Privacy

A man in fatigues and a face mask holds a phone with an app to the camera

How do contact-tracing apps around the world compare?

COVID-19

Countries around the world are developing contact-tracing apps to limit the spread of COVID-19. Part of that effort is balancing privacy with data collection. MIT is tracking how some of those worldwide apps compare.

A woman takes tampon boxes out of a supermarket shelf in Buenos Aires January 16, 2015.  

Period apps share your fertility data with Facebook

Margrethe Vestager

Europe is not afraid to regulate Big Tech. EU Competition Commissioner Vestager explains why.

Environment

Diaries & Journals

Arts, Culture & Media
WhatsApp and Facebook messenger icons are seen on an iPhone in Manchester , Britain March 27, 2017.

The new DHS plan to gather social media information has privacy advocates up in arms

Global Politics
French President Francois Mitterrand raises his cap as he goes for a walk in the streets of Chateau-Chinon in 1995.

French politicians have a long history of keeping their serious illnesses secret

Global Politics

An unhealthy penchant for privacy is not unique to US presidential candidates.

Google’s new keyboard, Gboard, via Google

How much of your personal data do you give up when you use your smartphone?

Technology

Is the information in our smartphones more secure now that the NSA has changed its metadata collection guidelines?

Protestors gathered at a small rally in support of Apple's refusal to help the FBI access the cell phone of a gunman involved in the killings of 14 people in San Bernardino, California in February.

Did an Israeli digital forensics firm unlock the San Bernardino attacker’s cellphone?

Justice

Cellebrite, a company headquartered in a Tel Aviv-suburb might have helped the FBI hack into the San Bernardino attacker’s iPhone.

Fitbit Watch

How a couple’s Fitbit told them they were expecting

Business

David Trinidad and his wife Ivonne had just recently started using Fitbits, when Ivonne said that hers was malfunctioning. The device was showing an unusually high resting heart rate and recorded 10 hours in one day in what it called the “fat burning zone,” even though she had not been particularly active. But her Fitbit wasn’t broken — she was pregnant.

Apple and the FBI are at odds over iPhone encryption.

Where European countries stand on privacy versus security

Business

In the wake of the San Bernardino shootings, the debate over encryption between tech companies and law enforcement has reached a fever pitch in the US. Meanwhile, lawmakers in some European countries are taking new steps to broaden government access to big data.