Privacy is a growing concern in today’s world. Follow along with all our coverage related to privacy, security, what Apple and other companies are doing to keep your information safe, and what steps you can take to keep your information private.
The Cellebrite Physical Analyzer – the most intrusive phone-cracking tool offered by the company – no longer supports the direct extraction of iPhone data, according to a document shared with us. This follows the discovery and exploitation of a vulnerability by secure messaging app Signal.
Signal discovered multiple security vulnerabilities in Cellebrite’s software, and was able to find a way to booby-trap iPhones to corrupt the results of a scan using Physical Analyzer …
Expand Expanding Close
iOS 14.5 finally landed yesterday after what seemed like a never-ending series of betas, bringing with it the option of blocking app tracking. Well, for most people, anyway.
We explained earlier what the two options mean …
Expand Expanding Close
US military movements in Syria were revealed by location info available for purchase from smartphone apps, says a new report today. This included enough information to identify the location of an undeclared US military base in the country.
The sensitive location information was harvested from weather, games, and dating apps on the phones of US soldiers, and appears to include special ops personnel …
Expand Expanding Close
Apple today finally made the new App Tracking Transparency feature available to users, which is part of the newly released iOS 14.5. The new feature lets users opt out of being tracked by third-party apps, but the toggle is grayed out for some users even after installing iOS 14.5 — which has made people confused about how the new feature works.
Expand Expanding Close
Apple today finally released iOS 14.5 to the public, which comes with the long-awaited App Tracking Transparency feature. With this new option available in the iOS settings, users can opt-out of being tracked by third-party apps across other apps and websites. To further highlight this new feature, the company has now shared a new video explaining how App Tracking Transparency works.
Expand Expanding Close
iOS 14.5 – available now – comes with a host of new features, and one of the big ones is apps have to request permission before they can track you. Along with that, you have total control to allow or block iPhone app tracking, read on for how it works.
Expand Expanding Close
Apple’s App Tracking Transparency policy, expected to come into force shortly, has led to an antitrust complaint in Germany from some of the largest media, tech, and ad companies in the country. It follows a similar complaint in France last month.
The companies behind the complaint say that app developers could see their ad revenue fall by 60%, and also claim that consumers will pay more for apps …
Expand Expanding Close
An AirDrop flaw means that doing nothing more than opening an iOS or macOS sharing pane within Wi-Fi range of a stranger can enable them to see your phone number and email address. You do not have to initiate an AirDrop transfer to be at risk.
The security researchers who discovered the vulnerability say that they disclosed it to Apple way back in May 2019, but the company still hasn’t provided a fix to the 1.5 billion affected devices …
Expand Expanding Close
Secure messaging company Signal has successfully used an iPhone SE to hack Cellebrite‘s phone-cracking software. The company says that anyone could place a file on their iPhone that effectively renders useless any data extraction performed on the phone, and that it will be doing this for Signal users.
Signal says that the file could also compromise all past and future reports generated from the Cellebrite Windows app …
Expand Expanding Close
TikTok is illegally collecting data from children, according to a legal case made by the former children’s commissioner for England. She says the company is breaching privacy laws.
Anne Longfield has filed a claim on behalf of “millions of children,” and is seeking to force TikTok to delete personal data as well as pay “billions” in compensation …
Expand Expanding Close
As the launch of App Tracking Transparency with iOS 14.5 nears, Apple continues to defend the privacy-preserving feature against backlash. In a new interview with the Toronto Star, Apple CEO Tim Cook discussed App Tracking Transparency, as well as Apple’s ongoing legal battle with Epic Games.
Expand Expanding Close
Not long after we learned that more than 500M accounts were scraped, exposing personal data from Facebook users, a report today says the same is true of LinkedIn and unnamed additional services.
Some 2 million records have been put online as proof of the attack …
Expand Expanding Close
Cellebrite is an advanced and controversial tool that has been used by law enforcement officers to crack the iPhone security on multiple occasions. Today Brazilian police confirmed that they used this tool to unlock the iPhones of two child murder suspects who were arrested after important messages were recovered from their devices.
Expand Expanding Close
As Apple prepares to roll out its new App Tracking Transparency feature in iOS 14.5, companies around the world are scrambling to find ways to skirt the guidelines.
A report from from the Wall Street Journal today offers new details on the companies involved with developing and testing an advertising technology in China to gather data from iPhone users for targeted ads without user consent.
Update: Proctor & Gamble has published its response to the WSJ story detailing its efforts to build a digital advertising future that respects privacy.
Expand Expanding Close
Facebook will tell you if a page is satire, as well as if it isn’t, in a new initiative. When a satirical page uses the name of a politician, for example, it will be labeled “Satire Page” to ensure that people don’t mistake it for the real person.
Conversely, posts by politicians will be labeled as “Public Official” …
Expand Expanding Close
Apple has debuted a new “A Day in the Life of Your Data” report today with updated details on its efforts to preserve user privacy. The new report focuses on the behind-the-scenes technology Apple uses to manage the impact on user privacy of targeted advertising. This comes ahead of this spring’s launch of App Tracking Transparency.
Expand Expanding Close
Mark Zuckerberg’s contact details were included in the leaked records of more than 500M Facebook users, it has been revealed …
Expand Expanding Close
Following this morning’s Tim Cook interview with Kara Swisher that focused on privacy, Apple has reminded developers to update their apps with the new AppTrackingTransparency framework before the release of iOS 14.5. AppTrackingTransparency, or ATT, is a new tool Apple is introducing to protect users’ data and prevent unwanted apps from tracking you across other websites and apps.
Expand Expanding Close
It was revealed over the weekend that a huge data breach saw personal data leaked from Facebook, including phone numbers, full names, and dates of birth. There’s now a way for you to check if any of your personal data was compromised …
Expand Expanding Close
Snapchat owner Snap has tested a workaround to App Tracking Transparency to try to match users to the ads they have seen.
Snap says that it will discontinue the tests once the new privacy rule comes into effect, but that it believes there are other steps it can take without breaking Apple’s rules…
Expand Expanding Close
iOS 14 has brought several new privacy features, and there are more to come with App Tracking Transparency — which will let users opt out of being tracked by apps. As the launch of this new option approaches, Apple has begun to reject apps using third-party SDKs that collect user data without consent.
Expand Expanding Close
Tech companies have been talking more about privacy in recent years, and Apple proudly says that it protects user data more than anyone else. This week, new research by Douglas Leith from Trinity College showed that Google collects up to 20 times more data from Android users compared to the data Apple collects from iOS users.
Expand Expanding Close
The French data protection regulator, CNIL, is casting doubt on Apple’s compliance with EU privacy rules, according to a 13-page confidential note. As reported by Politico, CNIL believes that “Apple’s practices suggest a lack of consent collection” despite its requirements for other developers.
Expand Expanding Close
iPhone app privacy labels have been a real eye-opener in showing just how much of our personal data is accessed by certain apps. If you’ve ever wondered which apps collect and share the most data, cloud storage company pCloud did the legwork.
The company examined app privacy labels in the App Store, and compiled a ranking of apps by the percentage of personal data collected, as well as the amount of it passed to third parties…
Expand Expanding Close