Tag: Location Privacy

(May 23, 2019) At a hearing in front of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, advocates and academics strongly urged lawmakers to immediately act to rectify what they called a dangerous problem for U.S. citizens: the use of facial-recognition technology by both law enforcement agencies and private corporations. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle indicated support for a ban or moratorium on facial-recognition technology until laws can be enacted to regulate its use and the software itse... Read More

(May 22, 2019) Millions of records from the Game Golf app, including “134 million rounds of golf, 4.9 million user notifications and 19.2 million records in a folder called ‘activity feed,’” were exposed on an unprotected server, Security Discovery Senior Security Researcher Jeremiah Fowler told Threatpost. The app analyzes players while they’re on the golf course, offers tips and has chat capability. Compromised information included profile data, such as usernames, passwords and emails, in addition to Faceboo... Read More

(May 17, 2019) Greetings from Portsmouth, New Hampshire! We’re finally coming out of a cold and wet weather pattern here in New England. I did not need a jacket on my way into work today, and if I squint just enough, I can convince myself the sun is peeking through the clouds. I hope your local weather has been more spring appropriate. Facial-recognition technology received a lot of attention this week. San Francisco banned it; Oakland, California, and Somerville, Massachusetts, are considering doing the sam... Read More

(May 17, 2019) Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile have each notified the U.S. Federal Communications Commission that they have stopped sharing customers' location data with third parties, The Hill reports. After urging carriers to explain their practices earlier this month, Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel revealed the companies' notices regarding the end of their programs Thursday before turning her attention to the status of the FCC's investigation into the sharing practices. “The FCC has ... Read More

(May 16, 2019) U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce Ranking Member Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., took a stance against content providers in Wednesday's Federal Communications Commission Communications Subcommittee oversight hearing regarding geolocation data sharing, Multichannel News reports. While Democrats used the hearing to further blame the third-party sharing on wireless carriers and press FCC Chairman Ajit Pai on the investigation into the matter, Walden discussed how the third parties were selling ... Read More

(May 14, 2019) From ion battery–powered e-scooters floating in rivers to scooter riders without helmets, cities that have welcomed the popular personal vehicles have a lot to contend with. Then, there are the data issues. City governments, e-scooter providers and third-party data management firms are negotiating agreements and rules that could set precedents for future mobility-related data practices in the future for data-centric and autonomous cars and freight vehicles, delivery drones and more. And, along w... Read More

(May 14, 2019) Cities that have welcomed e-scooters have a lot of issues to contend with, and the data generated by the vehicles is one of them. City governments, e-scooter providers and third-party data management firms are negotiating agreements and rules that could set precedents for mobility-related data practices in the future for data-centric and autonomous cars. Along with privacy considerations, proposed state legislation could limit city control even more. Local governments want granular data to help ... Read More

(May 14, 2019) Twitter announced it had inadvertently collected and shared iOS location data with one of its partners. The social media platform said in a blog post users who have more than one Twitter account on iOS and opted to use the precise location feature in one account had all their location information collected, regardless of whether the feature was enabled for the other profiles. Twitter intended to remove location data from any real-time bidding but did not do so. The company said it implemented me... Read More

(May 9, 2019) The installation of artificial intelligence–driven security cameras at Christchurch's Al Noor mosque is a reassuring move for the community, but privacy advocates see pitfalls, Radio New Zealand reports. The security cameras from Texas-based Athena Security, like most facial-recognition software, don't provide guaranteed accuracy, while questions remain regarding data collection and access. "The technology is [not] perfect. So they'll have a decision to make about exactly how sensitive they want... Read More

(May 9, 2019) According to a Pennsylvania State University study, researchers found an individual's online privacy behaviors and habits vary based on the internet connection they are using. The study focused on participants' "publicness heuristic," which is a mindset that keeps a person from revealing private things in public settings, and it explored how the mindset works with different privacy-related scenarios in various locations. The research concluded that participants with a higher publicness heuristic... Read More