Mozilla Firefox Slated To Block All Trackers: Crowd Goes Wild

Alert The Media: Lawrence Abrams, writing at Bleeping Computer, reports on new security/privacy decisions at Mozilla Foundation targeting user securiity & privacy of the organization's Firefox browser: of which, is apparently slated to block all tracking bits... I'll believe it when I see it.

"According to Mozilla's announcement, enabling the Slow-Loading Trackers blocker will improve page performance while browsing the web as tracking scripts that take longer than 5 seconds will be blocked. If you wish to block cross-site tracking cookies, you would also want to make sure that the Third-Party Cookies and All Detected Trackers settings are enabled as well." - via Lawrence Abrams, writing at Bleeping Computer

Bye-Bye, DNA - Hello GSK (and others)

via The Outline's author, Paris Martineau, comes this tale of opt-in/opt-out, GlaxoSmithKline 23andMe. and of course, The Goods - , your DNA. Of which, results in a nagging question: Why would I (or you for that matter), agree to hand over my uniquely identifying DNA data to a commercial enterprise (that only answers to it's shareholders, and only has it's best interests in mind) to use as they see fit? Oh, and a couple of other questions: Do you trust a big-pharma corporation with your own personal Map of Life? What about the future use of that data, once it's in the slipstream of artificially intelligent genetic-testing-reliant health insurance companies? Food for Thought or just Paranoia? You be the judge; after all, it's your DNA, right?

"In short, most — if not all — of the information 23andMe has on its users has probably been shared with someone that isn’t 23andMe itself, and money might have even changed hands. Which is all perfectly within the company’s rights to do, since they agreed to it (probably blindly) when they signed up." - via The Outline author Paris Martineau in the well crafted post 'How To Sign Away The Rights To Your DNA'

EDPB To ICANN: No Can Do

In one of the more amusing (El Reg is more often than not, amusing...) article titles to date: Kieren McCarthy's 'ICANN't get no respect: Europe throws Whois privacy plan in the trash' let's us know - whilst mincing few words - of the apparent ineptitude of current ICANN efforts to align WHOIS with European privacy concerns (via a correspondence from the European Data Protection Board (EDPB)). I Say, it's timee to create another study ICANN! ICANN's repsonse? See ICANN 's General Counsel and Secretary John O. Jeffrey's blog post. Perhaps it's time for an ICANNexit...

'Despite existing solely to develop rules for the internet's underlying infrastructure and possessing a $100m annual budget, ICANN has put itself in the position where it has effectively outsourced decisions over the critical Whois service to a group of bureaucrats in Brussels.' - via Kieren McCarthy, writing at El Reg

The Supremes, Warrants Required

via the prolific Cyrus Farivar (author of Habeas Data), whilst opining at our beloved Ars Technica, elaborates upon the 2018/06/22 decision by our United States Supreme Court. In which, Cyrus details the decision SCOTUS has come to, regarding the application of a warrant standard upon public law enforcement agencies whence those agencies are focused upon cell-site location data search. Certainly, more than most, Cyrus' piece on the decsision is a Monday Must Read and a victory of sorts for Privacy Advocates nationwide!

Artificial Intelligence, The Facial Recognition Debacle →

via Ben Coxworth, writing at NewAtlas, comes a fascinating discussion of an AI duel, of sorts. Squarely ensconced in the facial recognition arena, this is a story you won't want to miss. Today's Must Read!

'As concerns over privacy and data security on social networks grow, U of T Engineering researchers led by Professor Parham Aarabi (ECE) and graduate student Avishek Bose (ECE MASc candidate) have created an algorithm to dynamically disrupt facial recognition systems.' posted by Marit Mitchell, University of Toronto, U of T Engineering News

EFF Releases New PrivacyBadger, Now at Version 2018.5.10 →

via Martin Brinkmann, writing at GHacks, comes a report detailing the release of the most recent version of PrivacyBadger crafted by developers at Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Now at Version 2018.5.10, PrivacyBadger will protect you from web tracking by (for example) the borderline-nefarious-link-shimmming operators at Facebook Inc. (Nasdaq: FB). Enjoy the Protection!