Educational

Owners of the Hong Kong-based sex toy company Lovense's vibrators who installed the company's remote control app were surprised to discover that the app was recording user sessions without their knowledge. They had authorised the app to use the phone's built-in microphone and camera, but only for

On September 11, 2017, while Florida residents were evacuating during the approach of Hurricane Irma, Tesla rolled out a real-time software update that increased the battery capacity of some of its Model S sedans and Model X SUVs. The update extended the vehicles' range, enabling drivers to travel

The UK consumer watchdog Which? has called on retailers to stop selling popular connected toys it says have proven security issues. These include Hasbro's Furby Connect, Vivid Imagination's I-Que robot, and Spiral Toys' Cloudpets and Toy-fi Teddy. In its report, Which? found that these toys do not

The UK Information Commissioner's Office has published policy guidelines for big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning and their interaction with data protection law. Applying data protection principles becomes more complex when using these techniques. The volume of data, the ways it's

A mistake in Facebook's machine translation service led to the arrest and questioning of a Palestinian man by Israeli police. The man, a construction worker on the West Bank, posted a picture of himself leaning against a bulldozer like those that have been used in hit-and-run terrorist attacks, with

A 2017 Freedom House survey of 65 countries found that 30 of them were using armies of "opinion-shapers" to manipulate elections, advance anti-democratic agendas, and repress their citizens. Although most of these countries direct these efforts to manipulate opinion domestically, the report finds

An investigation by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner has led Eir, a telecommunications company, to replace almost 20,000 modems supplied to customers with basic broadband packages without access to fibre services. The action follows an incident in 2016 in which nearly 2,000 customer routers

A paper by Michael Veale (UCL) and Reuben Binns (Oxford), "Fairer Machine Learning in the Real World: Mitigating Discrimination Without Collecting Sensitive Data", proposes three potential approaches to deal with hidden bias and unfairness in algorithmic machine learning systems. Often, the cause is

In the remote western city Xinjiang, the Chinese government is using new technology and humans to monitor every aspect of citizens' lives. China, which has gradually increased restrictions in the region over the last ten years in response to unrest and violent attacks, blames the need for these

Cracked Labs examines the impact on individuals, groups, and wider society of the corporate use of personal information as it feeds into automated decision-making, personalisation, and data-driven manipulation. On the web, companies track us via hidden software that collects information about the

The Dutch data protection authority has found that Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system breaches Dutch law by processing personal data of the system's users without informing them clearly about what type of data the company uses and for what purpose. In addition, users cannot give valid consent

Privacy and child advocacy groups in the US, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, and the UK are filing complaints with regulators after a study by the Norwegian Consumer Council found critical security flaws and missing privacy protection in children's smartwatches. The watches

In 2017, after protests from children's health and privacy advocates, Mattel cancelled its planned child-focused "Aristotle" smart hub. Aristotle was designed to adapt to and learn about the child as they grew while controlling devices from night lights to homework aids. However, Aristotle was only

A report from the University of Washington studies parents' and children's interactions with general-purpose connected devices and connected toys. There are numerous privacy issues: toy companies may collect masses of children's intimate data; the toys may enable parents to spy on their children

In 2016, researchers at the University of Birmingham and the German engineering firm Kasper & Oswald discovered two vulnerabilities in the keyless entry systems affecting practically every car Volkswagen Group had sold since 1995, estimated at 100 million vehicles. Two separate attacks use cheap

A pregnancy-tracking app collected basic information such as name, address, age, and date of last period from its users. A woman who miscarried found that although she had entered the miscarriage into the app to terminate its tracking, the information was not passed along to the marketers to which