The UK Digital Minister announced the country’s Online Safety Bill has been strengthened to ensure users of pornography sites are 18 years or older. Companies that don’t apply stringent checks to ensure age verification can be subject to fines from the Office of Communications (Ofcom), which can include up to 10% of their annual worldwide turnover and/or being blocked from accessibility in the UK.
An employee class action brought against McDonald’s and its franchisees in Illinois was settled with a commitment by the company to pay between $40-$50 million. The suit alleged that the company violated Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) by collecting data without express written, informed consent.
CNET compared Android VPNs to determine which only require critical permissions,and which others put privacy at risk by making unnecessary requests. CNET editors considered Surfshark, ExpressVPN, NorvidVPN, and IPVanish best in class, and identified a number of others as dangerous to privacy. Further, CNET editors warn that Five Eyes (US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand)-based VPNs can come with backdoor access to data.
The U.S. Department of Justice has formally requested the sale of the Chrome browser among other measures following last August’s guilty verdict in its search advertising antitrust suit (not to be confused with last week’s guilty verdict in the adtech antitrust lawsuit). Google is asking for a much narrower focus on deals to be the default search engine for Apple, Mozilla and others. There will be a three-week hearing on the government’s proposals.