The latest tech news about the world's best (and occasionally worst) software, hardware, and services in the privacy world. Privacy Guides News has you covered for any important information you might need on your privacy journey.
Illustration: Jonah Aragon / Privacy Guides | Photo: Micah Lee
If you don't know who Micah Lee is yet, here's why you should: Micah is an information security engineer, a software engineer, a journalist, and an author who has built an impressive career developing software for the public good, and working with some of the most respected digital rights organizations in the United States.
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Privacy is a human right that should be granted to everyone, no matter the reason. That being said, it's also important to remember that for millions of people around the world, data privacy is crucial for physical safety. For people in extreme situations, privacy can literally mean life or death.
Illustration: Jonah Aragon / Privacy Guides
There is a growing sentiment that the US shouldn't be relied upon for the technologies that many people and businesses use every day. Lately, the US has been unilaterally cutting off access to critical technologies to European countries, prompting calls for "radical action" to bolster European tech stacks from EU lawmakers.
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On February 7th this year, Joseph Menn reported from the Washington Post that officials in the United Kingdom had contacted Apple to demand the company allows them to access data from any iCloud user worldwide. This included users who had activated Apple's Advanced Data Protection, effectively requesting Apple break its strong end-to-end encrypted feature.
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Data privacy is a vast subject that encompasses so much. Some might think it is a niche focus interesting only a few. But in reality, it is a wide-ranging field influenced by intricate relationships between politics, law, technology, and much more. Further, it affects everyone in one way or another, whether they care about it or not.
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"No shady privacy policies or back doors for advertisers" proclaims the Firefox homepage, but that's no longer true in Firefox 128.
Less than a month after acquiring the AdTech company Anonym, Mozilla has added special software co-authored by Meta and built for the advertising industry directly to the latest release of Firefox, in an experimental trial you have to opt out of manually. This "Privacy-Preserving Attribution" (PPA) API adds another tool to the arsenal of tracking features that advertisers can use, which is thwarted by traditional content blocking extensions.
EDIT: This change has been temporarily rolled back after discussions that took place in the Signal community. It will likely be the way things work in the future, but it seems that the old behavior is now back in place for the time being.
Signal has changed how it handles registration. This primarily affects people who are using a number for Signal that they don't have exclusive access to.
macOS Ventura was released this week, and the Apple users among us may be interested in the improvements it brings to your personal privacy and security. We always recommend running the most up-to-date version of your operating system available. Updates add privacy and security improvements all the time—and macOS Ventura is no exception.
People looking to use Signal Proxies to bypass censorship programs should be aware of a number of issues with Signal’s current proxy implementation. Currently, Signal does not tunnel all application traffic through the specified proxy, which means authorities could still track people using Signal.
Illustration: Jonah Aragon / Privacy Guides | Photo: Unsplash
There’s a massive problem in the privacy world. Websites, social media accounts, and other platforms are constantly popping up out of nowhere, telling you to buy The Greatest Service Ever in order to solve all your privacy woes, whatever that may be. These websites often employ marketing teams to make sure their “reviews” are what you see first when you begin your research. Some of them are even operated by VPN providers themselves, operating under anonymous business entities to hide their bias, or doing it right out in the open, hoping you’ll mistake their advertising-filled press releases and blogs as insider knowledge of the VPN space.