A TikTok class-action complaint in California accuses the social app of collecting mass data from iPhone users by capturing keystrokes when users visit outside websites via TikTok’s browser. Concern is that keyboard inputs, including for passwords and credit card information are accessible to TikTok. The company has lately been raising concerns of EU and US regulators for its data practices.
Tinder, the dating app owned by Match Group, has been sued under Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) alleging it violated the law by compiling and storing faceprints without notifying app users. Google is facing a similar class action in Louisiana that claims it violated a state statute that’s similar to BIPA by collecting and selling biometric data of state residents. There is also a proposed class action in Illinois against Subaru that alleges car models with its DriverFocus facial recognition function violate BIPA because the tool collects and stores... Read More >
Saudi Arabia’s data authority has published draft amendments to its Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL) for comments this month in preparation for changes to go into effect this spring. This includes major changes to make laws more business friendly. The Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA) changes include allowing data transfers to jurisdictions that ensure appropriate privacy protection; allowing legitimate interest as a basis for processing non-sensitive data, including for location data; and a right to individual data portability.
BrightEdge reports that, despite huge growth, AI search engines still provide less than 1% of website referral traffic. You might think that’s a reason to ignore your ranking in AI search engines, but BrightEdge argues those rankings are still important because the main role of AI search is discovery, not referrals. Seems like a testable hypothesis. What we know for certain is that over-all traffic has dropped as users switch from traffic-generating traditional search to traffic-stifling AI search engines.