CyberTechTips

We need to have a hard look at the surveillance industry. It is a key enabler of vast and untold violations of human rights and civil liberties, and it continues to be used by aspiring autocrats to threaten our very democracy. As long as it exists, the surveillance industry, and the data it generates, will be an irresistible tool for anti-democratic forces.

A federal court in California has ruled that YouTube creators who use stream-ripping tools to download clips for reaction and commentary videos may face liability under the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions -- a decision that could reshape how one of the platform's most popular content genres ope...

End-to-end encryption protects the privacy of your data.

On June 1, 2025, the California Applicants' Attorneys Association reported that Serviceaide, a provider of AI-powered healthcare software, had suffered a data b

: Agency looks to understand the extent of identifying information available to its masked agents

The TikTok privacy debate did not end with the US agreement. It has escalated. TikTok has updated its US Privacy Policy. It is now one of the most aggressive data collection regimes of any mainstream consumer platform. It explicitly acknowledges the collection and processing of sensitive personal information under US state privacy laws. Named directly: • Racial or ethnic origin. • Religious or philosophical beliefs. • Mental and physical health data. • Sexual orientation. • Transgender or nonbinary status. • Citizenship or immigration status. • Precise location data. The policy goes further. TikTok is collecting far more than what users consciously share. Under the updated policy, it gathers what you provide, what it observes automatically, and what it receives from third parties. That includes account details and identity verification documents, private messages, drafts and unpublished content, AI prompts and interactions, clipboard content, purchase and payment data, contact lists and social graphs, and an extensive set of technical signals such as device identifiers, keystroke patterns, battery state, audio configurations, and activity tracked across devices. This is not incidental data leakage. It is formalized, permitted, and documented. Images and video are treated as analyzable environments. TikTok states that it "identifies objects and scenery, detects faces and other body parts, extracts spoken words, and collects metadata describing how, when, where, and by whom content was created." Post a photo near the Golden Gate Bridge and you are not just sharing a moment. You are generating structured data about place, time, environment, and your body, or body parts. Photos and videos are not just content. They are raw material for computer vision, biometric analysis, and location inference. Tik Tok will use all of the collected data, and maintains the right to sell all of it to interested third parties, from vendors to the federal government. Leaders must act on this immdiately. Privacy policies are not background reading. They are power documents. When they change, accountability shifts with them. If you are a user, a parent, a school, a youth facing organization, nonprofits, and public institutions that use TikTok as a communications channel, the update changes the governance calculus. Engagement is not a neutral act. It carries serious legal and ethical obligations tied to data protection, duty of care, and institutional risk. The new policy deserves close reading. At this stage of platform power, and scale of data collection, policy literacy is a governance responsibility, not a personal preference. Read the policy here: https://lnkd.in/ejbm8THx | 164 comments on LinkedIn

Thomas Brewster reports: Early last year, the FBI served Microsoft with a search warrant, asking it to provide recovery keys to unlock encrypted data stored on

updated: If you're serious about encryption, keep control of your encryption keys

Driven by concerns over privacy and geopolitical vulnerability, Europeans are increasingly adopting local "app menus" and open-source software to reduce reliance on US big tech.

A few enterprising hackers have started projects to do counter surveillance against ICE, and hopefully protect their communities through clever use of technology.

ClearURLs Documentation

Microsoft's OneDrive cloud storage service has drawn renewed criticism for a particularly frustrating behavior pattern that can leave users without access to their local files after the service automatically activates during Windows updates. Author Jason Pargin recently outlined the problem: Windo...

From being extra careful with your browsing habits to downloading the latest security apps, here are the ways you can safeguard your Android from cyber threats.

New Pixel update means your RCS messages might be visible to your boss

There’s no shortage of great apps for Windows 11, but we’ve narrowed our list to five standouts.

The ultimate all-in-one tweaker for Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8, and Windows 7.

Contacted out of the blue for a virtual interview? Be cautious. Attackers are using fake interviews to slip malware onto your device.

Shedding old edtech is a real pain, district experts say. Worse, student privacy may be at risk.

The Lawrence public school district switched digital surveillance software vendors for the new school year while facing litigation that accuses school officials of unconstitutional spying on students, including high school journalists.

Slashdot reader joshuark writes: Microsoft says that the File Explorer (formerly Windows Explorer) now automatically blocks previews for files downloaded from the Internet to block credential theft attacks via malicious documents, according to a report from BleepingComputer. This attack vector is pa...

Would you allow a stranger to drive a camera-equipped computer around your living room? You might have already done so without even realizing it. The Beginning: A Curious Experiment It all started innocently enough. I had recently bought an iLife A11 smart vacuum—a sleek, affordable, and technologically advanced robot

"Eleven days ago, the nonprofit entity that develops the protocol, Signal Messenger LLC, published a 5,900-word write-up describing its latest updates that bring Signal a significant step toward being fully quantum-resistant," writes Ars Technica: The mechanism that has made this constant key e...

The Windows Recall feature on Copilot PCs regularly saves screenshots for later searches. Veracrypt can stop this and increase privacy.

: Crims turned trusted mapping software into a hideout - no traditional malware required

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Discord has identified approximately 70,000 users that may have had their government ID photos exposed as part of a customer service data breach announced last week, spokesperson Nu Wexler tells The Verge. A tweet by vx-underground said that the co...

: Affects users regardless of when their backups were created