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Privacy News 4 June 2025 - 26 October 2025

Microsoft Teams to Snitch on Remote Workers? December Update Sparks Privacy Uproar

Microsoft Teams to Snitch on Remote Workers? December Update Sparks Privacy Uproar

Teams’ New “Big Brother” Feature: How It Works Microsoft is poised to roll out a new Teams feature by end of 2025 that can automatically detect an employee’s location based on Wi‑Fi networks. In plain terms, if your laptop or phone connects to the company’s office Wi‑Fi, Teams will flip your status to show you’re “in the office.” Conversely, if you’re on home or public internet, it would indicate you’re remote. Microsoft’s official roadmap description sounds innocuous and “neutral”: “When users connect to their organization’s Wi‑Fi, Teams will automatically set their work location to reflect the building they are working
26 October 2025
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OpenAI Unveils ChatGPT Atlas Browser — Google Shares Tumble in AI Search Showdown

OpenAI’s ChatGPT Atlas Browser Takes on Chrome – Privacy Alarm and Stock Market Whiplash

In-depth report: ChatGPT Atlas is not just a regular browser with an AI tacked on – it is built around ChatGPT. techradar.com At launch it’s essentially a Chromium-based browser where every tab can become an interactive conversation. OpenAI describes it as a “super-assistant” that understands your goals and context, auto-prompting actions without copy-paste openai.com techradar.com. In practice, this means Atlas replaces Google Search with ChatGPT’s engine, adding a chat pane to web pages for summaries, rewriting tasks, or deeper analysis washingtonpost.com techradar.com. Key Features: Atlas integrates ChatGPT “in every tab” tomsguide.com. For example, if you’re researching a recipe or shopping
24 October 2025
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‘BritCard’ Shock: UK to Force Digital IDs by 2029—Here’s What It Is, Why It’s Explosive, and How It Stacks Up Against EU Wallets, Estonia’s e‑ID and India’s Aadhaar

UK’s Mandatory Digital ID Plan Sparks Uproar: Security Game-Changer or Privacy Nightmare?

UK Government’s Rationale: Tackling Illegal Work and Modernizing ID The push for digital identification in the UK comes against a backdrop of political pressure over immigration and a desire to modernize public services. Announcing the policy in late September, Prime Minister Keir Starmer framed it as a response to voter concerns about unauthorized migrants finding jobs. “I know working people are worried about the level of illegal migration… This will make it tougher to work illegally in this country, making our borders more secure,” Starmer said theguardian.com. By requiring every employee to hold a verified digital ID, the government says
30 September 2025
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‘BritCard’ Shock: UK to Force Digital IDs by 2029—Here’s What It Is, Why It’s Explosive, and How It Stacks Up Against EU Wallets, Estonia’s e‑ID and India’s Aadhaar

‘BritCard’ Shock: UK to Force Digital IDs by 2029—Here’s What It Is, Why It’s Explosive, and How It Stacks Up Against EU Wallets, Estonia’s e‑ID and India’s Aadhaar

Key facts (as of September 28, 2025) The in‑depth report What exactly is “BritCard”? Downing Street announced a national digital ID to be mandatory for Right to Work (RtW) checks by the end of this Parliament. The government says a BritCard credential would sit in a GOV.UK wallet on a person’s phone, similar in feel to the NHS App or contactless payments, with a promise of free enrollment. A formal explainer pledges convenience for citizens and a phased expansion to public‑service access; RtW is slated as the first mandated use‑case. GOV.UK+1 The vision reported so far: a credential that employers,
28 September 2025
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Goodbye, Cookie Pop-Ups? Inside the EU’s Battle to Fix Cookie Consent Laws

Goodbye, Cookie Pop-Ups? Inside the EU’s Battle to Fix Cookie Consent Laws

The Origin of the EU’s Cookie Consent Law (ePrivacy Directive) The story begins in the early 2000s. In 2002, the EU passed the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive (Directive 2002/58/EC), commonly called the ePrivacy Directive. This law was intended to safeguard privacy in the digital realm – covering things like the confidentiality of communications, spam emails, and online tracking. Originally, the ePrivacy Directive said websites should give users the right to refuse or opt out of cookies, but it did not yet mandate an explicit opt-in for most cookies. However, by the end of that decade, concerns about online tracking
22 September 2025
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3D-Printed Ghost Guns Won’t Stay Anonymous: How Digital Fingerprints Could Track Every Part

3D-Printed Ghost Guns Won’t Stay Anonymous: How Digital Fingerprints Could Track Every Part

Introduction: Ghost Guns and Digital Fingerprints 3D printing has opened the door to amazing innovations – custom tools, spare parts, even artistic creations – but it also has a dark side. In recent years, hobbyist 3D printers have been used to produce unregistered, untraceable firearms known as ghost guns. These DIY weapons lack serial numbers and skirt traditional gun regulations, making them appealing to criminals. A chilling example came in late 2024, when a ghost gun was implicated in the murder of a healthcare executive engineering.washu.edu engineering.washu.edu. This incident underscored why law enforcement is anxious about ghost guns: they’re effectively
17 September 2025
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Apple’s July 2025 Bombshells: Foldable iPhone, AI Secrets, Encryption Showdown & More

Apple’s Big Week: Record Earnings, Huge iPhone 17 Leaks, and a Privacy Showdown (July 27–Aug 2, 2025)

On July 31, 2025, Apple reported a record June-quarter revenue of $94.0 billion, up 10% year over year, across all regions and product categories. During WWDC25 Apple announced a “beautiful new software design” and introduced Apple Intelligence features across platforms. Apple CFO Kevan Parekh said the active installed base of devices reached an all-time high. The board approved a quarterly dividend of $0.26 per share. On July 29, Apple released iOS 18.6 and iPadOS 18.6 for eligible devices, along with watchOS 11.6 for Apple Watch Series 6 and later, featuring bug fixes and security improvements. No new hardware was launched
2 August 2025
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Google Glass: From Futuristic Hype to Privacy Nightmare to Enterprise Hero (2025 Update)

Google Glass: From Futuristic Hype to Privacy Nightmare to Enterprise Hero (2025 Update)

Google started Project Glass at Google X around 2011, officially announced in April 2012, with a dramatic June 2012 I/O live demo. Time magazine named Google Glass its Invention of the Year in 2012. The first Explorer Edition shipments began in April 2013, priced at $1,500. Explorer Edition hardware included a 640×360 display (perceived as a 25-inch screen at 8 feet), 5 MP photos, 720p video, bone-conduction audio, 16 GB storage (12 GB usable), 2 GB RAM, a dual-core TI OMAP processor, and a weight of 36 grams. Public reaction shifted to privacy concerns and the ‘Glasshole’ stigma, with bans
20 July 2025
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You Won’t Believe China’s New ‘Mosquito Drone’—How Insect-Sized Spies Could Rewrite Warfare (and Your Privacy) Forever

You Won’t Believe China’s New ‘Mosquito Drone’—How Insect-Sized Spies Could Rewrite Warfare (and Your Privacy) Forever

On 20 June 2025 CCTV aired footage from the National University of Defence Technology showing student Liang Hexiang balancing a micro-robot the size of a mosquito between his fingers. The insect-sized drone uses flapping leaf-shaped wings and hair-thin legs to hover, perch and crawl inside buildings for information reconnaissance on the battlefield. Analysts describe the device as part of China’s PLA modernization drive, pushing covert surveillance to a new extreme. Its dimensions are about 1.3 cm long and it weighs less than 0.3 g. It has three carbon-fiber legs with a 0.1 mm diameter that double as landing gear and
24 June 2025
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Why iOS Isn’t Open Source: The Secrets Behind Apple’s Walled Garden

Why iOS Isn’t Open Source: The Secrets Behind Apple’s Walled Garden

Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, originally naming the OS iPhone OS and presenting it as OS X with desktop-class applications to emphasize hardware–software integration. The App Store launched in 2008, with every native app required to use Apple’s SDK and undergo Apple’s review and guidelines. Apple released the Darwin core under the Apple Public Source License, and in 2017 posted the ARM64 iOS kernel source publicly, while higher‑level iOS remains closed. In 2015 Apple open-sourced the Swift programming language under an Apache license. iOS is tightly integrated with Apple hardware, including the Neural Engine and Secure Enclave, enabling optimizations
18 June 2025
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Inside the Sky Shield: How Secure Is Your Satellite Internet?

Inside the Sky Shield: How Secure Is Your Satellite Internet?

Satellite internet data travels from your dish to a satellite, then to a gateway and onto the internet, with traditional GEO orbits at about 35,786 km and newer systems like SpaceX Starlink using low Earth orbit swarms and inter-satellite laser links. Geostationary (GEO) latency is roughly 500–700 ms for a round trip, while Starlink’s low Earth orbit (LEO) latency is about 20–40 ms, impacting secure handshakes such as TLS. Signals require line-of-sight, and because satellite beams cover broad areas, adversaries can jam or disrupt links from within the footprint with a powerful transmitter. Unencrypted satellite downlinks can be intercepted since
4 June 2025
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