smart speaker, that fitness tracker, those wireless headphones?

And once they have the data, they fail to secure it:

• Go read this look into how Amazon failed to secure customer personal data

• South Korea Is Giving Millions of Photos to Facial Recognition Researchers

Here are some interesting ways to fight back

• A newWorkplace monitoring is everywhere. Here’s how to stop algorithms ruling your office

• DuckDuckGo tool is supposed to prevent apps from tracking Android users

• Boffins find way to use a standard smartphone to find hidden spy cams

Unfortunately, Facebook Messenger and Instagram may not get default end-to-end encryption until 2023

And while not actually a privacy issue, the attitude demonstrated here is disappointing, to say the least: Apple just provided the perfect example of why you can’t trust App Store review scores

Security

More news about consumer data hacks:

• DOJ charges two Iranian hackers for threatening US voters during 2020 election

• US education software company exposed personal data of 1.2M students

• GoDaddy Hacked, 1.2M Customers at Risk of Phishing Attack

• Hackers used this software flaw to steal credit card details from thousands of online retailers

Amazingly, Too Many Data Breach Victims Respond by Doing Nothing

While not actually a data breach, still an annoying security problem: Tesla app outage locked some owners out of their cars

As Hacking Fingerprints Is Actually Pretty Easy—and Cheap, will we have to give up on touch-id?

Regulation

Who Owns Your Data? Calif. Congresswomen Try Again With Online Privacy Act

And Ohio suing Facebook, says it misled the public about the effect its products have on children

In Europe,

• Adviser to EU’s top court suggests German bulk data retention law isn’t legal

• EU’s data protection adviser latest to call for ban on tracking ads

• Britain launches review of bias in medical devices

Why did Apple change its mind on Right to Repair - to avoid stricter regulation!