> "The development comes days after TikTok said it does not plan to introduce E2EE to secure direct messages on the platform, telling BBC News that the technology makes users less safe and that it wants to protect users, especially young people, from harm."

Translation: We can't spy on you and confirm that you're not doing something illegal.

https://thehackernews.com/2026/03/meta-to-shut-down-instagram-end-to-end.html

#privacy #security #cryptogarphy

Privacy isn't just about the tools, the laws, or the culture, it's about all of it together. 🧰 From our Privacy Activist Toolbox, learn more on how to: 🌐 Keep in Mind the Whole Landscape privacyguides.org/en/activism/toolbox/tip-keep-in-mind-the-whole-landscape #Privacy #Activism

Keep in Mind The Whole Landsca...

Privacy isn't just about the tools.
It also isn't just about the laws.
And it isn't just about the practices either.

For privacy to become the default, we must consider technology, law, and culture altogether.

🌐 Learn more on how to evaluate the whole landscape.

🧰 Check our Privacy Activist Toolbox tip to Keep in Mind the Whole Landscape: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/activism/toolbox/tip-keep-in-mind-the-whole-landscape/

#PrivacyGuides #Activism #PrivacyActivistToolbox #Privacy

🎥🔴 Episode #44 of This Week in Privacy is live in 30 minutes, Jonah & Nate will be going live in a special stream together in person. They'll be talking about Chat Control and other popular stories in the #privacy and #security space! Come say hi! 👋

https://streamyard.com/watch/5WgU5YvZhGVJ

#privacyguides

🎥🔴 Episode #44 of This Week in Privacy is live in 30 minutes, Jonah & Nate will be going live in a special stream together in person. They'll be talking about Chat Control and other popular stories in the #privacy and #security space! Come say hi! 👋 youtube.com/live/R1ks2qp... #privacyguides

A redditor (Ok_Lingonberry3296) traced $2 billion in nonprofit grants and lobbying records across 45 states to figure out who's behind the age verification bills.

The answer is Meta - a company that profits from your data writing laws that collect more of it.

Page: https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings?tab=readme-ov-file

Page backup: https://archive.ph/2026.03.13-193015/https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings?tab=readme-ov-file

Reddit discussion: https://web.archive.org/web/20260313143853/https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_billion_in_nonprofit_grants_and_45/

#Meta #Facebook #AgeVerification #privacy #surveillance #dystopia #socialmedia #technology

#FacialRecognition Error Jails #Innocent Grandmother For Months

Angela Lipps, 50, spent nearly six months in jail after #Fargo police identified her as a suspect in an organized bank fraud case using facial recognition software, according to south-east #NorthDakota news outlet InForum. Lipps told the outlet she had never been to North Dakota and did not commit the crimes.
#privacy #rights

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/03/13/0513251/facial-recognition-error-jails-innocent-grandmother-for-months?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

TikTok Reportedly Rejects End-to-End Encryption for DMs, Citing Child Safety

https://www.pcmag.com/news/tiktok-reportedly-rejects-encryption-for-dms-citing-child-safety

#tiktok #tiktoknews #tiktokdms #apps #tech #technews #socialnetworks #socialmedia #encryption #privacy #tiktokrejects

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@Em0nM4stodon/116194451395085142

Y’all. Em brings a wealth of privacy, digital rights, and open-source information to the world. And she’s super smart and friendly.

If you need to fill a gap on your team, do yourself a favor and give her a look.

#FediHire #GetFediHired #Tech #Privacy #DigitalRights

Guillaume Ross boosted

Em » 🌐 2026-03-08
@Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange

Bad news 😔💔

I am sad to announce today that unfortunately I will not be working with Privacy Guides anymore after the end of this month.

Good news! 🚨

I will be available for a new position or contract, starting in April!

I am looking for a position or contact for:

✊ Digital rights activist (with a specialty in privacy rights)

🔒 Privacy expert or consultant

Fediverse and Mastodon advocate

🙌 Managerial position

📰 Tech journalist

💻 Technical writer

💚 Or any other fitting positions

I am especially interested in working with nonprofit organisations, cooperatives, open-source projects, privacy-oriented software companies, or any other organisations working for the public good.

🇨🇦 Remote from Canada

All the work I produce is guaranteed to be AI-free

Let me know if you hear of any good opportunities!

#FediHire #GetFediHired #Tech #Jobs

The Government Must Not Force Companies to Participate in #AI-powered #Surveillance

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/government-must-not-force-companies-participate-ai-powered-surveillance

#politics #privacy

Meta Platforms: Lobbying, Dark Money, and the App Store Accountability Act

https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings

#privacy #security

Very interesting opensource investigation on the age verification laws... https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings

#meta #asaa #privacy #lobbying #politics #uspol

Online age-verification tools spread across U.S. for child safety, but adults are being surveilled

Large volumes of sensitive identity data can become targets for government demands and hackers. But at a more fundamental level, the surveillance strikes at the foundation of the free and open internet

#ageverification #surveillance #privacy #FirstAmendment #technology #tech

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/03/08/social-media-child-safety-internet-ai-surveillance.html

Mandating behavioral monitoring and warning labels creates serious constitutional and practical concerns for online services. NJ Assembly Bill 4013 is under consideration by the Assembly Committee on Appropriations. CCIA is cautioning that the proposal could create significant constitutional risks, vague compliance obligations, and unintended #Privacy consequences. [LINK] #FirstAmendment #FourteenthAmendment

Alt...

CCIA's Kyle Sepe providing his testimony to the New Jersey legislatures

"There is little evidence that young people are using VPNs to bypass digital ID checks imposed by the [UK] Online Safety Act."

Age gating them "will have little impact on children's online safety but will deter adults from using them or force people to hand over personal documents or biometric data."

🗣️ @JamesBaker for ORG.

https://www.independent.co.uk/extras/indybest/gadgets-tech/vpn-ban-uk-b2934934.html

#vpn #privacy #cybersecurity #onlinesafety #ukpolitics #ukpol

#DHS Ousts #CBP #Privacy Officers Who Questioned ‘Illegal’ Orders

https://www.wired.com/story/cbp-privacy-threshold-analysis-foia/

#politics

Wow, all of the public #ProxiTok instances seem to be down. :(

https://github.com/pablouser1/ProxiTok/wiki/Public-instances

Fortunately, (a) I rarely need to visit #tiktok urls (ugh), and (b) yt-dlp still works.

It's a bummer, though. People need #privacy-respecting front-ends.

"Conseil d'État upholds Criteo's €40M GDPR fine"

"Conseil d'État upholds Criteo's €40M GDPR fineCNIL fined CRITEO, the biggest online advertisement and tracking company in Europe €40 Mio based on complaints by noyb and Privacy International.franziska13 March 2026"

https://noyb.eu/en/conseil-detat-upholds-criteos-eu40m-gdpr-fine

#Privacy

Another Pearl update!

This is the last "polish" update before the next big feature addition. It has a couple of new handy buttons to use during chats and a lot of bug fixes.

It also marks my slow transition to a new GUI framework, ultimately turning it into a truly professional app.

Check it out! #Pearl #AI #Privacy

Download: https://github.com/pdschneider/Pearl/releases/tag/v0.2.5

Here's what concerns me most from a privacy perspective. These bills don't just verify age once. They create a persistent identity layer inside the operating system that applications can query at will.

The commercial age verification vendors who would provide this infrastructure (Yoti, Veriff, Jumio) charge $0.10 to $2.00 per check, require proprietary SDKs, demand API keys tied to commercial accounts, and operate cloud-only with no self-hosted option. Your age verification data goes to a third-party cloud service. Every time.

Compare this to what the EU built. The EU Digital Identity Wallet under eIDAS 2.0 is open-source, self-hostable, and uses zero-knowledge proofs. You can prove you're over 18 without revealing your birth date, your name, or anything else. No per-check fees, no proprietary SDKs, no data going to a vendor's cloud. The EU's Digital Services Act puts age verification obligations on Very Large Online Platforms (45M+ monthly users), not on operating systems. FOSS projects that don't act as intermediary services are explicitly outside scope. Micro and small enterprises get additional exemptions.

#ageverification #followthemoney #privacy #digitalsurveillance

@TheLastOfHisName https://beige.party/@TheLastOfHisName/116222062028401019

LuLu is a free, open-source firewall for macOS that alerts you whenever an app tries to make an outbound network connection.

Helps you block unwanted tracking or data exfiltration and see what software is actually talking to the internet.

👉 https://github.com/objective-see/LuLu

👉 More privacy-friendly tools curated at : https://digital-escape-tools-phi.vercel.app/

#OpenSource #Privacy #macOS #Security #DigitalMinimalism

Alt...

Screenshot of LuLu firewall alert on macOS showing Safari attempting to connect to configuration.apple.com, with Block and Allow buttons. Below is a CNN Tech article about security researcher Patrick Wardle, followed by his profile promoting Mac security tools.

FYI: Meta's Messenger gets a cryptographic shield nobody asked about - but everyone needed: Meta yesterday detailed the cryptography and confidential computing architecture behind Advanced Browsing Protection in Messenger, a tool that scans malicious links inside end-to-end encrypted chats without exposing user URLs to its own servers. https://ppc.land/metas-messenger-gets-a-cryptographic-shield-nobody-asked-about-but-everyone-needed/ #Meta #Messenger #Cryptography #Privacy #CyberSecurity

CNBC: Online age-verification tools spread across U.S. for child safety, but adults are being surveilled. “New U.S laws designed for online child safety are pulling millions of adult Americans into mandatory age-verification gates that often use AI technology, and causing major headaches for social media companies attempting to strike a balance for users between legal compliance and privacy.”

"'It's making me nauseous': some users are complaining about the Galaxy S26 Ultra's Privacy Display"

"There are numerous Galaxy S26 Ultra owners now complaining about the quality of the display."

https://www.techradar.com/phones/samsung-galaxy-phones/its-making-me-nauseous-some-users-are-complaining-about-the-galaxy-s26-ultras-privacy-display

#Privacy

Daily Digest | 13 March 2026

Your daily dose of Privacy, Data Protection, AI & Cybersecurity news.

5 stories you should not miss.

Read more: https://www.nicfab.eu/daily-digest/

#Privacy #AI #GDPR #Cybersecurity #TechLaw

Virebent Onion Ergo IRCD Server

In un'epoca in cui ogni click viene tracciato, ogni messaggio archiviato e ogni connessione monetizzata, abbiamo costruito qualcosa di diverso. VirebentIRC è il servizio IRC del gruppo Virebent, accessibile esclusivamente come hidden service Tor. È infrastruttura per chi crede che la comunicazione privata sia un diritto inalienabile. Il server gira su Ergo, un demone...

https://virebent.noblogs.org/virebent-onion-ergo-ircd-server/

#blog #privacy #opensource

Why a #privacy researcher prefers to live in an apartment and not a suburban house?

Apartment doesn't have a #backdoor .

The problem with having a surveillance state is not that they will know everything about you. The problem is that they will assert that they know everything about you. And you’re screwed either way; no matter if they’re right or wrong.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/12/tennessee-grandmother-ai-fraud

Via @yawnbox

#privacy #humanRights #democracy #surveillance #surveillanceState #policeState

OK, here we go. The 4th run of the Tunnel training.

Learn best-practice server security & computer networking fundamentals while building up your own high-performance, censorship-resistant VPN in Iceland. Generate configs as easy-to-use QR codes to give out to friends, family & your activist mates to protect them in this mad era of runaway surveillance, automated attacks and account theft.

https://courses.nikau.io/tunnel/

March 27. 4x4hrs. No prior skills required.

#selfhosting #sysadmin #privacy

Alt...

The title image for Tunnel, featuring the word, in caps, atop a duo-tone background of an old brick tunnel complex.

https://action.openmedia.org/page/187832/action/1 "Protect Canadian democracy: Sunset Bill C-4!
Every day, ordinary Canadians navigate a digital world where our personal habits are constantly tracked and used to surveil and manipulate us. We rely on privacy laws for protection. Yet, federal political parties are using Bill C-4 to exempt themselves from the laws everyone else follows, bound by no rules other than their own self-written privacy policies. In the age of AI, that is a massive threat to the health of our democracy.1

The Senate has offered the House a compromise: a three-year sunset clause for C-4, during which they could create real, enforceable privacy rules for political parties.2 But with less than a week until the House decides, rumours suggest MPs will reject the deal."
#openmedia #canada #privacy #billc4

"Rep. Finke Was Right: Age-Gating Isn’t About Kids, It’s About Control"

"When Rep."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/rep-finke-was-right-age-gating-isnt-about-kids-its-about-control

#Privacy

When we think about privacy, we often focus on the technical tools. While this is an important part of it, it's crucial to also consider how regulations and invasive practices can impact us collectively.

♾️ Learn more on how to expand your perspective on data privacy.

🧰 Check our Privacy Activist Toolbox tip to Don't Stop at Individual Solutions: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/activism/toolbox/tip-dont-stop-at-individual-solutions/

#PrivacyGuides #Activism #PrivacyActivistToolbox #Privacy