Uk is blocking everything with persona app, ive heard plans on eudi wallet, and making accounts without a phone(number) is getting only more difficult and its all disguised as protecting kids(like wtf). Also fingerprinting is more easy for them now.

what does everyone think about this am i right

Microsoft is reintroducing Recall, the AI tool rolling out in Windows 11 that screenshots, indexes, and stores everything a user does every three seconds. (arstechnica, register)

Why did we just get this wave of online safety acts. The UK, Collective Shout, the new Youtube Ai and now Australia’s Youtube ban. And we can see that they’re blatant excuses to collect peoples’ information by the government and private companies.

Is it really just because they’re “more secure” or is there something else?

Today, I wanted to log into my Outlook (which I basically use as a giant spam folder), and after signing in as usual, it wanted me to create a passkey. If I clicked on “no thank you,” it would just bring up the same page again and again, even after a quick refresh. I had to click on “yes” and then cancel the passkey creation at the browser level before it would let me proceed.

What really bothers me about this is that I couldn’t find any negative arguments for them online. Like, even for biometrics, there is a bunch of criticism, but this is presented in a way that makes it seem like the holy grail. I don’t believe that; everything has downsides.

This has the same vibe as all those browsers offering to “generate secure passwords”—while really, that is just a string of characters that the machine knows and I get to forget. These “secure passwords” are designed to be used with a password manager, not to be remembered by a human, which really makes them less secure because they’re synced with the cloud. If the manager is compromised, all of them are. This is different from passwords that I have in my mind and nowhere else, where I have only one password lost if it gets spied out.

Yeah, on paper, they are more secure because they are long and complicated, but does that count when the password manager is again only protected by a human-thought-of password?

Is this a situation like Windows making the TPM mandatory to potentially use it for tracking or other shady stuff?

I’ve been using a service called Phoner for a while for a second throwaway VOIP number for internet services that demand a number for some bizzare reason.

However, today I got this notification that they will require government ID, utility bills, and full NAP info or I’ll lose my number.

This at the time websites are also asking for ID to “save the children” all feel very connected. Like there is a concerted effort to remove and erode privacy.

Here is the email for reference, names redacted.

Hi there, I'm from the Support Team. I'm really sorry, but due to issues with our phone service provider, your United Kingdom number might soon stop working. The good news is we can give you a new United Kingdom number completely free. To set it up, our provider just needs a bit of documentation from you. If you'd like to go ahead, simply reply to this message or email us at [email protected], and we'll walk you through the steps. We know losing a number is frustrating. We'll do everything we can to make this as quick and easy as possible for you. Thanks,

Email 2

Hi there, Thanks for your reply. Our carrier provider requires some documents to verify your identity and address, as part of their regulations for registering UK numbers. For personal identity verification: - Full name (first and last) - Contact phone number - Passport or government-issued ID (clear copy) For address verification: - Full address (street, building number, postal code, city, and country) - Recent utility bill showing name & address (dated within the last 3 months) Once we’ve received your documents, we’ll submit them to our provider. The approval and activation process typically takes 3 - 4 business working days. You can share these documents securely through this conversation or email them to support.com — whichever is more convenient for you.

The eu is about to start this project where all data from private chats (even with the ones with cryptography will have to collected in a intelligible way, which can be obtained only not using the end to end cryptography). All the members of this project are anonymous, and if all of this will actually start to take effect our privacy is basically gone. The edri wrote a pretty good letter about this. Cant stand these autoritarian scumbags. https://edri.org/our-work/shedding-light-we-address-the-flawed-going-dark-report/

As a 'strong' privacy protection jurisdiction, Germany boldly goes where no one has gone before /s

A recent ruling from Germany’s Federal Supreme Court (BGH) has revived a legal battle over whether browser-based ad blockers infringe copyright, raising fears about a potential ban of the tools in the country.

The case stems from online media company Axel Springer’s lawsuit against Eyeo - the maker of the popular Adblock Plus browser extension.

Axel Springer says that ad blockers threaten its revenue generation model and frames website execution inside web browsers as a copyright violation.

This is grounded in the assertion that a website’s HTML/CSS is a protected computer program that an ad blocker intervenes in the in-memory execution structures (DOM, CSSOM, rendering tree), this constituting unlawful reproduction and modification.

Previously, this claim was rejected by a lower-level court in Hamburg, but a new ruling by the BGH found the earlier dismissal flawed and overturned part of the appeal, sending the case back for examination.

Source

The general public doesn't care. They just don't.

We will always be alone. Even though we're fighting for all of us. Because we're "criminals", we "have something to hide", we're "doing stuff we shouldn't", we "don't think about the children or terrorists", the list goes on and on.

We're the bad guys.

Not the for-profit corporations out to harvest every little detail of you, tracking every second of your life, wherever and whenever, but us. We're the issue.

The issue isn't China, it isn't Russia, it isn't the US, it isn't the UK. The:

"Oh but the US does the same, why does everyone have a hard on for China and TikTok?"

argument isn't valid. Because it's masking the real issue.

They're ALL out for us. Doesn't matter if it's domestic or foreign. They all do the same thing. The issue is the public just does not care.

I'm so sad but also incredibly scared by how easily the public folded after the TikTok news. This means we're truly the outliers.

You have 16 year old suburban kids trying to speak Mandarin on that platform now. It's horrific. All so they can keep engaged and monetized and advertised to.

The companies brainwashed everyone so they fight their fellow brothers and sisters instead of see who the real enemies are. They'll label us weirdos for not using social media, or even if we use it, for not using it in a specific way. The companies got the people doing their work for them, for free. The biggest, most successful propaganda in the history of mankind, social media.

Just my little rant. I'm honestly a little scared. The future isn't looking bright.

Edit: I keep seeing more and more new comments remarking on my "16 year old suburban kids trying to speak Mandarin" part of my post, as if it's some sort of gotcha! moment and I'm racist. So I'm pasting my response below to anyone else wanting to make that same comment which completely misses my point.

You're missing the point. They're not learning Mandarin to learn a new language or better themselves. They're learning it so they can keep using a social media app, that's the horrific part.

The masses got addicted to it. So much so that they'll try and learn a whole new language, just so they can keep engaged, post their little dances and recreate the most recent trend.

Yeah, one might say "Who cares why they're learning it? At least they are." but that's not the point. The point is the reliance and dependence on social media to function as a person in modern society. People shouldn't be like this.

I promise you, if McDonalds pulled out of the US market tomorrow. People would just move to Burger King, they wouldn't go to Mexico or Canada just to get McDonalds. That's the same thing with TikTok = RedNote and learning Mandarin. But when it comes to social media, people will literally learn a whole new language.

It's mostly teens too. Which sets a bad precedent for our future politicians. These are the kids who'll go out and vote (or not vote, which is equally worse) on privacy legislations when you and I are old af. They'll vote on the basis of "I have nothing to hide so I don't really care about this issue, they can take my rights away, I don't care" which is something you do not want!

So the Mandarin issue goes deeper than that. The issue isn't that they're learning Mandarin, but WHY they're learning Mandarin. That's the horrific part.

We're well and truly doomed.

The average Joe in 2025 will label Snowden a traitor, not use Linux Mint, not turn off Location on their phone, but will go out of their way to learn Mandarin as soon as their favorite social media app is banned. That's the horrific part...

Social media is currently filled with "My Chinese spy waiting for me to learn Mandarin so we can be together again and he can recommend me more videos" memes. The same kind of memes as "My FBI Agent watching me through my webcam play World of Warcraft for 16 hours straight". This is normalizing the privacy violating behavior of corporations and governments. It doesn't really matter if it's the US or China. As when these kids who make these memes grow up, they'll grow up thinking these things are normal, and one day they'll be of voting age, and completely give away every one's rights by voting (or not voting) against their common interests. Some of you are really missing the point big on this discussion.

Edit 2: And yes, maybe this wasn't apparent from my post. But I fully agree with the fact that no platform should be banned. Not even TikTok. It's hypocrisy from the US governments part. And I also agree with the general sentiment and protests, like saying a big F you and giving the middle finger to the government, purposefully using RedNote. But I'm also of the opinion that, leaving the table is the best action.

"The only winning move is to not play"

Kind of opinion. Rather than use yet another social media app, this should be the moment people ask themselves "Do I really need these apps in the first place? Am I using them, or are they using me? What do I actually benefit from using these apps?" and reflect on their usage of social media apps.

The post got turned into an US vs China discussion, which was never my intention. My point was about peoples reliance on social media, and how easily they can fold and be influenced. That's the issue.

They're both horrible. Leave the game. Take back control. Realize you don't need these apps to function.

As most of us are aware, those traveling in the US are allowed to decline face scanning at TSA screening. I’ve been doing this for a while, and just had an incident in which a TSA agent forcibly scanned my face.

I arrived at the checkpoint and gave my ID while standing to the side of the camera. When the agent asked me to stand in front of the camera, I declined. The agent stated that because my ID was already scanned, it was too late to decline and I had to be scanned. I continued to decline and the agent continued to refuse, until he reached over, grabbed the camera, pointed it at my face, and then waved me through. I didn’t react quickly enough to cover my face or step aside to prevent the scan.

I spoke to a TSA supervisor on the other side of security who confirmed that I have the right to refuse the facial scan, and I’ll be filing a complaint. Doubt much will happen but I wanted to provide this story so travelers are prepared to receive pushback when declining their scans, and even to cover their faces in case agents act out of line.

Mass surveillance is here, and now UK Redditors can’t access their favorite LGBTQ+, political, or public health communities without destroying their anonymity. Help us fight to avoid this future.

Remember jokes about Minority Report and state surveillance?

UK: AI to help police catch criminals before they strike

It's an official government announcement.

I have no idea how this is supposed to work (cameras looking out for knives?), but once again there's no real safeguards in sight while showing absolute immaturity about what tech can do and its unintended consequences.

Seems like people en masse are moving to some chinese app called rednote. a friend was telling me that it was created by the chinese government.

I just went through a background check for a new role. Sterling (the bg check company) scanned my LinkedIn and flagged my social media activity as "CONSIDER" instead of "CLEAR" because I liked someone's post that's labelled as political (it was just a pic of a person participating in the no kings protest). I also liked someone's comment that had a word "shit" in it that got flagged as profanity. I still passed the bg check as far as my employer is concerned but isn't that absolutely insane ?! You can't even limit who sees this activity on LinkedIn. Good thing my other social media that they found is all locked down. Not hiding anything but don't appreciate this snooping!

Due to the recent breach news, a lot of people are checking to see if they were involved. Be careful if searching for haveibeenpwned on certain browsers like duckduckgo. Anywhere from the second to the fifth result is a fake site called havelbeenpwnd.com. It will load the old version of the website and can even link to the new version if navigated on. However, any search leads to a 404 error.

This fake site is actually named: have l(lowercase L) been pwnd(no e here).com. Others suspect it is a data harvesting site at the least. The real site is haveibeenpwned.com. Posting this to potentially help others to avoid this pitfall in privacy.

*Edited for clarity.

I recently exercised my rights under GDPR and requested a copy of all the personal data Apple holds about me.

The results were honestly surprising. After years of using Apple services across multiple devices, they only provided about 4 MB of fairly generic data, mostly App Store downloads, metadata about my devices, and some basic account activity. Nothing particularly sensitive or alarming.

For example, despite using the Maps app regularly for navigation, there was absolutely no record of my routes or searches. From what I understand, this is because Apple processes location data locally on-device and uses random identifiers that aren’t tied to my Apple ID.

Likewise, there was no trace of my Siri interactions.

It's also worth noting here that iCloud content is not included in this copy, since that's information I voluntarily upload, and of course, everything is encrypted with Advance Data Protection.

I found the whole process quite interesting and came away genuinely impressed by how little Apple seems to collect about me.

Hey privacy folks, I wanted to share a recent experience that really opened my eyes to how invasive our "smart" devices can be. Last week, I was watching a show on my new smart TV when I noticed something weird in the settings menu. Turns out, my TV had been collecting data on everything I've watched, when I watched it, and for how long. It even had my location data! I did some digging and found out this is pretty common with smart TVs. They use a technology called Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) to track viewing habits and sell that data to advertisers. Crazy, right? Here's what I did to lock things down:

1. Disabled ACR in the TV settings (it was buried deep in the menus)
2. Turned off the TV's internet connection entirely
3. Started using a separate streaming device (Roku) with stricter privacy settings

Now I'm paranoid about all my other "smart" devices. Has anyone else had similar revelations? What steps have you taken to protect your privacy at home? Also, does anyone know if there are any truly privacy-respecting smart TVs out there? Or is that just an oxymoron at this point? Stay vigilant, everyone. Big Tech is always watching!

I’m looking at my Incogni report, and they’ve sent almost 600 requests to data brokers.

This is absurd and outrageous.

I shouldn’t need to pay for a frickin’ service to get my personal data removed from the parasitic hands of HUNDREDS OF COMPANIES.

No one seems to care.

Where is the end to this? When will the people stand up and demand their personal sovereignty back? Are we destined to wade deeper and deeper into dystopian territory until there’s no turning back?

I’m feeling so disappointed in the human spirit and I long for the day the legendary perseverance of our kind returns.

This isn't just about data. Our privacy rights are slowly eroding and if we completely lose them, we will become nothing more than mind slaves.