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Press review

Thousands of Popular Websites See What You Type—Before You Hit Submit

WHEN YOU SIGN up for a newsletter or check out online, you probably take for granted that if you mistype your email address three times or change your mind, it doesn't matter. Nothing actually happens until you hit the Submit button, right? Well, maybe not. According to new research, a surprising number of websites are collecting some or all of your data as you type it into a digital form.
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Press review

It’s the middle of the night. Do you know who your iPhone is talking to?

Apple is strict about requiring apps to get permission to access certain parts of the iPhone, including your camera, microphone, location, health information, photos and contacts. But Apple turns more of a blind eye to what apps do with data we provide them or they generate about us — witness the sorts of tracking I found by looking under the covers for a few days.
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Press review

Location tracking apps and privacy implications

Users are largely unaware of the privacy implications of some permissions they grant to apps and services, in particular when it comes to location-tracking information. Thanks to machine learning techniques, these data provide sensitive information such as the place where users live, their habits, interests, demographics, and information about users' personalities.
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Press review

How Mobile Phones Became a Privacy Battleground—and How to Protect Yourself

How to improve your mobile privacy : disable personalized ad tracking on your phone, consider the apps you download, pay attention to permissions, limit what apps can do in the background, note when services require logins and look for other options, poke around for privacy-focused in-app settings toggle and delete apps you don’t use.
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Press review

Apple Is Tracking You Even When Its Own Privacy Settings Say It’s Not, New Research Says

For all of Apple’s talk about how private your iPhone is, the company vacuums up a lot of data about you. iPhones do have a privacy setting that is supposed to turn off that tracking. According to a new report by independent researchers, though, Apple collects extremely detailed information on you with its own apps even when you turn off tracking, an apparent direct contradiction of Apple’s own description of how the privacy protection works.
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Press review

5-Eyes, 9-Eyes, and 14-Eyes agreement explained

Discussions of online privacy often refer to Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, or Fourteen Eyes countries. This extended alliance of governments has been linked to surveillance across the globe, including the unconstitutional collection of data on their own citizens. So what exactly are the 5-Eyes, 9-Eyes, and 14-Eyes alliances? What exactly do they do? How dangerous are they for your privacy and wellbeing? And crucially, how do you minimize exposure?
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Press review

How Our Smartphones Spy On Us, And What You Can Do To Avoid It

The technology created to help us be a more energy efficient and productive society, is now our greatest threat to our privacy and self-sovereign well-being. Our smartphones are all equipped with cameras, sensors and microphones that watch and monitor our every move, emotion and action. Privacy is a right, we all should remember, and not take it lightly or sacrifice it for convenience. Nothing is 100% secure and private, unless you are planning to go live off the grid in the mountains.
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Press review

Google Pixel 5a + CalyxOS : The perfect Linux user’s mobile companion

Everyone needs a phone. Not everyone wants to spied on. Reclaim your privacy with CalyxOS. What makes CalyxOS exciting is that it’s the only privacy focused mobile operating system I know that doesn’t require you to give up a massive amount of convenience and mainstream technology in exchange for security and privacy.
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Press review

8 reasons why smartphones are privacy nightmare

Our phones have truly become the new personal computer for many of us, in addition to being our primary means of communication, we can watch movies, play games and now even enjoy virtual reality experiences on our handsets. But while smartphones are the epitome of modern convenience, the dirty little secret is that these omnipresent devices, which we have with us 24/7, and keep switched on for most of that time, are also a serious threat to our privacy. Here’s why...
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Press review

Data privacy truly matters to your customers. It’s time to make it a core business value

Ask a roomful of people if they care strongly about the environment, and just 55% will agree that they do. Ask about data privacy, however, and you’ll find far more agreement, a remarkable 74% of people now rank data privacy as one of their top values. It’s a sign that companies need to take privacy seriously not just because it’s a legal requirement, but because it’s a core value for their customers.
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Press review

Privacy vs "I have nothing to hide"

I wouldn’t want the world to know the details of the text conversations I have with my wife. We’re not discussing anything illegal or doing anything wrong, but I’d prefer to keep those conversations out of the public eye. Being private is different from being secure; privacy is a right, security is a choice.
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Press review

Cell Phone Privacy Issues – Why It’s Impossible to Be Anonymous and Private on Cellular Networks

It’s really an uphill battle to get security privacy and anonymity with your modern mobile cell phone and mobile companies. With mobile devices, it’s more of a best-effort approach to privacy and anonymity. For example, I'm using a secure messaging app like signal but I acknowledge that if I’m using an iPhone, Apple, my network provider, can control my phone if they really want to and that’s the same for all other major operating systems and networks like Android, Windows, BlackBerry etc.
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Press review

Why Privacy Matters

So how do you protect yourself in a world of relentless surveillance? This seems like a good time to go back to the basics and understand what privacy is and why we seek it. Privacy matters because privacy is about human information. We’ve known for a long time that information is power. We know now that human information confers power over human beings. People think privacy is about hiding dark secrets, and that those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear. This nothing to hide fallacy is dangerous because it promotes a kind of privacy fatalism and a sense that people who demand privacy must be deviant or criminal or wrong.
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Press review

How Free & Open Source Software Can Save Online Privacy

I have used services from tech giants for years. Most were free of charge, at the expense of my privacy. But those days are over. Now I browse, chat and work without anyone tracking, monetizing or censoring my data. Thanks to free (libre) and open source software. Here are seven steps to replace Big Tech with privacy-respecting, free and open source software.
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Press review

How Companies Can Do Data Privacy Better

As consumers in today’s digital world, we’re used to giving away huge amounts of personal data. In theory, much of these data are intended to help firms provide better, more personalized service. But as customers become increasingly aware of the risks of their information being stolen by hackers or misused or sold to third parties, they’re looking for stronger privacy protections. Not all efforts are costly, and being known for strong protections could give firms a competitive advantage.
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Press review

Privacy and what its means going forward

The root idea behind data sovereignty is simple, as we move into a more digitally focused age it is becoming imperative that you take more control of your online presence. Everyone’s situation is different and if you haven’t taken digital privacy seriously before it takes a little while to adjust your habits. There are some steps even the non-technical can take that vastly improve your overall privacy online.
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Press review

Surveillance and Your Soul, or Why Privacy Is Essential

When pointing out the importance of privacy, a common rebuttal is "Well, I don't have anything to hide, so I don't care". This is a very grave misunderstanding. You do have something to hide. Something very important. Your soul. Without privacy, human connection is impossible. Without human connection, we will degenerate into malevolence. We will die - and a prolonged, terrible and gruesome death it will be.
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