Peter Deacon had been a Pandora user for years, using Pandora’s free service. Then Pandora shared his private information, including his full name, his music preferences, and what he listened to, both on Facebook, and for anyone searching the Internet, Not cool, he thought, and sued for breach of privacy. But the Michigan high court ruled last week that because he doesn’t pay for the Pandora account, he is not a ‘customer’, and so not entitled to privacy protection.

Now here’s a novel idea: how about if your Internet service (ISP), telecom, or broadband provider had to get your permission before they could sell your information and data to third-parties? That’s just what FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is proposing (full text of proposal below). What, you thought it was already that way? Think again, and the Internet, broadband and telecom providers are fighting it.

You know that old adage, that something is only as strong as its weakest link? Well, private Facebook groups are only as private as the admins keep them. Which means that all it takes is for one admin to accidentally (or intentionally) make the group public for a period of time, during which people who aren’t members of the closed Facebook group can see both the members, and what they posted. So how safe is it to rely on the private, closed status of a Facebook group? Not very, it turns out.

We’ve always said that submitting your DNA for DNA analysis at services like 23andMe, and AncestryDNA by Ancestry.com, is a bad idea, because regardless of what ‘good’ can come from it, the potential for bad is just too great. Having unknown actors have access to your DNA information is a violation of privacy of the most basic, and intimate, kind. Sadly, we were right. Law enforcement agencies are now using what is known as “familial DNA search” to go on DNA fishing expeditions, searching for near matches to DNA found at a crime scene.

Sick of the ads by Adblade on your iPhone, Android device, or on websites on your computer? You’re not alone. In fact, we get a lot of people searching for how to remove ads by Adblade. Here is how to opt-out of advertising by Adblade, and block ads by Adblade.

With Google’s announcement that businesses can now upload your email address to Google so that they can target advertising to you even more, a lot of you have been asking us “how do I stop Google ads from following me?” Here’s how to stop Google ads from following you around the Internet.

Today Google rolled out a new feature for their Google Adwords advertisers (the businesses you see advertising in the “Ads by Google”): “give us the email addresses on your mailing list and we’ll target ads to them.” Google calls this “Customer Match”. We call it “email privacy fiasco”. Here’s why.

As we mentioned in our “what’s new in iOS 9” article, the “improvements” that Apple added to Siri in iOS 9 may be a privacy nightmare (even more than previously).

This is a continuation of the full text of the iOS 9 User Agreement. To read Part 1, go here.

Thinking of upgrading to iOS 9? Here’s what you are agreeing to? Already upgraded to iOS 9? We bet that you didn’t read the entire TOS, because, let’s face it, it was long, and in tiny chunks. Here’s what you agreed to. Be sure to stay tuned for our upcoming article on the privacy nightmare that are the ‘new and improved’ Siri search functions!

By now you may have heard about the Charlotte Proudman and Alexander Carter-Silk brouhaha. If you haven’t, here’s the bottom line: Charlotte Proudman, an up and coming young barrister in the UK, sent a LinkedIn connect request to Alexander Carter-Silk, a prominent, senior intellectual property solicitor. Carter-Silk accepted her request, and in his reply, commented on her LinkedIn profile picture. That’s when all hell broke loose, with Proudman attacking Carter-Silk, saying she found the compliment offensive, and making their private In-Mail public – very public.

Few people aren’t aware of at least one of the Hillary Clinton, Sony Pictures, or American Egg Board email scandals. But what should we learn from them, and has anybody actually learned from them?

Earlier this year Firefox ramped up its speculative pre-connections ‘feature’ (which some call “predictive preconnections”), so that when you even just hover over a link or thumbnail, Firefox may start preloading certain parts of the linked page (this is different from prefetching). Here’s how to disable it.

Stringray device phone technology tricks your cellphone into connecting to the Stingray ‘phone tower’ (your phone doesn’t realize it’s connecting to a cell phone simulator interceptor rather than your provider’s tower – it’s the ultimate in cell phishing), and then sucks down all of your International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) information, including not only your call details, but even your text messages, email, and other private information. (This is also known as an IMSI catcher.) Now being deployed by local police and sheriff departments, these cell phone interception and eavesdropping devices are not only legal, but they require no warrant, and their use is jealously protected by the Feds.

Both the Federal Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee heard today from FBI Director James Comey, and from Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates, that they need a backdoor (or a “front door”, as Comey calls it) that allows them to decrypt encrypted email and messages in order to fight terrorism.