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14 votes
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What to know before you buy or install an Amazon Ring camera
8 votes -
How ads follow you around the internet
8 votes -
Data
12 votes -
The EARN IT Act: How to ban end-to-end encryption without actually banning it
16 votes -
Avast announces that they are shutting down Jumpshot, their subsidiary that's been collecting and selling user data to marketing clients
11 votes -
Facebook to pay $550 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over its use of facial recognition technology in Illinois
9 votes -
Scroll: A subscription service partnered with major websites that removes ads and many trackers, and pays sites based on your usage
24 votes -
Facebook’s Clear History tool is now available to everyone
15 votes -
Ring's doorbell app for Android sends sensitive user data to multiple analytics and marketing companies
10 votes -
Jumpshot, a subsidiary of antivirus company Avast, is selling users' web browsing data to many of the world's biggest companies
30 votes -
Google researchers find serious privacy risks in Safari’s anti-tracking protections
9 votes -
Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained
21 votes -
The secretive company that might end privacy as we know it
23 votes -
App tracking alert in iOS 13 has dramatically cut location data flow to ad industry
21 votes -
Fifty countries ranked by how they’re collecting biometric data and what they’re doing with it
11 votes -
Are there any personalized recommendation engines/sites that you trust?
In the 2000s I used to use a service called last.fm (originally called Audioscrobbler) that would track the music I listened to and give me recommendations based on that. It was able to give me...
In the 2000s I used to use a service called last.fm (originally called Audioscrobbler) that would track the music I listened to and give me recommendations based on that. It was able to give me some really great personalized suggestions, but that came at the expense of me handing over significant amounts of personal data.
In prioritizing privacy, I feel like I've stepped away from a lot of the big recommendation engines because they're tied to data-hungry companies I am in the process of disengaging with (e.g. Goodreads is owned by Amazon). I can still find stuff I like, but it's often the result of manual searching that turns up popular recommendations that work for me, rather than less well-known or acutely relevant things. last.fm was good at giving me less "obvious" recommendations and would find music I was unlikely to find on my own. I want that, but for all of my media: books, movies, etc.
There's a second concern in that I also feel like I can't trust platforms like Netflix, who seem to prioritize their content over that of other studios. Their recommendations feel weighted in their favor, not mine.
What I want is an impartial recommendation engine that gives me high quality personalized suggestions without a huge privacy cost.1 Is this a pipe dream, or are there examples of this kind of thing out there?
1. I don't mind handing over some of my specific interest data in order to get good recommendations for myself and help a site's algorithms cater to others, as I get that's how these things work. I just don't like the idea of my interests being even more data for a company that already has thousands of intimate data points on me.
18 votes -
Release of over 100,000 leaked documents from Cambridge Analytica has started, showing the company's work in sixty-eight countries
14 votes -
The last tracker was just removed from Basecamp.com
16 votes -
Promiscuous cookies and their impending death via the SameSite policy
10 votes -
On privacy versus freedom
9 votes -
How NIST tested facial recognition algorithms for racial bias
5 votes -
Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines, tracking the locations of hundreds of thousands
35 votes -
Messaging app ToTok has been removed from the Apple and Google app stores following claims the United Arab Emirates government was using it to spy on people
12 votes -
What we know about you when you click on this article—Vox has a pretty typical privacy policy. That doesn’t make it great.
11 votes -
One nation, tracked : An investigation into the smartphone tracking industry
15 votes -
NIST study evaluates effects of race, age, sex on face recognition software - Findings included that many algorithms had false positive rates 10 to 100 times higher for non-Caucasians
7 votes -
What does your car know about you? We hacked a Chevy and found that automakers collect data through hundreds of sensors and an always-on Internet connection
22 votes -
How tracking pixels work
13 votes -
FTC weighs seeking preliminary injunction against Facebook over antitrust concerns related to how its apps interact
3 votes -
Apple’s ad-targeting crackdown shakes up ad market
22 votes -
How to fight back against Google AMP as a web user and a web developer
28 votes -
Behind the one-way mirror: A deep dive into the technology of corporate surveillance
9 votes -
The citizen scientist who finds killers from her couch: How CeCe Moore is using her genetic knowledge to expose murderers
8 votes -
A new tracking technique using CNAME aliases to circumvent third-party cookie restrictions is blockable using a Firefox DNS API, but not in Chrome
18 votes -
Private Internet Access VPN acquired by Kape Technologies for US$127.6 million
30 votes -
Android exploit of system camera apps enabled a malicious app to record and upload photos, video and audio with only "storage" permission
10 votes -
Firefox’s fight for the future of the web: With Google’s Chrome dominating the market, not-for-profit rival Mozilla is staking a comeback on its dedication to privacy
49 votes -
Google is an emerging health-care juggernaut, and privacy laws weren’t written to keep up
14 votes -
YouTube is requiring all new and existing videos be marked as "Made for Kids" if they're intended for children, which will disable personalized ads, end screens, comments, and more
16 votes -
Interpreting GDPR data requests: Why does British Airways need to know that I'm 98% LGBT?
10 votes -
What half of iPhone users don’t know about their privacy
18 votes -
Google’s secret ‘Project Nightingale’ gathers personal health data on millions of Americans
12 votes -
Smart TVs collect data for political-advertising use
16 votes -
Give Firefox a chance for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet
27 votes -
Almost 7000 pages of leaked Facebook documents show how they leveraged user data to fight rivals and help friends
15 votes -
Two former Twitter employees charged with spying on behalf of Saudi Arabia
9 votes -
The fantasy of opting out
16 votes -
ISPs lied to Congress to spread confusion about encrypted DNS, Mozilla says
15 votes -
Chinese professor sues wildlife park after it introduces facial recognition entry system
6 votes