A new privacy feature in Apple’s pending update has online publishers and mobile ad companies worried vast numbers of users will opt to block ads. iOS 14 has a pop-up notifying users when an app wants to track them, and requires their opt-in to allow it.
Consumers are concerned, confused and apprehensive about how businesses use their data, according to the 2020 Consumer Trust and Data Privacy Report released by Privitar. Citing a need for businesses to take a leadership role and build brand loyalty by protecting customers, Privitar’s announcement indicates that nearly half surveyed said they would not share sensitive data; a third said they did not read privacy notices; and as few as 21% said they would be willing share health data for contract tracing purposes because of privacy concerns.
Et tu, Fluffy? No one really thinks a cat is behind the notorious “meow” attacks on misconfigured cloud databases, but it’s 2020 so anything is possible. We do know that more than 25,000 Elasticsearch and MongoDB databases have been wiped, up from an estimated 1,500 barely one month ago. That’s one busy kitty unless she’s attracted some copycats.
In a follow-up to their January report, the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority raised the number of concerns they have with Privacy Sandbox to 79. Among other issues, they adopted the privacy concerns raised by another U.K. regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office. Google’s recent decision to shift third-party cookie deprecation to next year might mean they saw this coming.