This Tool Unmasks the Shadowy World of Ads that Track Your Location

It's usually very difficult to investigate the advertising industry. A new tool called DecryptAds aims to make it much easier with a massive dataset anyone can query.

DecryptAds — From Hidden Flows to Public Insight

DecryptAds maps programmatic ad-tech supply chains from public files — ads.txt, sellers.json, and related signals — so you can trace hidden flows and surface invalid supply.

Everyone knows your location

How I tracked myself down using leaked location data in the in-app ads, and what I found along the way.

Facebook snooped on users' Snapchat traffic in secret project, documents reveal | TechCrunch

A secret program called "Project Ghostbusters" saw Facebook devise a way to intercept and decrypt the encrypted network traffic of Snapchat users to study their behavior.

Ad Tech Says It’s Not In The Surveillance Business. Now Is The Time To Prove It | AdExchanger

ICE wants to know how ad tech and location data could aid investigations. The question is: Will ad tech finally draw a line – or cross one?

Exposing AdFection: How Discover-Tech Turned Targeted Ads Into a Pipeline for Zero-Click Mercenary Spyware - The Citizen Lab

This is the first-ever public confirmation of zero-click mercenary spyware delivered via targeted ads. We call the technique AdFection, and show how it was used to infect devices at Al Jazeera with Candiru’s spyware. We also uncover Discover-Tech, and show how the company helps mercenary surveillance vendors track and hack devices around the world.

bsky.app | WhoTracks.Me

Explore the tracking landscape of bsky.app on WhoTracks.Me, revealing the most common trackers like Sentry and their impact on privacy

The Tor Project | Privacy & Freedom Online

Defend yourself against tracking and surveillance. Circumvent censorship.

Japan police panel urges remote phone analysis to fight anonymous crime groups

TOKYO -- A Japan police advisory panel has proposed the early introduction of remote analysis of smartphones used by anonymous, fluid crime groups, de

Project 'Ghostbusters': Facebook secretly spied on Snapchat data, docs allege

New docs from a monopoly lawsuit shed light on Facebook's "Ghostbusters" project.

I Decompiled the White House's New App

The official White House Android app has a cookie/paywall bypass injector, tracks your GPS every 4.5 minutes, and loads JavaScript from some guy's GitHub Pages.

Privacy under attack: the NSA files revealed new threats to democracy

We now know the apparatus of repression has been attached to the democratic state, but our struggle for privacy is far from hopeless. By Eben Moglen

The Technology the Trump Administration Could Use to Hack Your Phone

Other Western democracies have been roiled by the use of spyware to target political opponents, activists, journalists, and other vulnerable groups. Could it happen here?

The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It (Published 2020)

A little-known start-up helps law enforcement match photos of unknown people to their online images — and “might lead to a dystopian future or something,” a backer says.

Facebook snooped on Snapchat, Amazon, and YouTube user data, documents reveal

"Project Ghostbusters" lies at the core of it all.

Revealed: how Russia uses mobile ‘super-app’ Max to spy on its citizens

Research shows tens of millions of people are being forced to use platform that amounts to ‘backdoor’ on their device