Hacker News with Generative AI: Data Privacy

Show HN: I built a privacy-first period tracker but it seems nobody cares (ycombinator.com)
There’s something quietly unsettling about how normal it's become to hand over our most personal data to apps that barely deserve our trust.

Privacy, Health Tech, Data Privacy

10 points by ebenezerdon 4 days ago | 9 comments

OpenSNP Shutting Down (tzovar.as)
As this blog post is being published, we are sending out emails to all openSNP users with some news: OpenSNP will be turned off – and with that also delete all the data stored on it – on April 30, 2025.

Shutdowns, Genomics, Data Privacy

9 points by fbn79 4 days ago | 0 comments

How to protect your phone and data privacy at the US border (theguardian.com)
With reports of people being turned away at airports over messages found on devices, here’s what to do to minimize risks

Data Privacy, Security, Travel, Technology, United States

94 points by beardyw 9 days ago | 98 comments

Escaping USA Tech, Bye Bye Dropbox, Hello Jottacloud (mjanssen.nl)
I recently got more concerned about what is happening in the US since a certain president He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and what this does in the world and my personal life.

Data Privacy, Cloud Storage, Technology, USA Politics

18 points by marc0janssen 10 days ago | 0 comments

Google admits it deleted some customer data after 'technical issue' (theregister.com)
Google has admitted it lost some customer data, possibly forever.

Google, Data Privacy, Security, Technical Issues

7 points by LinuxBender 10 days ago | 0 comments

Google confirms it deleted Maps Timeline data for some (theverge.com)
Google Maps users have recently been complaining on places like Reddit that their Timeline data — the app’s historical record of where they’ve been — had disappeared. Now, Google has confirmed that it accidentally deleted the data and that anyone who wasn’t using Google’s cloud backups is out of luck.

Google, Maps, Data Privacy, Technology, User Experience

9 points by nini1294 11 days ago | 3 comments

UK wants dirt on data brokers before criminals get there first (theregister.com)
The UK government is inviting experts to provide insights about the data brokerage industry and the potential risks it poses to national security as it moves to push new data-sharing legislation over the line.

Data Privacy, Government, National Security, Data Brokerage

45 points by rntn 17 days ago | 21 comments

Data Broker Brags About Having Highly Detailed Information on Nearly All Users (gizmodo.com)
The owner of a data brokerage business recently put out a creepy-ass video in which he bragged about the degree to which his industry could collect and analyze data on the habits of billions of people.

Data Privacy, Surveillance, Big Data, Technology, Business

6 points by doener 17 days ago | 0 comments

EU-US data deal may be dead in the water (simpleanalytics.com)
The EU-US data transfer deal might be heading for another collapse.

EU, Data Privacy, International Relations, Technology

7 points by belter 23 days ago | 0 comments

1Password in your region: you can choose where your data is hosted (1password.com)
1Password was designed with you in mind. You can choose where your data is hosted and which currency you pay in.

Security, Data Privacy, Software, Location

4 points by robin_reala 24 days ago | 0 comments

Apple takes legal action in UK data privacy row (bbc.com)
Apple is taking legal action to try to overturn a demand made by the UK government to view its customers' private data if required.

Data Privacy, Apple, UK, Lawsuits, Government

7 points by adrian_mrd 30 days ago | 1 comments

UK watchdog investigates TikTok and Reddit over child data privacy concerns (theregister.com)
The UK's data protection watchdog has launched three investigations into certain social media platforms following concerns about the protection of privacy among teenage users.

Data Privacy, Social Media, Teenagers, UK, Regulation

5 points by LinuxBender 31 days ago | 0 comments

Microsoft unveils finalized EU Data Boundary as European doubt over US grows (theregister.com)
Microsoft has completed its EU data boundary, however, analysts and some regional cloud players are voicing concerns over dependencies on a US entity, even with the guarantees in place.

Data Privacy, Cloud Computing, Microsoft, European Union, Geopolitics

4 points by rntn 32 days ago | 1 comments

Mozilla is trying to backtrack on Firefox's controversial data privacy update (pcgamer.com)

Mozilla, Firefox, Data Privacy, Privacy, Software Updates

60 points by HelloUsername 32 days ago | 92 comments

Ask HN: Firefox may be selling our data. Can you recommend an alternative? (ycombinator.com)
Firefox just made a change their TOS copy that implies that they may begin selling our data [^1]. I'm a web developer– which means I need access to browser tools, and the 1Password extension. Are there privacy-focused forks of Firefox or an alternative browser you can recommend?

Privacy, Web Browsers, Firefox, Data Privacy, Alternatives

19 points by devilsdata 34 days ago | 13 comments

Misusing police database now over half of all cybercrime prosecutions in the UK [pdf] (cam.ac.uk)

Cybercrime, Law Enforcement, UK, Data Privacy, Research

26 points by luu 34 days ago | 0 comments

DOGE staffers resign, saying they won't help 'dismantle' public services (text.npr.org)
A group of 21 civil servants whose team was folded into Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency resigned on Tuesday, writing in a joint letter posted publicly that they refuse to use their skills to put Americans' data at risk and "dismantle critical public services."

Government, Public Services, Data Privacy, Resignation, Elon Musk

23 points by greenburger 37 days ago | 13 comments

FBI Warns iPhone, Android Users–We Want Lawful Access to All Your Encrypted Data (forbes.com)
The furor after Apple removed full iCloud security for U.K. users may feel a long way from American users this weekend. But it’s not — far from it. What has just shocked the U.K. is exactly what the FBI told me it also wants in the U.S. “Lawful access” to any encrypted user data. The bureau’s quiet warning was confirmed just a few weeks ago.

Security, Law Enforcement, Data Privacy, Smartphones

28 points by miles 38 days ago | 8 comments

Curl website traffic Feb 2025 (haxx.se)
Data without logs sure leaves us open for speculations.

Web Traffic, Data Privacy, Security

30 points by TangerineDream 40 days ago | 3 comments

What Your Email Address Reveals About You: LLMs and Digital Footprints (maximepeabody.com)
LLMs are famous for having been trained on massive amounts of data. Estimates for GPT4, for example, give training data sizes of up to 1 petabyte of data. This training data comes from crawling the open internet, as well as collections of books, articles, scientific papers, etc.

Privacy, Data Privacy, Digital Footprints

24 points by peab 43 days ago | 16 comments

South Korean regulator accuses DeepSeek of sharing user data with ByteDance (bbc.com)
South Korea has accused Chinese AI startup DeepSeek of sharing user data with the owner of TikTok in China.

Data Privacy, Artificial Intelligence, China, South Korea, Regulation

243 points by devonnull 44 days ago | 136 comments

Coordinates of millions of smartphones feared stolen (theregister.com)
Gravy Analytics has been sued yet again for allegedly failing to safeguard its vast stores of personal data, which are now feared stolen. And by personal data we mean information including the locations of tens of millions of smartphones, coordinates of which were ultimately harvested from installed apps.

Data Privacy, Security, Smartphones, Location Data

6 points by LinuxBender 54 days ago | 0 comments

UK government reportedly demands Apple backdoor to encrypted cloud data (techcrunch.com)
Government officials in the United Kingdom have reportedly secretly ordered Apple to build a backdoor that would give its authorities access to users’ encrypted iCloud data.

Government Surveillance, Data Privacy, Apple, Encryption

13 points by LorenDB 56 days ago | 1 comments

Coordinates of Smartphones Feared Stolen (theregister.com)
Gravy Analytics has been sued yet again for allegedly failing to safeguard its vast stores of personal data, which are now feared stolen. And by personal data we mean information including the locations of tens of millions of smartphones, coordinates of which were ultimately harvested from installed apps.

Data Privacy, Mobile Security, Location Data, Data Breaches

4 points by jjgreen 56 days ago | 0 comments

'Meta Torrented over 81 TB of Data Through Anna's Archive, Despite Few Seeders' (torrentfreak.com)
Freshly unsealed court documents reveal that Meta downloaded significant amounts of data from shadow libraries through Anna's Archive. The company's use of BitTorrent was already known, but internal email communication reveals sources and terabytes of downloaded data, as well as a struggle with limited availability and slow download speeds due to a lack of seeders.

Meta, BitTorrent, Data Privacy, Shadow Libraries, Court Documents

19 points by HieronymusBosch 56 days ago | 0 comments

DeepSeek AI's Hidden Data Pipeline to China (feroot.com)
ABC Good Morning America featured an exclusive report this morning highlighting Feroot’s discovery of concerning code within DeepSeek’s AI platform.

Artificial Intelligence, China, Data Privacy, Security

9 points by gnabgib 57 days ago | 4 comments

New Outlook's security issues: Businesses should avoid switching (tuta.com)
Microsoft's "new Outlook" (introduced in 2022) has been promoted as an upgrade, but its implementation introduces severe data protection concerns - so severe that it's fair to say it's a downgrade rather than an upgrade. Regardless, Microsoft increasingly pushes personal and business Outlook users to switch to the new Outlook.

Security, Microsoft, Email, Business, Data Privacy

12 points by shaunpud 59 days ago | 2 comments

r/Duolingo Will No Longer Be Duolingo’s Unpaid Customer Support or Data Mine (reddit.com)
It brings me no joy to make this decision, but it has become necessary. For too long, Duolingo has treated this subreddit as free labor—data mining our discussions, using us as an unpaid customer support desk, and ignoring real user concerns. That ends today.

Social Media, Customer Service, Data Privacy, Online Learning

61 points by Lammy 63 days ago | 26 comments

California law enforcement misused state databases more than 7k times in 2023 (eff.org)
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LACSD) committed wholesale abuse of sensitive criminal justice databases in 2023, violating a specific rule against searching the data to run background checks for concealed carry firearm permits.

Law Enforcement, Data Privacy, California, Technology, Government

564 points by hn_acker 63 days ago | 310 comments

OpenAI Furious DeepSeek Might Have Stolen All the Data OpenAI Stole from Us (404media.co)
OpenAI shocked that an AI company would train on someone else's data without permission or compensation.

Generative AI, OpenAI, Artificial Intelligence, Data Privacy

1361 points by latexr 64 days ago | 16 comments