Your phones and computers hold more than you might realize. The files that you can view by default on Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS are by no means everything that’s stored on those systems. These hidden files are typically used by the operating system and the applications you’re running to store data that you don’t […]
Few, if any, services have done more to bring secure messaging to more people than WhatsApp. Since 2016, the messaging platform has enabled end-to-end encryption—by default, no less—for its billions of users. No complaints there. But if you back up your WhatsApp messages to iCloud or Google Cloud, those chats no longer have that level […]
This weekend, news broke that the anonymous email service ProtonMail turned over a French climate activist’s IP address and browser fingerprint to Swiss authorities. The move seemed to contradict the company’s own privacy-focused policies, which as recently as last week stated, “By default, we do not keep any IP logs which can be linked to your […]
In May 2019, Melissa Polinsky, director of Apple’s global investigations and child safety team, faced investigators working on the UK’s inquiry into child sexual abuse. During two hours of questioning, Polinsky admitted Apple employed just six people on its global team responsible for investigating child abuse images. Polinsky also said the technology Apple used to […]
Police around the country have drastically increased their use of geofence warrants, a widely criticized investigative technique that collects data from any user’s device that was in a specified area within a certain time range, according to new figures shared by Google. Law enforcement has served geofence warrants to Google since 2016, but the company […]
More than 90 policy groups from the US and around the world signed an open letter urging Apple to drop its plan to have Apple devices scan photos for child sexual abuse material (CSAM). “The undersigned organizations committed to civil rights, human rights, and digital rights around the world are writing to urge Apple to […]
“When you attach to the network, you offer the IMSI number to show the backend database that you are a paying customer and here are the services that you have subscribed to,” Schmitt says. “The system then informs the rest of the core to allow you onto the network. But what we do with PGPP […]
In North America and many other parts of the world, high-speed 5G mobile data networks dangled just out of reach for years. But as 5G coverage becomes ubiquitous, the rollout comes with an important caveat. Even if your phone says it’s connected to the next-generation wireless standard, you may not actually be getting all of […]
Facebook and Google are the web’s biggest advertising powerhouses. But Spotify has ambitions to rival them. And it has all the data it needs to do just that. Each day hundreds of millions of people use Spotify on their phones, tablets, and desktops—most often remaining logged in as they move from one device to the […]
Children’s safety groups, for their part, also immediately applauded Apple’s moves, arguing they strike a necessary balance that “brings us a step closer to justice for survivors whose most traumatic moments are disseminated online,” Julie Cordua, CEO of the child safety advocacy group Thorn, wrote in a statement to WIRED. Other cloud storage providers, from […]