标签：#Privacy

From anti-drone tech to face recognition, 2026 World Cup stadiums in the US, Canada, and Mexico are subjecting fans to an array of surveillance tech. Here’s what you need to know.

Every week I open a new browser tab and search for something like "json formatter online" or "jwt decoder" or "regex tester". And every week I land on a site that: Shows me three ad banners before I can see the tool Requires me to create an account to "save" my work Is quietly uploading my payload to their server That last one bothers me most. Developers paste real things into these tools — JWT tokens with live user data, passwords they're about to deploy, private keys, internal API responses. Most people assume these tools are "just a webpage" and nothing is being sent anywhere. Often that's not true. So I built SnapTxt — a collection of 50+ developer utilities that run 100% client-side. No backend. No account. No tracking. Your data never leaves your browser. What's in it The toolkit covers the things I reach for most often: Data & text JSON formatter, validator, minifier, diff, tree explorer SQL formatter XML formatter YAML → JSON, CSV → JSON converters Base64 encode/decode, URL encoder, hash generator Auth & security JWT decoder & generator RSA key generator bcrypt generator x.509 certificate decoder Password generator Images Image compressor Image format converter Image to text (OCR via Tesseract.js) SVG to PNG, favicon generator, code-to-image Frontend / CSS Regex tester CSS gradient generator, box shadow generator Color converter Mermaid live editor HTML live editor, HTML to Markdown, HTML to JSX Cron expression builder And more — word counter, text diff, unix timestamp, lorem ipsum, QR code generator, markdown to PDF, and a collection of Australian and NZ business number validators. How it's built It's a Next.js app deployed as a fully static export to Firebase Hosting. There is no server. Every tool runs in the browser using: CodeMirror 6 for editor-style inputs Tesseract.js for OCR (runs a WASM binary in a web worker) Chrome's built-in Prompt API (Gemini Nano) for the AI explain features in JSON, SQL, and JWT tools — meaning even the AI inference is on-dev

Meta is planning to use the data shared by other businesses to personalize your feed and its AI responses. In a blog post on Tuesday, Meta explains that it already uses your off-platform activity, like the games you play or your purchases on other websites, to serve you ads. But now it's expanding the scope […]

When developers think about privacy, they often think about legal compliance, consent banners, or policy pages. But privacy starts much earlier than that, at the API layer. Every time your backend asks for a phone number, date of birth, location, or optional profile field, you are making a design decision. If you collect too much data by default, you increase risk, reduce trust, and make your system harder to maintain. The good news is that privacy by design does not have to make your product worse. In many cases, it makes your API cleaner, safer, and easier to reason about. Why collecting less data matters The more data you collect, the more you have to protect. That means more storage, more access control, more breach risk, more compliance burden, and more user distrust if something goes wrong. A developer friendly privacy approach is simple: Only collect what you need to deliver value. Bad pattern: collecting everything up front user_profile = { " name " : " Amina " , " email " : " amina@example.com " , " phone " : " 07000000000 " , " dob " : " 1995-01-01 " , " address " : " 123 Main Street " , " location " : " Lagos " , " gender " : " female " } This kind of structure is common in early stage products. The thinking is usually: let us ask for everything now, just in case we need it later. But just in case is not a good privacy strategy. Better pattern: collect only what is required def build_profile ( name , email , phone = None ): profile = { " name " : name , " email " : email } if phone is not None : profile [ " phone " ] = phone return profile user_profile = build_profile ( " Amina " , " amina@example.com " ) print ( user_profile ) This is small, but the principle matters. Optional data should stay optional unless it is truly needed. Use explicit field validation Instead of accepting a giant payload and filtering it later, validate the exact fields you expect. ALLOWED_FIELDS = { " name " , " email " , " phone " } def sanitize_payload ( payload ): return { k :

The code WIRED identified is gone from the latest version of Meta AI, the companion app for the company’s smart glasses. Meta won’t say why or whether it’s coming back.

The bill is expected to blanket-ban companies and startups from selling people's precise location data across the state.

Hey DEV community! 👋 I just completely rebuilt and launched Mailfo v2.0 , an privacy-focused temporary disposable email app for Android[cite: 1, 2]. The first version got the job done, but it lacked the fluid user experience, offline reliability, and sleek UI that modern mobile apps need. I decided to tear it down and rewrite it from scratch using Jetpack Compose , Room DB , and modern Android architecture[cite: 1]. Here is a breakdown of what went into the rebuild, why privacy tools like this are essential, and what's new[cite: 1]. 🛡️ Why Use a Temporary Disposable Email? We’ve all been there: you want to download a single source-code snippet, test a new app, or sign up for a one-time service, but you don't want your primary inbox flooded with endless marketing spam[cite: 1]. A disposable email address acts as your personal buffer[cite: 1]. It protects your personal data, prevents tracker exposure, and keeps your real inbox clean[cite: 1]. ⚠️ Pro-tip: Mailfo is designed strictly for low-risk temporary email needs[cite: 1]. Do not use disposable email addresses for banking, legal accounts, or primary account recoveries[cite: 1]! 🛠️ The Tech Stack & Architecture Upgrades Moving from version 1.0 to 2.0 meant migrating away from legacy views to a fully declarative UI workflow[cite: 1, 2]. UI/UX Architecture: Built entirely with Jetpack Compose for smooth performance, a modern look, and native Light, Dark, and System theme switching[cite: 1]. Navigation: Implemented an intuitive bottom navigation system dividing the app into distinct Home, Inbox, and Profile tabs[cite: 1]. Caching & Offline Stability: Integrated a local Room SQLite database to cache inbox summaries and message data[cite: 1]. This guarantees instantaneous screen transitions without annoying network loading spinners[cite: 1]. ✨ Key Features in Mailfo v2.0 Custom & Random Email Generator: Instantly spin up a completely randomized address or build a custom email username using multiple searchable domains[ci

Every online Fake Data Generator tool I used had the same quiet flaw: whatever you paste gets POSTed to someone's server. For a Fake Data Generator, that paste is often exactly the sensitive thing — a token, a config, an API response. So I built Fake Data Generator to not do that. Generate fake names, emails, UUIDs, addresses — custom columns, CSV/JSON export. 100% browser-side — and it runs entirely in your browser, so there's nothing to send and nothing to breach. You don't have to take my word for it: open DevTools → Network, use the tool, and watch the tab stay empty. One HTML file, View-Source-able. https://faker.platotools.com/ It's part of platotools.com — a set of single-purpose, client-side dev tools. Feedback and edge-case bug reports very welcome.

If you've been running local models/apps across more than one machine for any length of time, you've probably noticed that everything is served over plain HTTP, whether its the backend llm apis, the front end sites, or whatever other stuff you've tossed in: most of it is HTTP-only out of the box, no TLS option anywhere in sight. On one machine thats usually fine since its all loopback, but the second you spread apps across a few different computers ( which some of us do ), every prompt and every response starts crossing your LAN in plaintext. Is plaintext on your own LAN a huge deal? Honestly... a lot of folks would say it's probably low risk. But the moment you've got guests, other people's phones, or random IoT junk sharing that network, your prompts and the models responses flying around in the clear are more exposure than you'd probably be comfortable with if you sat down and thought about it. So, with that said- I figured Id write up how I've dealt with that, because the textbook answer ( certs ) is annoying enough on a local network that I think a lot of folks just dont bother. This is a lot easier, especially on something like a mac where you can make sure it kicks off automatically via launchd . Why not just do TLS The "correct" answer is to put TLS on everything; HTTPS everywhere. And you can. But walk through what that actually means on a home network full of mixed machines: You stand up your own little CA, then sign a cert for each host ( unless you want to deal with some code just straight up rejecting the cert ). You install and trust that CA on every client. Every browser, every OS trust store, and ( this is the annoying one ) every app that ships its own trust store and ignores the system one. Plenty of python and node apps do that. A lot of these local LLM apps dont even expose a TLS option, so to add it you front them with something like nginx or Caddy, which is now another moving part on every box ( Setting up Caddy is what convinced me to go this

Plus: Hackers use Meta’s AI bots to hack Instagram accounts, Anthropic helps NSA hackers, a decades-long GPS satellite mystery may have been solved, and more.

The deadline to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is coming up a week from now on June 12th, and legislators seem no closer to reaching a deal. If this sounds like deja vu, it's because we've been here before. Congress reauthorized Section 702 in late April - but only for 45 […]

Even if you've done nothing wrong, it's never a good idea to hand your phone to the cops. But international travelers at American airports often have no choice - even if they're US citizens. When Minnesota labor organizer Janette Zahia Corcelius returned home from a three-week trip to Europe in late April, she was detained […]

Your AI vendor says "trust us" with your data. At the end of June, ByteDance's Doubao (豆包) officially ends its free tier and starts charging for API calls. The discussion in developer communities quickly shifted from pricing to a different question: all this data flowing to cloud AI services every day — where exactly does it go? Around the same time, NVIDIA spent significant stage time at GTC 2026 presenting the full-stack confidential computing capabilities of the Vera Rubin architecture. Jensen Huang's message was clear: future AI chips need to keep data encrypted throughout the computation process, making it inaccessible in plaintext to anyone — including the cloud service provider. Two signals pointing to the same trend: data security in AI services has moved from "someone mentioned it once" to "you need to answer this directly." The Data Path Through Cloud AI Is More Complex Than You Think Most developers have a simple mental model of cloud AI: I send a request, the model returns a result, and my data is gone. The actual data flow is more involved. A typical cloud AI call touches these steps: Request data travels over HTTPS to the service endpoint The service may queue the request while waiting for GPU allocation During inference, input data exists in plaintext in server memory After inference, whether inputs/outputs are cached or used for subsequent training depends on the provider's privacy policy Logging systems may record request metadata or partial content At each step, data is potentially accessible. Providers typically say "we don't look at your data" and "your data won't be used for training" in their privacy agreements. These are contractual commitments. You need to trust that they'll honor them. This is the "Trust Me" model. Trust Me vs Verify Yourself If you roughly categorize data protection approaches in AI services, two paradigms emerge: Trust Me Data leaves your device and is processed by a third party. The provider guarantees security through co

Most AI memory features are a black box. The assistant remembers things about your users, but you...

This popular ad blocker app for iPhones, iPads, and Macs can now block ads from loading inside apps, including web browsers, thanks to a new feature in the latest Apple software.

Musk can't be trusted to protect X user privacy, public commenters warn FTC.

A few weeks ago I was on a call sharing my screen, walking a teammate through a prompt I'd been iterating on in ChatGPT. Mid-sentence I scrolled up — and there, three messages back, was a chunk of a customer's data I'd pasted in earlier to debug something. Real email, real account info, sitting right there on a shared screen. Nobody said anything. Maybe nobody noticed. But I noticed, and I spent the rest of the call only half-present, trying to remember everything else still in that thread. If you live in ChatGPT all day, you already know the problem. The thread is your scratchpad. You paste logs, keys, customer rows, half-finished internal docs — things you'd never put in a doc you planned to share. And then someone says "can you share your screen real quick" and suddenly your scratchpad is a presentation. Why the usual advice doesn't work The standard answers are all some version of "be careful": Open a clean tab before sharing. Scroll to the top. Use a separate "demo" account. These fail for the same reason all manual checklists fail under pressure: the moment you actually need them is the moment you're distracted, talking, and not thinking about hygiene. You remember after . The fix has to happen before the screen goes live, and it has to require zero discipline in the moment. What I wanted instead I wanted something that just sat there and blurred sensitive parts of a page automatically, so that even if I forgot, the leak couldn't happen. A few requirements: Local only. Whatever it does, it never sends page content anywhere. A privacy tool that phones home is a contradiction. Before, not after. It blurs while the page renders, not after I've already exposed it. Per-element, not whole-screen. A full black box is useless for a demo. I still need to show the working parts. The interesting technical bit The naive approach is to listen for some "I'm sharing now" signal and react. That's too late — there's a visible frame where the data is exposed before the blur kic

Code reviewed by WIRED uncovered an unreleased face-recognition system embedded in Meta’s smart glasses platform. It’s designed to identify people via biometric data stored on users’ phones.

(yes, its open source. link at the bottom, if u want to skip ahead!) Most "debloat scripts" are a pile of registry edits you run as admin and pray. No preview, no undo, and half of them happily disable Safe Browsing or updates for "performance." For your browser, the most security-sensitive app you run, that's reckless. So I built BraveDebloater with one rule: never make Brave less safe. It clears out the noise like Rewards, Wallet, VPN nags, Leo AI prompts, News, and telemetry such as P3A, Web Discovery, and Chromium metrics. But it flat-out refuses to disable Shields, weaken Safe Browsing, turn off updates, or touch your hosts file. That isn't a README promise. It's enforced in the tool itself. A few things that make it trustworthy: Dry-run by default. Nothing changes until you explicitly apply. Official Brave/Chromium enterprise policies, so every change is visible and auditable in brave://policy instead of hidden. Automatic backups before any change, written safely so you never end up with a corrupted file. Validated restore that checks the backup before writing anything and only touches Brave's own policy and profile files. Doctor mode, a read-only health check of your current policy state with no writes. It's MIT-licensed, PowerShell 5.1 compatible, and has a few beginner-friendly issues open. If you care about privacy or Windows tooling, I'd love a star and a PR. Check it out at: https://github.com/osfv/BraveDebloater

PewDiePie launching an open-source AI project sounds like one of those internet headlines you have to read twice. But it is real. Felix Kjellberg, better known as PewDiePie, has released a project called Odysseus through the GitHub account pewdiepie-archdaemon. The repo describes it as a self-hosted AI workspace, and the pitch is simple: give people something that feels closer to ChatGPT or Claude, but runs under their control. That is the part that makes this more interesting than a celebrity side project. Odysseus is not just another chatbot wrapper. It is a statement about where personal AI could go if users start caring less about convenience and more about ownership. What is Odysseus? Odysseus is a free, open-source, self-hosted AI workspace. The project says it is meant to recreate the web UI experience people get from ChatGPT and Claude, but with a local-first and privacy-first approach. In the README, the project describes itself as running on your own hardware, with your own data, and “no trojan.” The landing page calls it “A Self-Hosted AI Workspace.” The GitHub repo is licensed under MIT, which means people can inspect it, run it, modify it, and build on top of it. As of June 4, 2026, the repo had more than 44,000 GitHub stars. That is a massive amount of attention for a project that was created on May 31, 2026. Some of that is obviously PewDiePie's name. But the reaction also says something about the moment we are in: people want AI tools, but they are increasingly uncomfortable with how much those tools depend on cloud platforms and private company servers. Why did PewDiePie build it? The short version: control. In his launch video, titled “MY trillion $Dollar Project is finally OUT!”, PewDiePie presents Odysseus as an alternative to the big AI platforms people already use. Coverage from Gizmodo quotes him promising “no tracking, no subscriptions, no funny business. It's yours and yours forever.” The Business Standard also framed the launch around a pus