Privacy | The Verge

Meta’s historic loss in court could cost a lot more than $375 million

2026-05-02T14:24:39-04:00

Mark Zuckerberg. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez won a historic sum of $375 million in a landmark child safety case against Meta earlier this year. But the next stage of the fight could be even more consequential for Meta and the social media industry at large.

Beginning Monday, attorneys for Meta and New Mexico will return to a Santa Fe courthouse for a three-week public nuisance trial, where they'll argue over the changes the AG wants the judge to order Meta make to Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Those changes include adding age verification for New Mexico users, prohibiting end-to-end encryption for users under 18 and capping their use to 90 …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Congress keeps kicking surveillance reform down the road

2026-04-30T16:59:58-04:00

Congress has reauthorized Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act - but only for another 45 days. The extension is meant to give legislators more time to negotiate reforms to the controversial wiretapping bill. If the past few weeks are any indication of how future debates will go, however, we're in for a bumpy ride.

The House renewed Section 702 with minor reforms on Wednesday evening. The bill didn't include the hotly debated warrant requirement, but it did feature a provision prohibiting the Federal Reserve from issuing Central Bank Digital Currencies, which Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) described as a nonstar …

Read the full story at The Verge.

You can get dragged into a police investigation by proximity alone — for now

2026-04-28T14:40:00-04:00

A years-old bank heist may soon have major privacy implications for every American who owns a cellphone. On Monday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Chatrie v. United States, a case involving police's use of controversial "geofence warrants" to find and arrest Okello Chatrie, the suspect of a 2019 bank robbery outside Richmond, Virginia. At stake is how private your location data - and any other information you store with a large tech company - actually is.

Chatrie was tracked down via the Location History feature on Google Maps, which can identify a person's location within three meters and refreshes every two minutes. Police served G …

Read the full story at The Verge.

A new Republican privacy bill could be ‘worse than no standard at all’

2026-04-23T23:09:40-04:00

It would add protections for many states, but also likely strip some from others. | Image: The Verge, Getty Images

Congress is once again attempting to pass a national data privacy law. But while it would introduce new protections in some states, it would weaken privacy rights in others - and it's missing several elements that privacy advocates deem necessary.

The SECURE Data Act is the product of a Republican data privacy working group led by Rep. John Joyce (R-PA), who introduced the bill alongside House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY). The proposal would require companies to collect only the user data they really need to perform the tasks they promise, let users see what information websites have on them and request its delet …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The only way to fight deepfakes is by making deepfakes

2026-04-16T14:44:25-04:00

I was unsure if my parents would notice that the voice on the other end wasn't mine - or that it was mine, sort of, but it wasn't me. The voice said hello, asked my dad how he was doing, and asked again when he didn't respond quickly enough. "What is that, Gaby?" He realized something was wrong almost immediately. I explained I had tried to trick him and it clearly hadn't worked. "It didn't," he said. "It sounded like a robot."

It wasn't a perfect experiment. My parents were out of the country, which made for a shoddy connection. They were having lunch with friends, and the voice couldn't deal with crosstalk or delays in the audio - it trie …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Privacy advocates want Google to stop handing consumer data over to ICE

2026-04-15T12:53:00-04:00

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is asking the attorneys general of California and New York to investigate Google for deceptive trade practices, saying the tech giant fails to notify users before handing over their data to law enforcement agencies like ICE.

"For nearly a decade, Google has promised billions of users that it will notify them before disclosing their personal data to law enforcement," the letter says. But it didn't in the case of Amandla Thomas-Johnson, a PhD candidate at Cornell University who received a notice after Google handed his data over to ICE.

The EFF alleges that this isn't an isolated incident, and that "t …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Little Snitch’s software counter surveillance jumps from Mac to Linux

2026-04-10T15:41:43-04:00

The popular macOS app Little Snitch brought its network-monitoring tools over to Linux this week. In a blog post announcing the launch, one of the developers at Objective Development shared some early results from using the app on Linux: "On Ubuntu, I found 9 system processes making internet connections over the course of one week. On macOS, we counted more than 100."

While the Linux version of Little Snitch provides the same basic functionality for viewing and disabling unwanted connections, it's not exactly the same. Objective Development says it's "not a security tool," unlike the macOS version.

According to Objective Development, Lin …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Congress can finally close a mass surveillance loophole — but will they?

2026-04-10T11:37:28-04:00

A warrantless wiretapping authority that has facilitated surveillance for decades is up for renewal in Congress. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), last reauthorized in 2024, is set to expire on April 20th. A bipartisan coalition of progressive Democrats and members of the hard-right Freedom Caucus say it's long overdue for reform. But they're up against powerful figures in both parties who want to deliver a "clean" reauthorization, even as critics warn the rule is allowing President Donald Trump's administration to spy on anyone - even Americans.

Section 702, first enacted in 2008, formally allows for the surv …

Read the full story at The Verge.

OkCupid settles claims it shared user photos with a facial recognition company

2026-03-31T10:52:31-04:00

Dating app OkCupid agreed to settle claims from the Federal Trade Commission that it deceived millions of users by sharing their photos with a third-party facial recognition company without their consent.

OkCupid and parent company Match Group did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement, but instead promised not to make similar alleged misrepresentations in the future. According to the FTC complaint, after facial recognition company Clarifai reached out to one of OkCupid's founders in 2014, the app gave it access to nearly three million OkCupid user photos, alongside demographic and location data about users. That access violated Ok …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Returning from a humanitarian aid trip to Cuba, Americans have phones seized at US airport

2026-03-27T10:40:09-04:00

Members of a convoy that delivered humanitarian aid to Cuba were detained and interrogated by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) upon returning to the United States on a charter flight from Havana. Of the 20 US citizens who were pulled for secondary inspection at Miami International Airport on Wednesday morning, 18 had their phones and other devices seized by CBP, with little information given on whether and when they'll get them back.

The group was part of a larger coalition of activists who traveled in waves to Cuba as part of the Nuestra América Convoy, named after an essay by nineteenth-century Cuban intellectual José Martí criticizing …

Read the full story at The Verge.