Suzanne Smalley reports: Privacy Commissioner of Canada Philippe Dufresne has launched a probe of IDScan.net in the wake of reports that a bad actor penetrated company databases to steal personal data and scans of 153 million people’s drivers’ licenses. IDScan.net’s technology is widely used by industry — particularly in the retail and hospitality sectors —...

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Brian O’Donovan reports: Tech giant Google has been fined €403m by the Data Protection Commission (DPC) over the processing of location data. Under data protection rules, such information must be processed in a lawful, fair and transparent manner. The DPC said that its investigation into Google found failures in this regard meaning that people could...

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Derek Kravitz reports: Nearly every time you buy something online or sign up for a loyalty program, you leave behind personal information that can be collected, shared, and sold among companies including advertisers, retailers, and data brokers. This kind of information is sometimes used to charge consumers more for a range of products and services,...

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Henry F. Fradella The Conversation, George Grispos, and Jihun Joun report: A husband in Taiwan suspected his wife of having an affair. In September 2023, he found a used toothbrush at their holiday home, and garage video showed an unfamiliar man driving his wife there. Three months later, he opened their robot vacuum’s app to...

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Odia Kagan of FoxRothschild writes: If a user sets a privacy preference, an operating system or app cannot change that setting without the user’s explicit consent, says new bill, AB 2561, that passed the California legislature. A “Privacy setting” means any user-configurable option within an application’s privacy, or similarly labeled, menu that governs the application’s...

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AFP reports: Calls are growing louder in Europe for action against “pervert” smart glasses after secretly filmed footage of girls and women appeared online — with a petition in Britain demanding a ban on their sale. Anyone wearing smart glasses can take photos, film videos, listen to music, make phone calls, translate text or interact...

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Jason Parham reports: We’ve all been there. You meet someone new on a dating app, start to envision a life together, only to wonder: Is the person actually who they say they are? It’s an experience that has led many singles, sometimes out of concern or just genuine curiosity, to prescreen dates by tracing their...

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Jake Moore of ESET had a concerning post on LinkedIn: I found a way to disable the privacy LED on Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses. Now Meta says it’s releasing an update to stop it 👀 But I’m not convinced… The privacy LED on Meta’s glasses can be switched off or hidden with simple modifications. The fact...

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Connor Jones reports: LG is once again fending off allegations that its expensive consumer hardware gathers extensive information about users and their surroundings for the benefit of its advertising business. The latest concerns center on smart TVs that researchers claim continued capturing audio after voice recognition was activated, including while the display was in standby....

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Gintaras Radauskas reports: If you’re a Polarsteps user who loves to share your travels on the app, be aware that anyone could find out what you were up to this past summer. The app exposed enough data to track users – sometimes to within a meter, an investigation has found. According to Follow the Money, Polarsteps...

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Roxanne Libatique reports: A data breach affecting more than one million students, parents, and teachers across Australia and New Zealand has produced one of the clearest test cases the Australian cyber insurance market has seen for how patch-management obligations in policy wordings translate into real claims consequences. Online mathematics platform Mathspace confirmed on September 6,...

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Jonathan Bilyk reports:  A federal judge will allow lawyers who led a privacy class action lawsuit against Google to claim nearly $147 million in legal fees, nearly a third of the $425 million a jury had ordered the tech giant to pay for allegedly tracking more than 100 million people’s data after the Google users...

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Christopher Brown reports: The California Legislature passed a bill to eliminate the right to file private lawsuits under a provision of the California Invasion of Privacy Act, partly stemming a recent wave of litigation. The bill, SB 690, passed the state Assembly by a vote of 66 to 0 Aug. 28 and then returned for a...

Linn F. Freedman of Robinson+Cole writes: Connecticut Attorney General William Tong announced in the past week that his office has entered into two settlements focused on the privacy of consumer data. The first, announced on August 19, 2026, is a settlement with TaxAct, a Texas company that assists taxpayers with filing tax returns. In the...

Cyrus Farivar reports: New data compiled by a Bay Area anti-surveillance advocacy group shows that not only are American localities dropping cameras from Flock Safety, but they are doing it at an accelerating rate. Communities from Lansing, Michigan, to Pflugerville, Texas, are ending their relationship with Flock, largely over concerns regarding out-of-control surveillance, unwanted data sharing, high expenses,...

Ethan Gach reports: On August 20, Rockstar Games’ parent company, Take-Two, filed petitions for subpoenas of records from Microsoft and Discord related to the recent spread of Grand Theft Auto 6 leaks. A federal court granted the requests a day later, but some users have been worried about how broad the data requests appeared to be. Discord now says...

Although this article focuses on a workplace potential issue, the surveillance issues and privacy risks go far beyond the workplace.  Kit Eaton writes: Apple’s big fall hardware release is just around the corner, and we suspect one of the hottest new devices we’ll see are AirPods with built-in cameras. A rumor about this innovation has been circulating...

Maggie Harrison Dupré reports: I’ve had one person who told me that their intentions were creepy,” a man tells me over a video call, on condition of anonymity. He’s based in Los Angeles, and while we speak, he eats what appears to be tuna directly out of the can. “He said: ‘I go to strip...

This. 1000x this. Mario Trujillo writes: In a handful of known cases, large social media companies have privately pushed back against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) subpoenas when the agency tried to unmask anonymous users who tracked immigration activities or criticized the government. As ICE engages in a pattern of illegal and chilling investigations, any resistance is...

August 21 – Today, the Department of Justice announced a $400 million settlement with TikTok, ByteDance, and affiliated entities (TikTok) resolving litigation concerning compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and its implementing regulations (COPPA). Under the settlement, TikTok will pay $300 million immediately and an additional $100 million upon entry of an order...