Microsoft Hates Security, "Surveillance Wages" Are a Thing Now, FBI Recovered Signal Messages From Notification History, and More!
Our top stories this week:
- Microsoft unexpectedly banned the accounts of VeraCrypt and Wireguard, making it impossible for those developers to push updates to users
- Employers are using your personal data to figure out the lowest salary you’ll accept
- Little Snitch has been ported to Ubuntu by the developer
- FBI Extracts Suspect’s Deleted Signal Messages Saved in iPhone Notification Database
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Updates from the Team
Interview w/Cindy Cohn (EFF Executive Director)
Recently Nate had the opportunity to sit down (in person!) with Cindy Cohn, who's been the executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation since 2015 (and working with them long before that). We talked about how to build a healthy privacy community, how to build a sustainable activism rhythm and avoid burnout, and her insight into the overall surveillance landscape. The video premieres on Sunday, and her book Privacy's Defender is out now.
News
This week we only published one recap about dating app OkCupid and how they sold millions of user photos for facial recognition training data. If you're online dating, be sure to read more.
Fria Reyes
Sources
Microsoft Abruptly Terminated Accounts for VeraCrypt and WireGuard
Multiple popular open source projects - including VeraCrypt, WireGuard, Windscribe VPN and MemTest86 - suddenly reported this week that their accounts had been terminated with no warning. There seems to be a lot of conflicting information. Microsoft required developers to verify, but all these projects claim not to have received the notifications and the verification program appears closed. VeraCrypt reported being unable to appeal or contact a person while WireGuard said their appeal could take up to 60 days. Thankfully, today there was some good news: thanks to public pressure it appears Microsoft's executives have personally intervened to speed up the process and fix things.
Joseph Cox
Sergiu Gatlan
Employers are using your personal data to figure out the lowest salary you’ll accept
As surveillance progressively gets worse, of course we can expect everyone to continue trying their best to save as much money as possible. That now includes employers, who are increasingly using personal data and not performance, seniority, or qualifications to determine an employee's wages. We're already seeing this kind of stuff in gig economies, but the article says it could come to other areas like retail, healthcare, customer service, and logistics.
Little Snitch for Linux — Because Nothing Else Came Close
This article is very straightforward: the developer of Little Snitch - a popular network monitoring and firewall tool for Mac - has recently ported the software over to Linux. The tool is free to use and the kernal & UI componenets are open source while the backend is not. It was tested and developed on Ubuntu.
FBI Extracts Suspect’s Deleted Signal Messages Saved in iPhone Notification Database
We've known for some time that message notifications can be a risk. 404 Media reported last year how Apple and Google typically get a copy of notifications that can be retrieved with a court order. This case is new, however, in that the notifications were retrieved from the device even after the app had been removed and the messages themselves erased. Remember to mindful of your notification settings.
Joseph Cox
Forum Updates
