Officers can also tap into data showing a car’s decals, bumper stickers, back and top racks—along with temporary and unique state tags.
Flock calls it a “Vehicle Fingerprint” and it’s touted as a way for law enforcement officials to get more information “even when you don’t have full plate information,” the company’s presentation shows.
The company gives police officers the ability to search that data as well, to “build stronger cases with less information upfront.” That includes being able to locate multiple vehicles law enforcement officials believe are moving together and what Flock calls a “multi geo search.”
This kind of thing is older than AI; I wrote about it in my 2014 book Beyond Fear. Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA was using cell phone location data to track phones that were habitually near each other.
As bad as Flock is, remember that anyone with broad access to cell phone location data can do the same thing.
Papa Johns is spying on people’s buying activities to predict when they are low on food:
The pizza chain recently tapped NBCUniversal, Instacart and the dentsu-owned media agency Carat for help reaching consumers when they’re low on groceries—and thus more likely to be swayed by a mouth-watering ad. The idea is to reach hungry consumers by “knowing what is in their fridge without being too creepy,” said Carrie Drinkwater, chief investment officer at Carat.
To achieve that goal, NBCU and Instacart created a custom audience of shoppers who regularly purchase grocery staples on Instacart, such as eggs, milk, meat and produce. Based on that data, Papa Johns can determine which days of the week certain consumers are likely to run out of groceries and serve them an ad on NBCU streaming content accordingly. The brand served custom creatives to consumers based on their food preferences—such as whether they buy meat regularly—with QR codes and calls to action such as, “Light on groceries?” or “Empty fridge?”
Back in 2012, we learned (from Target and its campaign that detects when someone is pregnant) that the trick is to hide the knowledge in other, wrong, information. So the way for Papa John’s to not be “too creepy” is to deliberately get it wrong sometimes.
The Financial Times has a good article on how AI is changing the capabilities of video surveillance, with information from both Israel/Iran and Russia.
I wrote about this sort of thing a few years ago, how AI enables mass spying in the way that computers and networks enabled mass surveillance. The interesting development in the article is that AI allows people to ask natural language questions about video footage to AIs—and AIs can answer them.
In contrast with older tools restricted to a few dozen preset searches, these new tools allow an almost unlimited range of enquiries by enabling language-based searches on video.
That lets intelligence officers hunt through massive streams of videos using simple search terms, such as two men handing a bag to each other; a person who has changed their appearance, or has changed clothes multiple times in a day; or a vehicle that has recently been painted over, or has driven past the same spot several times in a short period.
“This is the holy grail of surveillance,” said a European official whose country uses the technology on its cities. “We are able to look for behaviour, not objects it has created a world of new possibilities.”
There are over a dozen cases around the country where police officers are using the Flock surveillance camera system to obsessively and illegally stalk people.
LGBTQ+ communities are facing an escalating wave of censorship and targeted surveillance, but we can push back through mutual solidarity. Join us live to learn how safer virtual spaces get built, how platform policies and government pressure are reshaping the digital landscape, and what platform accountability actually looks like. Our panel will share ideas for direct action and concrete strategies you can bring back to your community. Whether you’re an activist, an ally, or just paying attention, this conversation is for you. Join the livestream online followed by live Q&A.
EFFecting Change Livestream Series: LGBTQ+ Solidarity Against the Tide of Surveillance Wednesday, June 17th 9:00 am - 10:00 am Pacific -Check Local Time Livestream followed by Q&A
This event is LIVE and FREE!
About the Speakers
Paige Collings As alawyer, digital policy activist and community organizer, Paige works to dismantle systems of oppression and advance collective liberation. Her work focuses on highlighting how state surveillance and corporate restrictions stifle marginalized communities and perpetuate historic injustices and harm. She has worked with activists across the globe to facilitate systemic change by speaking truth to power and creating spaces for alternative imaginations; and her writing on digital justice has been featured in Wired, Politico, Teen Vogue, the Daily Beast and more.
Jillian C. York Jillian is EFF's Director for International Freedom of Expression, based in London. Her work examines state and corporate censorship and its impact on culture and human rights, with a focus on historically marginalized communities. At EFF, she organizes coalitions, writes about and researches topics related to freedom of expression, leads theSpeaking Freelyinterview series, and contributes to various other areas of the organization's work. Jillian is the author of Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism(Verso, 2021), a contributor to severalacademic volumes, and has written for MIT Technology Review,The Guardian, and WIRED, among others. She is also a visiting professor at theCollege of Europe Natolinin Warsaw, and aregular speakerat global events.
Soatok Dreamseeker Soatok Dreamseeker is a gay furry security engineer. He blogs about applied cryptography on his blog, Dhole Moments, and is developing key transparency to enable end-to-end encryption on the Fediverse. His puns are 100% whole groan.
Luísa Franco Machado Luísa Franco Machado is an award-winning international expert in digital rights and data justice. She has also been a technical advisor in data governance and AI ethics for governments, NGOs, and international organizations worldwide, including the UN, OECD.AI, GIZ, and others. Luísa has carried on policy research at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and Sciences Po Paris on the intersection between technology and socio-economic development. In 2022, the United Nations recognized them as a global Young Leader for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) among more than 6,500 advocates. In 2025 she was featured in Apolitical's Government AI 100 list as a rising star.
A proposed FCC rule would kill burner phones: phones whose accounts are not attached to a particular person.
The FCC plans to do this by legally forcing the country’s telecoms to store a wealth of personal information about essentially all phone customers, including a government issued identification number and their physical address, alarming privacy advocates and civil rights activists who compare the measures to those from authoritarian countries where it can be difficult to buy a mobile phone plan without giving up your identity.
The proposed change would drastically shake up how people obtain phone plans in the U.S., and have all sorts of privacy and cybersecurity knock-on effects. The FCC is proposing the data collection partly as a way to combat scammers, with telecoms being required to collect other information on business and foreign customers like the intended use case of their bulk phone plan purchase and their IP address. But the changes would mean telecoms collect data on all new and renewing customers, and the FCC provides a long list of other things that the collected data could help authorities with.
Corporations harvest and monetize ever-growing amounts of our personal data, such as our browsing history and physicallocation. One bitter fruit of this poisonous tree is known as “surveillance pricing”: corporations offer the same product to two different people at two different prices, based on scrutiny of these people’s respective personal data.
Surveillance pricing is bad for privacy, equity, and price transparency. So EFF supports a California bill, S.B. 2564, which would ban this creepy practice.
How Surveillance Pricing Works
In 2025, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published a report about the practices of six companies that provide surveillance pricing services to hundreds of other companies, including grocery stores and apparel retailers. The report found that surveillance pricing draws upon customers’ browsing history, physical location, and shopping transaction history. Customers’ data can come from the vendor itself, from its surveillance pricing service provider, or from third-party data brokers. Customers are sorted into groups based on their personal data, as is done for targeted ads. As a result of surveillance pricing, a business might offer two customers different prices for the same product, based for example on whether they are a new parent, or whether they live near a business’s competitor.
Initial staff findings show that retailers frequently use people’s personal information to set targeted, tailored prices for goods and services – from a person’s location and demographics, down to their mouse movements on a webpage.
Unfortunately, the current FTC chair closed the FTC’s portal for public comments regarding surveillance pricing. Fortunately, the California Attorney General has initiated its own investigation of this practice.
Researchers have identified many examples of surveillance pricing:
The Princeton Review offered people who lived in some zip codes a higher price for test prep services, compared to people in other zip codes. As a result, Asians were twice as likely as non-Asians to be offered a higher price.
In a year-long study of tens of millions of rides in Chicago, Uber and Lyft offered a higher price for trips that ended in neighborhoods with high non-white populations.
Tindr offered older people (aged 30 to 49) higher prices for Tindr Plus, compared to younger people (aged 18-29).
Orbitz offered people who used Apple computers a higher price for hotel rooms, compared to people who used other types of computers.
Hotel booking sites offered people from San Francisco a higher price for hotel rooms, compared to people from other cities.
Target offered a higher price to people physically located at the store, compared to people located elsewhere.
Staples offered a higher price to customers who lived further from the company’s competitors, compared to customers who lived closer.
Why EFF Hates Surveillance Pricing
This practice is harmful in many ways. First, surveillance pricing invades our privacy. Vendors offer us a price only after scrutinizing our personal data about what we’ve clicked online and where we’ve travelled offline. Moreover, surveillance pricing incentivizes all businesses to harvest as much of our personal data as possible. Some businesses will use it for their own surveillance pricing. Other businesses, which might not themselves use it this way, will sell it to data brokers, which in turn will sell it to others for use in surveillance pricing.
Second, surveillance pricing can disparately burden people of color and other vulnerable groups. For example, as described above, surveillance pricing led to Asian people paying more for test prep services, older people paying more for dating services, and people living in non-white neighborhoods paying more for a ride home.
Third, surveillance pricing is opaque. Many people don’t even know when they’ve been subjected to it. Those that do often cannot determine the unknownreasons for the price they’re offered. As a result, consumer advocates will be less able to publish meaningful price comparisons to help consumers make choices. And regulators will be less able to identify unlawful pricing practices.
Its defenders sometimes argue that surveillance pricing benefits consumers because it can lead to lower prices. But while some consumers some of the time might get lower prices because of surveillance of their personal data, other consumers will get higher prices, as shown by the examples above. Somerecentstudies indicate there will be losers and winners based on factors like whether a consumer is willing or able to switch products. Who loses or wins also will turn on the accuracy of the underlying data – yet surveillance pricing is often based on false information.
In any event, both losers and winners of this price discrimination are harmed by surveillance. Privacy is a human right, not a property to be bought and sold on a market. For this reason, EFF has longopposed pay-for-privacy schemes, in which a company charges a higher price to a customer who refuses to submit to processing of their personal data. Thus, even if surveillance pricing sometimes leads to lower prices (and again, it often will not), we oppose it as just another way that corporations try to make customers pay for their privacy.
What the California Bill Would Do
The key term of California’s S.B. 2564 is short and sweet: “a retailer shall not engage in surveillance pricing.”
The banned practice is defined as: “[i] a customized price for a good for a specific consumer or group of consumers, [ii] based, in whole or in part, on personally identifiable information collected through electronic surveillance,” including if that information is “acquired from a third party.” In other words, “surveillance pricing” is a customized price based on personal information.
The bill has two enforcement methods. First, state and local government may bring enforcement actions, and seek all manner of remedies including monetary penalties. Second, individual consumers may bring their own enforcements lawsuits, and seek the remedies of an injunction and attorney fees. We are pleased the bill provides this private right of action, which is the mostimportant method of enforcement (we’d be even more pleased if the private remedies included liquidated damages).
The bill has three exemptions where surveillance pricing is allowed:
First, for price differences “based solely on costs associated with providing the good to different consumers.”
Second, for a discount offered to a consumer who is taking steps to terminate a service.
Third, for a discount, conspicuously posted on a retailer’s website, that is uniformly available based on (1) criteria anyone can meet, such as signing up for a mailing list, (2) membership in a broadly defined group, such as seniors, or (3) participation in a loyalty program.
The bill’s author is California Assembly Member Chris Ward. Its co-sponsors are Consumer Reports and TechEquity. Its supporters include Consumer Federation, EPIC, Kapor Center Advocacy, Oakland Privacy, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, labor unions, and other groups. The bill has advanced through the California Assembly and has arrived for consideration in the California Senate.
Why EFF Supports the California Bill
Surveillance pricing is just one part of a much larger problem: corporations maximizing their profits by invading our privacy. The all-too-common business model is to systematically harvest, collate, and store as much of our personal data as possible, and then monetize it through use and sale.
EFF’s general approach to this problem is a strong regulatory framework that we call “privacy first.” For example, laws should require businesses to “minimize” their data processing, meaning they must not collect, store, use, or disclose our data unless doing so is strictly necessary to give us what we asked for. Likewise, laws should require businesses to get our voluntary and informed opt-in consent before processing our data, buttressed by legal bans on coercive pay-for-privacy schemes and manipulative “dark patterns.”
A.B. 2564 is just a specific application of the minimization rule. Nobody who uses a web browser or a mobile app expects that, as a result, their clicks and footsteps will be funneled into personal dossiers, and later used by downstream businesses to offer a higher or lower price.
A.B. 2564 is also a specific application of the “no pay-for-privacy” rule. At its best, surveillance pricing is a corporate offer of a lower price in exchange for a consumer’s submission to surveillance of their personal data. This scheme encourages all people to surrender their privacy in exchange for a lower price. This is especially coercive for people with lower incomes, and thus carries the risk of creating a society of privacy “haves” and “have nots.” And swept into this supposed “bargain” is the potential for higher surveillance-based prices based on false information or erroneous inferences.
Surveillance pricing is very similar to online behavioral advertising, a business practice that EFF urges governments to ban. Both practices incentivize all businesses to collect as much of our personal data as possible, in order to later monetize it. Both practices lead some businesses to collate and store our data into dossiers about us for later use. Both practices use these surveillance-based dossiers to manipulate and limit our economic choices, by altering the advertisements and prices we see online. In the words of the FTC report discussed above: “Existing and common techniques used for targeted advertising can also be used for other forms of targeting prices.”
Absent a specific ban on surveillance pricing, as in A.B. 2564, it would be very difficult to protect the public from the many harms it causes. Corporate price-setting is increasingly opaque, making it difficult for consumers and regulators to determine whether a particular company set a particular price for a particular consumer based on their data, and if so, the particular data that it used. As a result, it would be very difficult in this context to enforce general laws requiring minimization or consent. Moreover, many such laws exempt how a business processes the data it directly collected from its own customers; for example, the California Consumer Privacy Act’s limits on “cross-context behavioral advertising” do not apply to how a business uses personal data it collected on its own website. Yet many practitioners of surveillance pricing (like Tindr) rely on such data.
Finally, there is little to no risk that A.B. 2564 will have unintended consequences that hurt internet users’ speech or technological innovation. The bill does not address any particular type of technology. It does not limit any collection, retention, or disclosure of personal data. It limits only one very narrow and easily defined use of data: use to set a customized price. And it has three broad exemptions.
In sum, EFF is proud to join with other groups in support of California’s A.B. 2564. You can read our support letter here.
Last June during Pride, we launched a new initiative—LGBT Q&A—where we answered your most pressing queer-related digital rights questions on EFF’s Instagram and TikTok accounts. No question was too big or too small! You asked us things like what pictures to use on dating apps; how to remove your name from internet searches; why homophobic content doesn't get removed after you report it; and how to stay safe at Pride marches.
And this year, we’re doing it all again.
Both online and offline, LGBTQ+ individuals and the fight for queer liberation are under threat; and the need for guidance and protection from prying eyes and oppressive structures is increasingly pertinent. This is particularly true for those of us who face consequences when intimate details around gender or sexual identities are revealed without consent.
But we know that it can feel overwhelming to even start thinking about how you can protect yourself online in the face of these issues. That's why this Pride, we’re answering all your digital rights questions.
How to submit your questions?
If you would like to remain anonymous and away from social platforms, you can submit questions via this secure link.
Head to EFF’s Reddit or the r/LGBTQ subreddit and submit your questions underneath the posts.
Your questions can also be submitted under the linked posts on EFF’s Instagram and TikTok, as well as on our stories where you can submit questions directly.
If you prefer Mastodon and Bluesky, comment your questions under the linked posts.
As always, we will not engage with comments that discriminate against marginalized groups, including the LGBTQ+ community.
We’re here to help build an online space where you get to decide what aspects of yourself you share with others, how you present to the world, and what things you keep private. Join us to make the internet private, safe, and full of pride.
Meta’s smart glasses are once again at the center of a privacy debate due to face recognition.
WIRED reports that Meta had quietly embedded unreleased face-recognition code, internally called “NameTag,” into its Meta AI companion app, which powers the company’s smart glasses. The code was not active, but its presence in an app installed on more than 50 million devices raised immediate concerns about how quickly using smart glasses could slide into biometric surveillance.
Face recognition in glasses, even if disabled or unreleased, is especially sensitive because it can identify people at a distance, in real time, and without their consent. Many organizations have warned that this technology could be misused by stalkers, abusers, and others who want to identify people in public without drawing attention.
Gizmodo reports on a proposed Pennsylvania bill that would require smart glasses and similar wearable recording devices to include a visible indicator light when they are capturing audio or video. The bill would also prohibit users from disabling that indicator, a move clearly aimed at reducing covert recording in public spaces.
Most smart glasses already include such an indicator, but reporters noted that some users have been paying others to have them removed or disabled. The proposal is interesting because it tries to solve a hardware-level trust problem with a visible signal. But a visible light only helps if it is both mandatory and difficult to bypass, and history suggests that any visible privacy safeguard becomes a target for tampering when the incentives are high enough.
These two stories are really about the same issue: smart glasses are normalizing the use of always-on cameras, microphones, and AI features in a form that is much easier to conceal than a phone. That creates an unwanted privacy problem for people around the wearer.
Smart glasses are supposed to make computing more seamless. Instead, they are becoming a test case for what happens when cameras, microphones, AI, and biometric features are squeezed into everyday wearables before the privacy rules catch up.
From our point of view, smart glasses sit at the intersection of consumer privacy, surveillance tech, and potential abuse. The risk is not just that a device records audio or video. AI-enabled wearables can process what they see, deduce identities, and potentially store biometric data in ways that ordinary users and bystanders can’t easily detect.
We’d rather err on the side of caution and use an app that can detect when smart glasses are nearby. Unfortunately, it only detects some devices, and we don’t yet know how well it will perform if smart glasses become more common.
As noted by 404 Media, the app is an imperfect, tech-based response to a social and legal problem: it can misfire, it can’t tell you who is being recorded, and it risks giving a false sense of safety. The developer frames it not as a solution but as a small, user-controlled countermeasure in an environment where surveillance devices are becoming less visible and more AI-enabled.
Don’t get recognized
If facial recognition features ever become common in smart glasses, much of their effectiveness will depend on how much information about you is already available online. There are a few steps you can take today to reduce your visibility in facial recognition systems and people-search databases.
A major factor is limiting who can see the photographs you post on social media and other online platforms. But there is more you can do:
Remove yourself from reverse face search engines
The major, most accurate reverse face search engines, Pimeyes and Facecheck.id, offer opt-out and removal processes that can help reduce your visibility in search results:
Most people don’t realize how much information can be found from a name alone. People-search sites often aggregate home addresses, phone numbers, ages, and relatives from public records and commercial databases.
The New York Times has compiled a useful guide to many of the major people-search sites, along with instructions for opting out and removing your information.
Scrub your data
If you’re in the US, you can also use Malwarebytes Personal Data Remover to help find and remove personal information that data broker sites have collected about you.
The internet is an essential resource for young people and adults to access information, explore community, and find themselves—both inside countries and across continents. Yet governments around the world continue to introduce and implement legislation requiring all online users to verify their ages before accessing the digital space. In some cases, politicians are going further, putting forth proposals to ban social media for younger users.
In late 2025, Australia’s government rolled out the first complete ban on users under 16 from having social media accounts. In this sweeping regime, platforms are required to introduce age assurance tools to block under-16s, demonstrate that they have taken “reasonable steps” to deactivate accounts used by under-16s, and prevent any new accounts being created, or face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($32 million USD). The 10 banned platforms—Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Snapchat, YouTube, TikTok, Kick, Reddit, Twitch, and X—have each said they’ll comply with the legislation, which led to young people losing access to their accounts overnight. Reddit is currently challenging the law in Australian courts on constitutional grounds. Recent research notes how the ban is preventing teenagers from accessing news in the country.
In the United Kingdom, rules took effect in mid-2025 under the Online Safety Act that require all online services available in the country to assess whether they host content considered harmful to children; if so, these services must introduce age checks to prevent children from accessing such content. Online services are also required to change their algorithms and moderation systems to ensure that content defined as harmful, like violent imagery, is not shown to young people.
This approach is reckless, short-sighted, and we’ve already seen it introduce more harm to the young people that it is trying to protect. The UK’s scramble to find an effective age verification method shows us that there isn't one, and we’ve spent years urging UK politicians to abandon any measures that require platforms to collect data or remove privacy protections around users’ identities.
Earlier this year, Indonesia’s Communications and Digital Affairs Minister, Meutya Hafid, announced that users under 16 would have their accounts on “high risk” platforms deactivated from 28 March. The platforms subject to this ban are YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bigo Live, and Roblox; with Hafid noting how this policy would make Indonesia “the first non-Western country to delay children's access to digital spaces according to age.”
Similarly, the Malaysian government has recently pushed forward with plans to ban users under 16 from having accounts on social media platforms with at least 8 million users in Malaysia, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Users under the age of 16 are being told to download or transfer their data from these platforms in one month before the restrictions are applied. Platforms failing to comply with the ban may face penalties of up to $2.5 million USD.
In Latin America, Brazilapproved a new law in 2025 establishing that providers of information technology products and services directed to children and teenagers, or likely to be accessed by them, must conduct age checks when their products and services offer risks to underage users. Regulation requires age assurance for products and services that are not allowed for children and adolescents in accordance with Brazilian legislation. App stores and operating systems are required to provide age signals for other providers.
While the law is already in force, full compliance with its obligations is expected for early 2027, after the approval of further regulations and a transition period, and the authority responsible for enforcing the law is the Brazilian National Data Protection Agency. The list of concerns regarding the implementation of the law include: the wide scope of products and services that may fall within age-check obligations, how these obligations can affect non-proprietary operating systems and free software projects, and how effective the law's crucial data protection safeguards will be in a context of likely widespread age checks for accessing content online.
Similarly, the European Union has taken large steps towards mandatory age verification that could undermine privacy, expression, and participation rights for everyone. Politicians are promoting an EU-wide approach to age verification through its age verification “app,” which will be fully interoperable with the Digital Identity Wallet. While this mini-app has been announced as technically ready to be rolled out “for citizens to use,” it comes with its own realm of potential privacy and security concerns, such as long-term identifiers (which could result in tracking) and over-exposure of personal information.
The European Commission also supports age verification in various legislative initiatives, from proposals that would allow or mandate companies to scan our communication (“Chat Control”) to non-binding guidelines of existing laws, such as the Digital Services Act. The EU Parliament, too, has proposed an EU digital minimum age of 16 for access to social media, a move that aligns with EU Commission’s president Ursula von der Leyen’s recent public support for measures inspired by Australia’s model. To all these initiatives EFF has provided one consistent response: mandatory age verification measures are not the right way to protect young people.
These proposals restrict the fundamental rights of young people to speak to each other and to access information. They also force all internet users, not just those under a certain age, to upload private data—like a face scan or passport—in order to access a website or service. In considering the vast scope of privacy issues pertaining to the collection, storage, and sharing of this personal information, the problems of age verification in restricting free speech are compounded by these reckless and harmful approaches to verification.
The problem of censorship and surveillance goes far beyond the borders of the internet. EFF continues to explore support for legislative and litigation challenges that recognize how these laws harm everyone’s rights to privacy, free expression and due process.
Last year during LGBTQ+ Pride month, we launched an LGBT Q&A where we answered your most pressing digital rights questions on EFF’s Instagram and TikTok accounts.
Ahead of LGBT Q&A Season 2 launching next week, we’re posting a recap with some of the questions we answered. Check them out below.
You wanted to know: How to stay safe when dating online.
You asked: I'm a 17 year old trans woman and my address is public on the Internet. What steps can I take to mitigate this risk?
You wondered about: Tips for staying safe at Budapest Pride.
You questioned: Why does homophobic content I report on social media not get removed?
You asked: What pictures are safe to use on dating apps?
You wanted to know: Is it safe to have gay, trans, and Palestinian flags in my bio?
We’re here to help build an online space where you get to decide what aspects of yourself you share with others, how you present to the world, and what things you keep private. Join us to make the internet private, safe, and full of pride.
Governments must not adopt emerging and powerful AI technologies without also adopting strong and clear safeguards to protect Constitutional rights, EFF Senior Policy Analyst Dr. Matthew Guariglia testified today to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection.
During the hearing on “The AI Security Landscape: How Frontier Models, Agentic AI, and AI Coding Tools Are Reshaping Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Resilience,” he explained that the use of generative AI for the purposes of mass government surveillance would supercharge unconstitutional violations of civil liberties. He also highlighted how government secrecy, in addition to the black box of for-profit proprietary technology, prevents the public and lawmakers from knowing when AI models make mistakes, including errors that seriously impact the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure and the lives of individuals.
“AI also has a track record of getting things wrong—from false citations on legal briefs to a major AI mistake that sentDHS recruits to the field without proper training. There are likely more consequential examples that we do not even know about because of classification that would prevent a more thorough accounting," he said in his opening remarks.
“At this level the question is not how do we rein in AI, it’s how do we rein in the agencies that would unleash AI on the American public,” Matthew said in response to a question by Subcommittee Ranking Member Delia Ramirez, D-Ill.
Customer service chatbots have one job: get the user what they’re asking for without bothering a human. Meta’s new AI support assistant took that brief a little too seriously. Over the past few months, attackers have been opening support chats, telling the bot they were locked out of Instagram accounts they didn’t own, and walking away with the keys.
Over the weekend, Meta pushed an emergency patch after Instagram accounts belonging to the Obama White House (now dormant), beauty retailer Sephora, and a senior US Space Force official were taken over and briefly defaced with pro-Iranian imagery. Security researcher and former Meta employee Jane Manchun Wong was also hit.
How the trick worked
The attack was simple. Attackers worked out where the account owner lived (there are lists of account owners’ home cities online, or they could just research the target). Then they used a VPN to match the target account’s geographic region, which avoided raising flags with Instagram’s security systems.
Then they started a normal password reset and opened the support chat. They asked the AI bot providing support to change the email address on the account, and it did exactly that, sending a one-time code straight to the attacker’s inbox.
To do this, the chatbot appears to have been wired into Meta’s account management systems with permission to make account changes, but without being taught how to verify it was talking to the real account owner. Security people have a name for that: “confused deputy.” The term has been around since the 1980s.
In fairness to the confused bot, attackers were successful even if the enhanced security was triggered. They would apparently create video deepfakes of their targets using images that were harvested from—you guessed it—Instagram.
Meta hoisted on its own AI petard
Meta has been shedding headcount and pouring money into AI, and rolled out its AI-powered support assistant earlier this year to help handle account recovery and other support requests.
The downside is that the AI appears to have been given the ability to perform actions such as email changes and password resets without applying enough safeguards to confirm the user’s identity first.
Meta communications executive Andy Stone said on X that the issue was resolved and impacted accounts were being secured. The company has not disclosed how many accounts were affected.
What actually worked
Why would anyone want to hack an Instagram account anyway? Revenge can be a driver, but more often than not, financial gain is the goal. Hijackers have blackmailed businesses that rely on those accounts for marketing.
Attackers using this technique have also been spotted targeting “OG” accounts with short or highly desirable usernames. If you joined Instagram early and registered a memorable handle, it can be worth thousands of dollars on underground markets.
What can you do to protect yourself?
A perennial piece of advice still holds: turn on multi-factor authentication (MFA). According to veteran cybersecurity reporter Brian Krebs, the attack failed against accounts that had MFA enabled, including those using SMS codes.
That doesn’t make MFA perfect, but it adds an important layer of protection.
So the practical advice is unglamorous:
Open Instagram’s Settings
Navigate to your Meta Accounts Center
Turn on Two-factor authentication. An authenticator app is better than SMS, but either is better than nothing.
Do it now, because this might not yet be over. TheCyberSecGuru reports that another attack is circulating, this time using an Android emulator called BlueStacks running a modified version of Instagram to send new prompts with hidden characters designed to manipulate the AI.
Expect more snafus from “helpful” bots
This won’t be the last attack against AI chatbots. As more companies use AI to reduce customer support costs, their attack surface will grow, and they’ll make plenty of mistakes as they try to balance security and functionality.
The Meta exploit is patched, but the confused deputy concept is not. And there’s nothing quite as damaging as a confused AI with the keys to your digital life.
Scammers don’t need to hack you. They just need you to click once.
California has sued the former shell of DNA testing company 23andMe over alleged security failures and misleading statements surrounding its 2023 data breach.
On May 27, 2026, Attorney General Rob Bonta filed suit in San Francisco Superior Court against Chrome Holding Co., the company now handling 23andMe’s remaining assets following its bankruptcy.
California’s complaint accuses 23andMe of failing to implement reasonable security measures to protect sensitive data and alleges violations of several state privacy and consumer protection laws. It also accuses the company of making misleading statements about its security practices.
The 2023 breach used old-school credential-stuffing tactics against 23andMe’s login page. Attackers operated inside the systems for roughly five months without anyone noticing. The direct compromise was modest, affecting about 14,000 accounts, but that was all the attackers needed to steal the data of just under seven million customers.
The intruders pivoted from those accounts through DNA Relatives, the platform’s headline feature, which enabled people to determine who they were connected with through DNA similarity. The lawsuit alleges a critical coding error in that feature enabled the perpetrators to scrape data from millions of other users connected by biological kinship.
The victim-blaming defense became evidence
After the breach went public, 23andMe sent victims’ legal representatives a letter blaming users for reusing passwords from sites that had been compromised earlier. The exposed data, the company suggested, had been shared of the users’ own free will and would not cause “pecuniary harm.”
The harms stemming from genetic data theft extend far beyond financial losses, however. The genetic information that was stolen enabled thieves to determine an individual’s genetic origins.
The data was reportedly offered for sale on the dark web with this information as a selling point, enabling sellers to offer records on Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) or Jewish customers, for example. Bonta’s office pointed out that antisemitic violence was on the rise at the time.
In spite of the letter’s attempt to blame users, only about 14,000 accounts were directly compromised through password reuse. The rest of the data was allegedly exposed through 23andMe’s own product. According to the complaint, the coding error in DNA Relatives exposed the data of anyone who had opted into the service, not just those linked to the 14,000 compromised accounts.
Can the state recover damages?
California is seeking statutory penalties ranging from $1,000 to $7,500 per violation. With 855,541 Californians among the affected users, the costs could mount up quickly.
The question is how much of it the state will collect if it wins its case. 23andMe filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March 2025, then sold most of its assets, including the genomic data of more than 15 million customers, to TTAM Research Institute, a nonprofit founded by former 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki. California and several other states opposed the sale on Genetic Information Privacy Act grounds, but a federal bankruptcy judge approved it. The states are now appealing that decision.
Chrome Holding Co., the corporate shell that remains of 23andMe, received $305 million from that sale. But others have already been picking over what’s left.
Other regulators have already had their turn. The UK Information Commissioner’s Office fined 23andMe £2.31 million in June last year following a joint investigation with the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. A federal court initially approved a $30 million class-action settlement covering most US customer claims. That settlement later grew to $50 million and received final approval in January 2026.
What customers can do
If you tested with 23andMe, the standard breach hygiene still applies. Reset any password you reused on other sites and turn on multi-factor authentication wherever it’s offered. Credential stuffing only works on usernames and passwords that have already been exposed elsewhere. Also watch for phishing attacks that name-drop 23andMe or the breach itself. And maybe weigh the benefits of using DNA testing services against the security risks.
Because there’s one part of this that no fine and no settlement can solve: stolen genetic data sold on the dark web cannot be taken back. Passwords can be changed. DNA can’t.
Browse like no one’s watching.
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A fake website impersonating BlueWallet (a real Bitcoin wallet) is targeting Mac users with a simple but effective attack. BlueWallet itself has not been compromised. Instead, cybercriminals have stolen the name and branding of the legitimate Bitcoin wallet to make a malicious download appear trustworthy.
If you went looking for a cryptocurrency wallet and landed on one of these fake BlueWallet download pages, the site tried to trick you into opening a downloaded file in a built-in macOS tool and pressing “Run.” If you followed those instructions, the malware could steal saved passwords, browser logins, cryptocurrency wallets, documents, and other sensitive data. It also watches the clipboard for cryptocurrency wallet addresses and can replace them with attacker-controlled addresses..
That last feature is particularly dangerous. If you copy a wallet address before sending funds, the malware can silently replace it with the attacker’s address. Everything looks normal on screen, but the money goes somewhere else.
Should you worry? Only if you downloaded and ran the file. Simply visiting the page and closing it does nothing on its own. The attack depends entirely on the user opening the script and pressing play.
If you did run it, treat the machine as compromised and follow the steps below.
What to do if you may have run it
If you opened the file and pressed play, assume your device was compromised and work through these steps:
Disconnect the machine from the network to cut the control channel
The most interesting part of this campaign isn’t technical. The attackers didn’t break into the Mac or bypass Apple’s security protections. They persuaded victims to run the malware themselves.
The fake website walks users through the process with a convincing download page, simple instructions, and even a keyboard shortcut. The attack succeeds because the victim trusts what they are seeing.
As operating systems get better at blocking malicious software, attackers are increasingly investing in social engineering. Instead of finding ways around security controls, they convince people to click through them.
That’s why one habit is becoming increasingly important: Be suspicious of any download that arrives with instructions to open it in a scripting tool, developer utility, or Terminal window and press “Run.”
In this campaign, a single press of ⌘R was enough to turn a Mac into a password stealer, cryptocurrency wallet thief, clipboard hijacker, and remote access tool.
Technical analysis
Stage one: The AppleScript downloader
The page lives at update-bluewallet[.]com, a domain name close enough to the real wallet (bluewallet.io) to pass a quick glance. The first thing the page does is not wait for consent. Its script calls a download routine on a two-second timer the moment the page loads, and again if the visitor clicks either of two buttons.
The file that lands in the Downloads folder is named BlueWallet Installer.applescript, an extension most people have never seen and have no instinct to distrust.
Then the page does something quietly clever. After a short delay, it rewrites its own status text to read like setup instructions: open the installer, then press the play button or ⌘R. It even draws a small blue play triangle in the text so the wording matches the real Script Editor interface the victim is about to see.
The page walks the victim through the exact motions needed to run the file.
On modern macOS, an unsigned application downloaded from the web gets quarantined and checked before it can run. A plain script opened in Script Editor and executed by the user sidesteps that flow. The person is manually instructing a trusted Apple tool to run code, so there is no notarization gate to fail.
This is why the attacker chose an AppleScript instead of a packaged app: it moves the risky action out of the operating system’s hands and into the victim’s.
The AppleScript itself is remarkably short. Stripped of its decorative comments, including a fake version number and a line claiming to be a “Brew Install Upgrade,” it runs a single base64-encoded shell command and then tells Script Editor to quit without saving, removing the evidence from view.
It fetches a second script from a remote host, saves it to a hidden file in the temp directory, makes it executable, and runs it in the background with all output suppressed.
The victim sees nothing. The filename .sysupd.sh is dressed up to look like a system update. This is a textbook staged dropper: stage one is tiny and disposable, and its only job is to fetch the real payload.
Stage two: Payload analysis
The first lines establish how the malware intends to operate. It sets umask 077 so everything it creates is readable only by the compromised user, then builds a hidden, randomly named working directory under /tmp seeded from /dev/urandom.
Its configuration is obfuscated, but weakly. A small function named _xd walks a hex string two characters at a time and XORs each byte against a hardcoded repeating key: swckR9JCD2Uu.
That function decodes the script’s Telegram bot token, chat identifier, secondary command token, and staging URL at runtime. It is enough to defeat tools that only search for plaintext strings, but not much more. Because the key and algorithm are both sitting in the file, every encoded value is fully recoverable.
One detail stands out: The decoded Telegram chat value and decoded command-and-control chat value are identical. The attacker is using a single Telegram channel as both the exfiltration drop and the control channel. It is cheap, scalable, encrypted, and blends into ordinary HTTPS traffic.
Not everything is obfuscated. The clipboard-hijacking addresses are sitting in the file in plain text: a Bitcoin address, an Ethereum address, and a Solana address. These are the addresses the implant swaps in when it catches you copying a wallet address. Because they are public on their respective blockchains, they are also among the most useful artifacts in the whole sample.
What the malware steals
The second stage’s collection routines are sweeping. They pull from six broad categories.
1. Web browsers
The script extracts history, cookies, login data, and bookmarks from a wide range of browsers, including:
Chromium-based browsers: Google Chrome Stable, Beta, Canary, and Dev; Brave; Microsoft Edge; Vivaldi; Opera; Opera GX; Arc; Chromium; Coccoc; and Yandex
Firefox-based browsers: Firefox, Waterfox, Pale Moon, Zen, and LibreWolf
macOS native browser data: Safari cookies, history, and form values
Other ecosystems: Yoroi, Lace, Petra, Martian, Suiet, Talisman, SubWallet, Braavos, and Temple
3. Password managers and security tools
The malware targets local storage and settings for several password managers, including LastPass, 1Password, Dashlane, Bitwarden, Keeper, RoboForm, NordPass, Enpass, StickyPassword, TrueKey, Passbolt, and Buttercup.
It also looks for data associated with 2FA and authenticator tools, including Google Authenticator, Authy, Duo, Microsoft Authenticator, 2FAS, and FreeOTP.
4. Communication and social apps
The script attempts to copy session data and local storage for Telegram Desktop and Discord, including Discord Canary and Discord PTB.
5. Developer and cloud tools
It looks for credentials and configuration files in the user’s home directory, including:
AWS CLI configurations in .aws
SSH keys in .ssh
GnuPG keys in .gnupg
Kubernetes configs in .kube
Shell and Git files including .zshrc, .zsh_history, .bash_history, and .gitconfig
6. Productivity apps and general files
The script copies the local Apple Notes database, NoteStore.sqlite.
It also looks for browser-extension data related to shopping and productivity tools, including Honey, CapitalOne Shopping, Rakuten, CamelCamelCamel, Grammarly, Evernote, Notion Clipper, Todoist, and Google Keep.
Finally, it scans Desktop, Documents, and Downloads for files with extensions including .txt, .pdf, .docx, .doc, .rtf, .wallet, .key, .keys, .seed, .kdbx, .pem, and .env, under a size cap.
What it does with the stolen data
The malware tries to capture the user’s account password directly. An osascript dialog titled “System Preferences” asks the user to re-enter their password “to continue.” The script validates each attempt against dscl . authonly before saving it, so it only stops once it has a working credential.
For exfiltration, it archives the staged data with macOS’s own ditto, likely because it is always present, unlike zip. To stay under Telegram’s 50 MB upload limit, it breaks larger archives into 49 MB chunks with split before sending each part.
It establishes persistence by writing a LaunchAgent plist into the user’s ~/Library/LaunchAgents, backed by a hidden support directory, and loading it with launchctl so the implant runs again at every login.
The clipboard hijack is a live background loop. A clip_watch function continuously inspects the clipboard, matches Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana address formats by regex, reports the original address to the command-and-control channel, and overwrites the clipboard with the attacker’s address via pbcopy.
That means the substitution happens silently between copy and paste.
Finally, the malware can be controlled interactively. A c2_loop polls the Telegram bot for commands and supports a full operator toolkit:
/info for system details
/exec for arbitrary shell commands
/clipboard to read current clipboard contents
/download to pull specific files
/exfil to rerun the theft module
/selfdestruct to wipe traces
This makes the Telegram channel a real-time remote-control link, not just a one-way drop.
Living off the land, and off Telegram
The pattern here is familiar and getting more common: lean on tools that are already trusted.
The delivery abuses Apple’s own Script Editor. The configuration hides behind a trivial XOR rather than packed binaries. The command channel rides Telegram’s Bot API, which can pass through egress filters that would flag an unknown server.
None of these pieces is novel on its own. The effectiveness comes from stacking legitimate-looking components so no single step trips an alarm.
Detection opportunities
The lessons here are less about the lure and more about the technique itself.
Script Editor executing a one-line base64 do shell script that immediately quits is a strong behavioral signal, and a far better detection target than the disposable stage-one file. So is a hidden /tmp/.sysupd.sh downloaded by curl and launched in the background.
Browsers and download surfaces could treat .applescript files arriving from the web with the same suspicion as executables. And Telegram remains an under-addressed command-and-control medium that bot-token abuse reporting could disrupt at the source.
An EFF analysis of millions of searches of Flock Safety automated license plate reader (ALPR) data by police has uncovered a troubling pattern: in the absence of a warrant requirement to search ALPR databases, law enforcement agencies have moved beyond specific investigations to use these surveillance networks for virtually any whim.
Our findings suggest that the absence of a warrant requirement has fostered a culture of unrestricted access to sensitive location data, allowing agencies to leverage that data beyond the scope of specific criminal investigations.
As a refresher: Law enforcement agencies lease or purchase camera systems from Flock Safety and then mount them by the side of the road and at intersections to document every vehicle that passes, including the plate, make, model, color and distinguishing characteristics, along with the date, time and location of where it was seen.
Law enforcement's talking points—often scripted by the company itself—trumpet their role in solving high-stakes crimes. But the data reveals a different story. What they're not saying is that ALPRs are also frequently used for extremely low-level investigations, such as verifying whether a student lives within a particular school zone. In some cases, police have even used this tech to conduct employment background checks and investigations into loud music complaints. Recently, a motorcyclist was even targeted for simply holding a cell phone while riding.
The reach of this ALPR surveillance is amplified by the nature of the indiscriminate sharing these technologies encourage. Most agencies choose to share broadly, often as part of a nationwide pool, making it common for a single city's system to be searched hundreds of thousands of times each month. By analyzing these "network audit logs," privacy advocates and journalists have uncovered evidence of the technology being used to surveil protesters, abortion-seekers, immigrants, and even ethnic Roma populations.
While these high-profile abuses are shocking, the more mundane uses are also problematic, signaling a massive, unchecked mission creep that has turned an alleged “crime-fighting” tool into a universal tracker of everyone’s movements.
Residency Checks
School systems in the U.S. conduct "residency verification" investigations of their parents or guardians to ensure enrolled children live in the district. To carry out these checks, some school districts have enlisted law enforcement officers for help, leveraging ALPR databases to track the comings and goings of families across the region.
Buford City Schools in Georgia, which serves only about 6,000 students, illustrates the scale of this prying. Between January 2025 and March 2026, school police ran more than 375 searches where officers listed school residency verification, or simply "RV," as the reason for the search. That accounts for more than half of all ALPR searches in that period, and in those three months of 2026, three-quarters of all searches were related to residency verification.
School officials stand by the searches. "[B]ecause Buford City Schools is a highly sought-after district, we experience ongoing challenges with residency fraud," a spokesperson told Appen Media, which shared the email with EFF. "Flock Safety is one of the tools we use to verify residency and protect the integrity of the Buford City School System for families who live within the district."
A search of ALPR data will show a lot more than whether a family lives within the right zone. In these Buford cases, officers ran some searches across more than 5,800 different networks nationwide. Every time a plate is searched, it can reveal personal information about a family: when they go to the doctor, when they go to worship, when they go out at night, and where they travel on vacation. None of that is the school district's business, and these searches are a huge invasion of privacy.
While Buford was by the far the most prolific, it wasn't the only agency to run school residency checks. For example, Delhi Township Police Department (DTPD) in Ohio ran 35 searches related to students in five schools in a three-month period during spring 2025, and similarly stood by the practice, citing a warning given to parents that submitting a false statement of residency may be a felony.
After EFF sent an inquiry to DTPD, the agency conducted a brief investigation and found that "these searches were not done to verify residency upon submission, but to investigate cases where it was believed the form was filled out with false information." DTPD did not say what kind of evidence was required to establish suspicion before an ALPR query, nor did it offer information on how many of these investigations turned out to be justified.
However, the official told EFF: "in response to your inquiry, the department will be implementing a change to how these queries are documented in the Flock system and internally, to increase accountability and help avoid any confusion moving forward."
Other agencies that ran school residency searches include Cortland Police Department in Ohio and Lincoln Police Department in Alabama. Several agencies also ran searches with "residency," "residency investigation" or "residency verification" as the reason, but that could refer to a number of public services. These agencies include Ridgeland Police Department in Mississippi, Fairfield County Sheriff's Office in South Carolina, Manteno Police Department in Illinois, Illinois Department of Natural Resources, and Mora County Sheriff's Office in New Mexico.
Background Checks
Few people would imagine that applying for a government job would open you up to an ALPR search. Yet, several law enforcement agencies ran searches through the Flock network related to employment.
For example:
Jefferson County Sheriff's Office in Missouri ran six searches across 2,853 networks, documenting "employment" in the reason field.
Little Elm Police Department in Texas ran 10 searches across 6,306 networks, documenting "EMPLOYMENT" in the reason field.
Ridgeland Police Department in Mississippi ran two searches across more than 6,000 networks documenting "employment background inv" in the reason field.
Texas City Police Department, Texas ran three searches across 728 networks, documenting "pre employment background" in the reason field.
Zion Police Department in Illinois ran a research across 585 networks documenting "Employee Background" in the reason field.
Davidson Police Department in North Carolina logged a search listed as "Employment Background," but in response to an inquiry from EFF, the chief described this as "poor choice of words by our investigator." He further stated that the agency does not use ALPRs as part of employment background checks, but in this case, the agency shared that a potential violation of a protective order came to light during a background check, hence the reference to it in the search log.
In addition to the agencies mentioned, several agencies ran searches that simply referred to "background check" or "background checks," which could be related to employment or perhaps some other issue, such as a concealed weapons permit, for example. These include Avon Police Department in Indiana, Rockford Police Department in Illinois, San Bernardino County Sheriff's Office in California, and Seaford Police Department in Delaware.
Noise Complaints
Many people have probably been irritated at some point or another by a car blasting a deep bassline or even the infamous "whistle tip." Some may have even called the cops to complain about a neighbor’s house party. But that's a far cry from the types of serious crimes that Flock and its customers have claimed that the ALPR systems would be used to solve.
Yet, EFF identified 26 agencies where officers felt it was appropriate to pry into a driver's life because of a noise complaint, ranging from house parties to loud exhausts to just "music":
Some of these agencies searched upwards of 6,500 networks’ cameras—the equivalent of launching a nationwide goose chase over a booming subwoofer or a busted muffler.
When Mission Creep Is Just Plain Creepy
An observant reader of this report may have noticed that Ridgeland Police Department in Mississippi ran searches in all three of the categories we reported above.
However, after the city first installed the Flock Safety cameras, the then-police chief told the press that the technology helps solve cases that range from "theft to crimes of violence"—without disclosing that the range would extend much further.
When police and salespeople trot out cherry-picked cases to argue that a mass surveillance technology is an "important" tool, they obfuscate that it's a convenient shortcut around due process. For serious crimes, police can already go through the standard legal process: making the case to a judge on why they should get a search warrant for location data, whether it's from cell phones or service providers. But police treat ALPR databases as if no such threshold exists, giving them free rein to track a person’s movements without a sliver of judicial oversight.
When police and salespeople trot out cherry-picked cases to argue that a mass surveillance technology is an "important" tool, they obfuscate that it's a convenient shortcut around due process.
"This is the same as if I put a police officer on the side of the road with a pen and a notepad and he writes down every license plate number that drives by,” the former chief said, repeating a commonly circulated talking point.
That rhetoric may sound reasonable if we were just talking about a single camera on a street corner, but Ridgeland now operates more than 50 cameras—the equivalent of one for every 500 residents—and maintains access to tens of thousands more.
If the chief had stood in front of the city’s aldermen and asked for permission to search more than 20,000 cameras so his officers could investigate the high crime of "music," it’s quite unlikely that they would have been nodding their heads along.
Ridgeland Police Department did not respond to EFF’s requests for comment.
You’re working hard late at night, replying to emails and planning the week ahead. Then suddenly, a PDF file requests access to your camera. Why would a PDF need camera access?
Cybercriminals often disguise spyware inside seemingly harmless files and programs. An unexpected request for access to your webcam can be a red flag that something is amiss.
Malwarebytes Windows Webcam Monitoring alerts you if a program tries to access your camera, so you can allow trusted programs to continue or block suspicious ones instantly.
Spyware doesn’t just steal passwords. Some malicious apps try to access webcams to secretly spy on victims or capture sensitive information.
What does Windows Webcam Monitoring do?
Sends you an instant alert when a program tries to access your webcam.
Allows only the programs you trust to access your camera, blocking everything else.
Lets you manage notification preferences in Privacy Controls. A dedicated “Webcam Monitoring” table shows recognized programs and gives you control over which apps trigger alerts, and which don’t.
With the benefit of real-time alerts, Windows Webcam Monitoring gives you visibility into which programs are trying to access your devices. And when it’s something you don’t recognize, it may even help you stop spyware before it can spy on you.
At Malwarebytes, we believe security shouldn’t be complicated. Windows Webcam Monitoring is another step toward giving you simple, proactive protection that works automatically, so you can stay focused on pretty much anything else.
Ready to take control?
Update Malwarebytes for Windows, go to Privacy Controls and enable Webcam Monitoring.
Mozilla has published release notes for Firefox browser version 151.0, and this update includes several genuinely meaningful privacy and security improvements.
Three changes stand out in particular:
Stronger anti‑fingerprinting
Broader protection for local network access
More control over private sessions and permissions
Note that Mozilla says several Firefox 151 features are “part of a progressive roll out,” meaning they will appear for some users first and be expanded over time. So, you may not see all of them immediately.
Privacy
One of the more visible additions is a new “end private session” control in Private Browsing Mode. Instead of closing every private window to clear your traces, you now get a dedicated fire‑icon button next to the address bar that wipes the current private session’s data and immediately starts a fresh one.
End private session button
Under the hood, this clears the usual private browsing artifacts for that session, including history, cookies, cached files, and other site data that would normally disappear only when the last private window closes.
For people who routinely mix normal and private windows, this is safer and less error‑prone than hunting down every private tab before you walk away from the machine.
Firefox 151 also tightens its defenses against browser fingerprinting in the default “Standard” Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) mode. Mozilla says Firefox now limits the amount of device and browser information exposed to websites in a way that reduces the number of uniquely identifiable users by about 14% overall, and by roughly 49% on macOS.
This makes it harder for trackers to pick you out of the crowd, especially on platforms with fewer users to begin with (like certain macOS configurations). This reduces the privacy risk surface by default, which makes it harder for phishing and landing pages that redirect visitors to “categorize” you.
Another important change is Firefox’s “local network access restrictions,” which are now rolling out to all users, not just those who turned Enhanced Tracking Protection to Strict.
This means that when a website wants to communicate with devices on your local network, or with apps and services running on your machine, Firefox now asks for permission first. Chrome and Edge have been rolling out similar permission prompts.
The most notable example is CVE‑2026‑8953, a sandbox escape due to a use‑after‑free in the Disability Access APIs component. While there are currently no reports of in‑the‑wild exploitation for this specific bug at the time of writing, this is the kind of bug cybercriminals love.
A use-after-free (UAF) is a software memory vulnerability where a program attempts to access a memory location after it has been freed. If the program fails to clear the pointer to that freed memory, attackers can manipulate the error to crash the system or execute arbitrary code. A memory corruption leading to a sandbox escape is exactly the kind of link attackers want to complete a browser exploit chain.
How to update
If you’re running Firefox in a home or small‑office environment, we recommend updating to Firefox 151 as soon as possible to get the fingerprinting protections, local network access prompts, and security patches.
To update Firefox:
Open Firefox
Click the menu (three stacked lines) in the upper-right corner
Go to Help > About Firefox
Firefox will automatically check for updates and begin downloading them
Restart the browser when prompted to complete the update
Once your Firefox browser has been updated, it will show a green checkmark along with the message: “Firefox is up to date.”
Let’s face it, an incognito window can only do so much.
Breaches, dark web trading, credit fraud. Malwarebytes Identity Theft Protection monitors for all of it, alerts you fast, and comes with identity theft insurance.
For years, civil society organizations, workers, journalists, and human rights experts have warned that major technology companies risk enabling grave human rights abuses when they provide cloud computing, AI, and surveillance infrastructure to governments implicated in violations of international and humanitarian law. While many companies pay lip service to evaluating customers and contracts for human rights implications (lip service Exhibit A: Palantir!), too often those processes fail to provide any meaningful accountability when their standards are not met or are simply ignored. But recent developments at Microsoft suggest that accountability for failing to uphold the human rights standards that a company itself sets, even if incomplete, is possible.
According to recent reporting, Microsoft’s Israel chief has departed amid an escalating ethical controversy surrounding the company’s business relationships with the Israeli Ministry of Defense. The move follows months of scrutiny, internal dissent, and sustained pressure from inside the organization along with press and civil society, especially after a report by The Guardian revealed that Microsoft technologies were used in systems connected to mass surveillance and military targeting operations in Gaza in ways that appeared to violate Microsoft’s own standards. This did not happen overnight.
In September 2025, Microsoft reportedly suspended certain services after initial investigations raised serious concerns about how its cloud and AI infrastructure may have been used. That alone distinguished Microsoft from many of its peers. Rather than simply dismissing mounting concerns or hiding behind vague claims of neutrality, Microsoft appeared to recognize that providing technology in conflict settings creates real human rights responsibilities. Now, after additional investigation and continued public scrutiny, it appears the company has taken another step, one that should send a strong signal to others that violating Microsoft’s human rights commitments could cost you your job. This is important.
There is still much more Microsoft should do, of course. The company has yet to fully disclose the scope of its findings, explain exactly which services were suspended, or clarify what safeguards remain in place to prevent its technologies from contributing to human rights abuses in the future. We shouldn’t have to infer the connection between this employment action and the company’s investigation.
Just prior to reports that Microsoft had fired its Israel Country General Manager, EFF joined Access Now, Amnesty International, Fight for the Future, and 7amleh in a joint May 7, 2026 letter to Microsoft leadership calling on the company to publicly release the findings of its investigation, suspend business relationships tied to serious human rights abuses, and implement meaningful safeguards to prevent its technologies from contributing to further harm. The letter detailed allegations regarding Microsoft’s reported provision of Azure cloud and AI services to Israeli military and intelligence units involved in surveillance and targeting operations, while also pressing the company to take concrete human rights due diligence measures going forward. Those demands remain urgent, even as Microsoft appears to be taking some of the steps we urged.
But even as we push for more, it is important to recognize when a company takes steps in the right direction. Because this is what it means to put human rights commitments into practice. It means acknowledging that human rights policies are not just branding exercises or transparency reports. It means accepting that companies providing cloud infrastructure and AI services have responsibilities when credible evidence emerges that their technologies may be enabling violations of international law. And it means taking concrete action when those risks become known.
The allegations facing Microsoft are serious. Human rights organizations and investigative reporting have documented claims that Microsoft Azure services were used by Israeli military and intelligence units to process large-scale surveillance data, support AI-assisted targeting systems, and sustain military cloud infrastructure during the war in Gaza. The concerns raised extend beyond ordinary business risk; they implicate potential complicity in violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.
Faced with these allegations, Microsoft could have chosen the path many tech companies take: deny everything, attack critics, suppress worker dissent, and continue business as usual. Instead, the company appears to have begun responding to the evidence.
Technology companies are not powerless bystanders. Cloud providers and AI companies make choices every day about who gets access to their infrastructure, under what conditions, and with what oversight. When companies claim to uphold human rights principles, those commitments should have operational consequences. Too many companies, in both international and domestic policing contexts, provide technology to institutions that violate people’s human rights and civil liberties, then fall back on the claim that they are merely providing a service that their customers can use how they see fit. This is an ethical failing that falls short of most companies’ publicly expressed commitments. Microsoft’s recent actions suggest that sustained public pressure, worker organizing, investigative journalism, and civil society advocacy can force even the world’s largest technology companies to respond.
Google and Amazon should especially see this as a clear example to follow. Both companies also provide services to the Israeli Ministry of Defense and have faced yearsofcriticism over those contracts and services, including from EFF. Yet neither has demonstrated the level of responsiveness or accountability that Microsoft has shown. If Microsoft can suspend services, investigate allegations, and make leadership changes amid mounting evidence and ethical concerns, then other cloud giants can no longer pretend that meaningful action is impossible.
The technology industry has spent years insisting that ethics and human rights matter. The real test has always been whether those principles survive when profits, government contracts, and geopolitical pressure are on the line. Microsoft’s recent steps are not the end of that story, but they may mark the beginning of what real accountability can look like.
We’re looking at you, Amazon and Google. If Microsoft can do it, why can’t you?
If you’re worried about deepfake likenesses of yourself showing up online, you’re not alone; YouTube is worried for you. It wants to protect you by having you upload a selfie video and government ID to its site.
The idea is that the video giant will use its own AI to patrol the service for fake videos using your likeness. In exchange, you get the chance to have them taken down.
This isn’t available for everyone, though. It’s for celebs, those in vulnerable jobs, and now, most YouTube creators.
YouTube has been working on this concept, which it calls its “likeness detection” system, since it first floated the idea publicly in September 2024. That December, it launched a partnership with the Creative Artists Agency that saw it using the technology with sporting and entertainment figures.
In October last year, it expanded likeness detection to cover more creators, and then in March it expanded it again to cover politicians and journalists. And last month, it widened the net again, offering the service to Hollywood celebs. They can use it regardless of whether they have a YouTube account, it added.
Now, in its latest move, anyone 18 or older with a selfie and ID can sign up. At least in theory, as it hasn’t rolled out to everyone yet. It’s also for faces only; AI-generated voice clones are another problem entirely.
The privacy risk
Privacy advocates warned that YouTube’s likeness detection system could normalize handing biometric data to large tech platforms, even if YouTube says the data is only used to improve likeness detection models with creator permission.
On the help page for the likeness detection service, YouTube says creators can separately choose whether their face and voice templates are used to improve its likeness detection models.
“When you sign up for Likeness detection, you also have the option to allow YouTube to use your face and voice templates to develop and improve likeness detection models. This helps us build better, more accurate likeness detection technologies.”
Adding:
“You can opt out of YouTube’s use of this data for development and improvement of likeness models at any time.”
YouTube supports legislation intended to tackle deepfakes, such as the NO FAKES and TAKE IT DOWN acts. These are designed to help stop the misappropriation of someone’s image online. TAKE IT DOWN, which became law a year ago, focuses purely on “nonconsensual intimate imagery.” But that doesn’t cover other kinds of deepfakes, such as fake politicians or celebrity endorsements. Those are becoming increasingly common. NO FAKES, which hasn’t yet become law, is far broader in scope, assigning people federal rights over their own image.
So is it worth the trade?
Deepfakes, intimate and otherwise, are definitely a threat, especially for YouTubers who become popular. And the barrier to entry is lowering all the time. Google’s own DeepMind researchers found most generative AI misuse isn’t sophisticated; it’s mundane likeness manipulation by anyone with a browser.
So do you hand over your face and government ID for your protection, to a company whose broader data collection practices have faced years of scrutiny, and hope its policies don’t change? Or do you skip it and hope that the deepfake merchants don’t decide to target you?
Creators commenting on YouTube’s video revealing the service six months ago were less than impressed. One commenter said:
“I was 100% on board, up until the ID upload. That makes me very uncomfortable.”
Echoing several others who complained that it’s difficult to get takedown requests actioned, another added:
“If YouTube actually acted upon these kinds of reports, then I’d be more in favour of this.”
Whether you decide to sign up for the service or not, just be sure to do it with your eyes open.
Someone’s watching your accounts. Make sure it’s us.
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