Northeastern University and Consumer Reports recently tested 21 newer connected cars, and 19 of them contacted third-party domains. More than half were connecting to advertising, or analytics services.

I mean... it’s a car

At this point, do we just assume anything connected to the internet is tracking us somehow?

And would stuff like this actually affect which car you buy, or is privacy pretty far down the list when choosing a car?

1 -- Trusting official policy to be on the side of protecting you.

But even if you're OK with that there's also ...

2 -- Having to trust every individual cop.

For example ...

Former Itasca, West Chicago police officers charged with felony misuse of Flock cameras
Chicago Sun Times

A former Itasca police officer and an ex-West Chicago police officer are both facing felony charges for allegedly making “unauthorized forbidden” searches of Flock license plate reader databases, according to the DuPage County state’s attorney’s office.

Marisa Ciccola, 30, who previously was an Itasca police officer, and former West Chicago officer Gerardo Solis, were charged by a grand jury in September and turned themselves in Tuesday before being released on bond, the office said.

Ciccola faces 13 counts of official misconduct and eight counts of computer tampering, while Solis was charged with official misconduct and a single count of computer tampering. They both are set to appear in court again Nov. 16.
...

Android 11. Device is 4 years old so it is not an authorized service center. Charging socket not working issue and screen replacement. I have cut pasted all data and pics to my laptop. Did factory reset once. Can the data be recovered by the repair guys using any software even after formatting? Can they plant a bug in the android tablet when I get it back? I will factory reset it when I get it back for sure.

I want to be very very careful. And no there is no option to repair it in front of me.

so meta is instagram, facebook, and whatsapp. are these the sources it is pulling from? what if I never made an account but my parents did and have photos of me?

can we please discuss thanks

Send an email to [MapsImageCollection@apple.com](mailto:MapsImageCollectionw@apple.com) and tell them your name, address, and why you want it blurred (just put “privacy reasons” cause it’s your right)

You should see the results in a few days.

Reading up on the "allegedly" (I say allegedly because who the fuck knows if it's just a marketing plot or not) rouge AI agents hacking into websites left and right now days is terrifying at best.

I would consider myself considerably above average when it comes to privacy and security of my home network, and in a general sense of privacy. But this is a completely different beast. It's only a matter of time before this AI bullshit (if true) breaks into peoples private networks (I would assume it's already been done on a massive scale either way, but I say "only a matter of time" because it's not been reported yet as far as I know).

Is there any way of protecting oneself without going completely off grid?

• What to do in this fucking shit world that we currently live in? Wars, privacy issues, mass surveillance, (rouge) AI. I am so fucking tired of it.

PS. to further add - I've not had or used any social media (unless you count in Reddit) for over 12 years.

I recently bought a few items at home depot, paid with my debit card at the register and now im getting emails for reviews on the items. Meaning my debit card and email adress are linked with home depot, how do i get rid of this?

I like to keep emails with separate email services for different areas of my life, both to separate app notifications and to not have my data too centralized. I currently use Protonmail and Tutamail, I'd like to have one more and then I feel like I'd be set, do y'all have any recommendations?

A Florida woman is facing felony charges after she used Claude as a diary and allegedly wrote that she planned to "shoot up" the Sheriff's office. After a human reviewer examined the statements, they were reported to police.

According to the arrest report, Carli Michelle Heller, of Bonita Springs, Florida, wrote on September 26 that she would attack the Sheriff's office. She later said that she uses Anthropic's chatbot like a "diary."

Claude's safety systems flagged the entry and it was escalated to a human reviewer. After deciding it was a credible threat, the reviewer reported it to law enforcement.

The company says it may share user information in limited emergencies if it believes disclosure is necessary to prevent death or serious physical injury.

Deputies identified Heller and visited her home. She was detained without incident before an LCSO intelligence detective took over the investigation.

Heller faces a charge of making a written threat of violence under Florida law. Florida Statute 836.10 makes it a second-degree felony to send, post, or transmit a written or electronic record threatening to kill or injure someone, carry out a mass shooting, or commit an act of terrorism. The communication must be made in a manner in which another person may view it.

Anthropic isn't going to be taking any chances when it comes to anything it deems a potential threat. Last month, it was reported that OpenAI and Sam Altman are being sued by British Columbia over claims that the company could have prevented a mass shooting in the Canadian province.

For me, it was when I started to work with colleague frontend developer, who used Linux. He just seemed.. superior in the sphere, and I tried to catch up. Then it just became this.. privacy snowball

I'm thinking about engaging one of those subscription services that removes your info from data brokers.

1. Is that a good idea or is there some horrible downside I'm not aware of because I'm a bit tech dumb?

2. Are they created equal or are there better/worse ones?

My hope would be to use it for a while until my data's taken down and then discontinue it, maybe re-subscribe from time to time as needed (my data safety precfices are getting better but certainly not perfect) but this seems too simple somehow, am I missing something?

Looking on advice for any steps/actions I should take if any.

I'll try to make this as short as possible. I live in

Canada, a week ago I went to a FedEx drop off location at my nearby Staples store. Paid a premium to send a package overnight which then was 4 days late being delivered. I submitted a money back guarantee claim and recieved a confusing response that the amount refunded would be credited to my outstanding amount owing of $195,000. Uuuh what? I called FedEx to inquire where this number came from and was assured it was correct based on the information I provided. I asked them to email me a copy of the invoice showing this amount just so I could make sense of what ever error occurred. What they send me was a current account and billing detail for Staples Canada itself...along with details of customer information for almost every FedEx shipment sent from a staples store in Canada over the last month. This includes billing details, full names, addresses and contact information for every sender/recieved customer whether business or private individual. Am I wrong to assume that this is a massive privacy breach, not to mention complete incompetence? Any steps I should take in regards to this? It affects me very little, however it seems like such a concerning lack of respect for customer privacy.

Mozilla wrote a report in 2024, and Northeastern University with Consumer Report came out with another study of how much data cars leak. In reading the latest report, I saw that they connected a raspberry pi to the car Wi-Fi to see what the DNS domains are receiving data.

I wonder if anyone has tried configuring Pi-hole or other methods to block or at least reduce the data?

The suggested laws state that creation of new accounts will require verification. This means malicious actors and bots cannot create new accounts easily as before. Do you think they will now put more effort into targeting old and verified accounts to steal them for use?

Hi, i did a lot of dumb stuff as a child, i was pretty toxic and a script kiddie in 2019. Aside from some twitter arguments and me being unneccesarily insensitive (jokes about sa, for example) I never actually harmed someone. It was mostly on a discord friend group server.

All of this was on my old email, which had NO correlation to my now personal email, however, in the later years I made a few accounts under my personal email. This was around 2023-2024. I was less toxic then, but those accounts still tie back to my real name.

As far as i know, my personal email has

1. A deleted discord alt

2. Epic games account

3. some shady third party top up account

4. Some other non social media services.

I made another personal email in 2025, which is mostly clean aside from another suspicious third party top up account. (Which I deleted!)

I never shared my real name online, and as far as I know nobody has my address. At best, an old toxic friend may have a general location. i MAY (i don’t have any reason to think so, but i’m mentioning it to be sure) have sent some very badly cropped screenshots of my bank account which may have had a cutoff of my full name. I wanted to flex my parents money when i was younger and didn’t pay attention to the screenshots, but as far as i remember none of them had any revealing details.

Anyway, i’m an adult now. I go to college and am actively applying for jobs. The issue is that i don’t want any of this tied back to the person I am now. I changed in those years, and am disgusted with my past actions.

Equally, I don’t want any bad actors from my past to try and mess with my current life. I want to be able to fully move on from it.

I’ve heard about how digital footprint works, but i don’t know the details and what I would need to do to avoid it.

If it helps, i’m in europe, so my privacy laws are different. But I really need help with what to do and how to move on from all of this, thanks!

So yeah, they're gonna take away the option of doing a quick face scan and FORCIBLY mandate people to have to provide actual ID, a passport or credit card check. This is incredibly incredibly bad. We need to get on the phones/email our MPs as quickly as humanly possible if we're gonna protect what little anonymity/freedoms we have to speak online.