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Data broker SafeGraph cashes in by revealing who visits abortion clinics

For just $160, Vice’s Motherboard team bought a SafeGraph list of a weeks’ worth of data on location and length of stay for groups of people who visited Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics (and where they went afterward). To say this is sensitive information, given what looks like pending reversal of Roe v. Wade, is an understatement. What is safe to say is the people whose data was collected never consented to have information accrued by SafeGraph via software development kit code (SDK) data of ordinary-use apps (for weather information, prayer groups, etc.) brokered to buyers, including the US military. That SafeGraph data is an aggregate of device location and doesn’t name specific individuals is small comfort.

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Netherlands ACM investigating Match Group claim against Google Play

May 10, 2022

The investigation by Netherlands’ Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) was triggered by a complaint by Match Group (which owns Tinder and other dating apps). Match claims Google’s Android Play Store uses a dominant position to preclude use of other payment systems. Google, in a statement, says Match is eligible to use other (more expensive) options outside Google Play’s standard policies.

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IT’S THE LAW (05/10/2022)

May 10, 2022

The privacy implications and risks to individuals, should the US Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade abortion rights protection (as a document leaked this week indicates), could be huge according to legal experts – particularly since there’s no national privacy law. Not only would it put women looking to get abortions and clinicians performing abortions on the wrong side of the law, but it opens up a rat’s nest of opportunity for legal as well as backdoor data sharing and tracking of information on people and services. It would also... Read More >

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