Latest articles on AI, technology, and software development.
Data brokers operate a $300 billion industry trading your personal information without your knowledge. California's Delete Act, FTC enforcement against Kochava and X-Mode/Outlogic, and EU GDPR fines are creating real consequences. Here's what the industry does, who the players are, and how to remove your data.
Passkeys use public-key cryptography to eliminate shared secrets entirely — your private key never leaves your device, phishing becomes technically impossible, and no server breach can expose your credentials.
Google finally removed third-party cookies from Chrome in 2025, completing a deprecation that took five years longer than originally promised. The advertising ecosystem adapted — through server-side tracking, first-party data, and browser fingerprinting. Privacy researchers say the post-cookie web is, in several measurable ways, less private than the one it replaced.
Laws in the UK, US, and EU are demanding that websites verify users' ages before showing them certain content. The problem: every practical method of doing this creates a surveillance infrastructure that privacy advocates, security researchers, and civil liberties groups have spent years trying to prevent.
The US health data market is larger, more detailed, and more consequential than most people realize. BetterHelp shared therapy data with Facebook. GoodRx shared prescriptions with ad networks. The 23andMe bankruptcy raised alarms about 15 million DNA profiles. Here's how the industry actually works and what legal protections exist.
WhatsApp adopted the Signal Protocol for end-to-end encryption in 2016. On that specific dimension — message content encryption — the two apps are technically equivalent. The differences that matter are metadata collection, business model, platform architecture, and what each company can and cannot hand to law enforcement. Here's a precise comparison.
Facial recognition systems are operating in airports, stadiums, schools, retail stores, and public streets in dozens of countries. The technology has improved dramatically and deployment has raced ahead of regulation. Here's where your face is being scanned, what the data is used for, and what protections actually exist.
Data brokers legally sell your home address, phone number, family members' names, political affiliation, and location history to anyone with a credit card. Most people don't know they can opt out — and those who do find the process deliberately painful. Here's what they actually sell, how they get it, and what realistically works to reduce your exposure.
Location data brokers collect precise movement histories from hundreds of millions of smartphones and sell them to advertisers, insurers, hedge funds, and government agencies. The data is collected without meaningful informed consent and is nearly impossible to opt out of completely.
Cookie consent banners give users the feeling of control. Browser fingerprinting — the technique that replaced cookies as the dominant tracking mechanism — requires no consent, stores nothing on your device, and is nearly impossible to block without breaking the web.
A $300 billion industry built on your name, location, health inferences, and political beliefs — and most of it is perfectly legal. Here's how it works, who's profiting, and what you can actually do about it.
In 2019, Google announced it would deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome within two years. In October 2025, Google shut down the Privacy Sandbox — the $500M+ initiative meant to replace them — citing low adoption. Cookies still work. Apple's App Tracking Transparency actually did what it promised, cutting iOS tracking by 55 percentage points. The gap between those two outcomes explains everything about where digital advertising privacy stands in 2026.