The latest news of Twitter “inadvertently” sharing email addresses or phone numbers provided for safety or security purposes (for example, two-factor authentication) for advertising purposes is extremely concerning for several reasons. First of all, it is not the first time for Twitter 's used
A 17-year-old Palestinian resident of Lebanon, Ismail B. Ajjawi, was deported shortly after he arrived at Boston Airport, where he was due to start attending Harvard University the following week. Immigration officers subjected him to hours of questioning — at one point leaving to search his phone
Image: The Great Hack publicity still, courtesy of Netflix. This is a review of the documentary 'The Great Hack' originally published on IMDb. This documentary is a fascinating account of The Facebook/Cambridge Analytica data scandal. In early 2018, Cambridge Analytica became a household name. The
image from portal gda (cc) Many people are still confused by what is 5G and what it means for them. With cities like London, New York or San Francisco now plastered with ads, talks about national security, and the deployment of 5G protocols being treated like an arms race, what happens to our
This blogpost is a preview of the full ' Our Data Future' story, produced by Valentina Pavel, PI Mozilla-Ford Fellow, 2018-2019. 2030. Four worlds. One choice. Which one is yours? All aboard! Time to step into the imaginarium. Explore four speculative future scenarios, examining how different ways
Today, the British Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced a partnership between the NHS and Amazon to use the NHS’s website content as the source for the answer given to medical question, such as “Alexa, how do I treat a migraine?” While we welcome Amazon’s use of a trusted source of information
Like many others, PI were alarmed at recent reports that Facebook have been making mobile phone numbers (which users believed to be) provided for the express purpose of "two-factor authentication" (2FA) both searchable, and a target for advertising by default. One of the myriad ways Facebook
When you go abroad, you expect to show your passport right? But what if immigration authorities wanted access to your Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts before they let you enter a country? What if they wanted to vet you based on your updates, photos, likes, retweets and even your DMs? We
Privacy International has today sent letters to leading social media platforms to ask what they're doing to protect their users' from dangerous surveillance by government immigration authorities. The letter comes following the implementation of plans by US authorities to require nearly all visa
Could an app you have never even heard of put you at risk? This is what happened to Chloe (real name has been changed), an investigative journalist exposed by an app that her source was using. Her source was using TrueCaller, an app that aims to identify phone numbers so users can filter out calls
The story of an investigative journalist highlights shows the concrete risks that call-blocking apps like TrueCaller present for people in vulnerable situations.
TrueCaller is an app particularly popular in India and Sub-Saharan Africa. TrueCaller identifies the numbers calling you, so you can filter out undesirable phone calls and make sure you pick up a call you have been expecting, even if you have not previously registered the number.
Every time a user makes or receives a phone call from a number not already in the TrueCaller database, TrueCaller offers the user the option to “tag” the number so it can be entered in the TrueCaller database, under the name entered by the user.
In January 2019 the UK's Information Commissioner's Office announced it was investigating an incident in which the food service company Deliveroo reported that some of its customers had complained they were charged up to £1,000 for orders they had not placed. Customers have used social media to
For low-income Americans to receive public benefits they are legally entitled to, they must submit to widespread monitoring of their intimate and personal affairs. This monitoring includes sharing a trove of personal documents and information, unannounced home visits from caseworkers, mandatory face
In Israel, the National Insurance Institute – in charge of granting benefits – eventually dropped a tender that had caused outrage in the country after being uncovered by Haaretz and Channel 13. The tender revealed the NII was trying to collect online data about benefits claimants – including from
The rise of social media has also been a game changer in the tracking of benefits claimants. In the UK in 2019, a woman was jailed after she was jailed for five months after pictures of her partying in Ibiza emerged on social media. She had previously sued the NHS for £2.5 million, after surviving a
In Mexico, people registered as beneficiaries of any programmes led by the Ministry of Social Development could obtain a TV set, as part of the transition from analogue to digital TV organised by the Ministry of Communications and Transportation. Yet, the Ministry of Communications and
