privacy – Page 2 – Tech News

Google: No, We’re Not Secretly Using Your Gmail Account to Train Gemini

Google has hit back at claims circulating on social media that accuse the tech giant of training its Google Gemini AI on users' emails without their permission. In a statement shared with The Verge, Google called reports "misleading," saying that the company has “not changed anyone’s settings. Gmail Smart Features have existed for many years, and we do not use your Gmail content for training our Gemini AI model.”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/google-no-were-not-secretly-training-gemini-on-your-gmail-account

California enacts law giving consumers ability to universally opt out of data sharing

The bill signed Wednesday would require them to set up an easy-to-find mechanism that lets Californians opt-out with the push of a button, instead of having to do so repeatedly when visiting individual websites. “These signals are going to be available to millions more people and it's going to be much easier for them to opt out,” said Matt Schwartz, a policy analyst at Consumer Reports.
https://therecord.media/california-signs-law-opt-out-browsers

Flurry to pay $3.5 million for harvesting sexual and reproductive health data from period app

The defunct analytics company Flurry agreed to pay $3.5 million to resolve a class action lawsuit claiming it improperly harvested data from a widely used period tracking app. Plaintiffs in the lawsuit said data they provided to the app, Flo Health, was obtained by Flurry, the ad analytics company AppsFlyer, Meta and Google.
https://therecord.media/flurry-pays-harvesting-sexual-data

Utah Lawmakers Pass Bill That Puts App Stores in Charge of Age Verification

Utah has become the first US state to pass legislation requiring app stores to verify users' ages and seek parental consent before allowing minors to download apps. "Parents want a one-stop shop to verify their child’s age and grant permission for them to download apps in a privacy-preserving way. The app store is the best place for it," Meta, X, and Snapchat said in a joint statement. "We applaud Utah for putting parents in charge with its landmark legislation and urge Congress to follow suit."
https://www.pcmag.com/news/utah-lawmakers-pass-bill-that-puts-app-stores-in-charge-of-age-verification

Mozilla removing Do Not Track option from Firefox 135

"Many sites do not respect this indication of a person's privacy preferences, and, in some cases, it can reduce privacy," Mozilla said on the updated DNT support page. It directs users to instead make use of newer Global Privacy Control features also present in the browser.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/12/firefox_do_not_track/

Meta fed its AI on almost everything you’ve posted publicly since 2007

Meta has acknowledged that all text and photos that adult Facebook and Instagram users have publicly published since 2007 have been fed into its artificial intelligence models.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/12/24242789/meta-training-ai-models-facebook-instagram-photo-post-data

New York moves to limit kids’ access to ‘addictive feeds’

Implementing this bill would require social media companies to verify users’ ages. It would also prohibit platforms from sending notifications related to these feeds between the ages of midnight and 6am without parental consent. Companies that violate the law could face penalties of up to $5,000 per violation.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/09/new-york-moves-to-limit-kids-access-to-addictive-feeds/