Advisor to Europe’s top court backs antitrust watchdogs looking at privacy

Don’t rush generative AI apps to market without tackling privacy risks, says UK watchdog

The UK’s data protection watchdog has fired its most explicit warning shot yet at generative AI developers — saying it expects them to address privacy risks before bringing their products to market. In a blog post trailing remarks the Information Commissioner’s Office’s (ICO) exec director of regulatory risk, Stephen Almond, will make at a conference later […]

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Google delays EU launch of its AI chatbot after privacy regulator raises concerns

Google delays EU launch of its AI chatbot after privacy regulator raises concerns

Google has delayed a planned launch of its generative AI chatbot, Bard, in the European Union this week, according to the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) — the tech giant’s lead data protection authority in the region. The development, first reported by Politico, comes long after OpenAI launched a free research preview (November 2022) of […]

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Spotify updates its home screen with new discovery feeds for music and podcasts

Spotify fined in Sweden over GDPR data access complaint

Music streaming giant Spotify is facing a fine of around €5 million ($5.4M) in Sweden years after it was accused of breaching the data access rights of users in the European Union by not providing full information about personal data it processes in response to individual requests. While the size of the fine is unlikely […]

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Meta launches Sphere, an AI knowledge tool based on open web content, used initially to verify citations on Wikipedia

Meta to let users refuse its cross-site tracking following German antitrust intervention

Meta has been dragged kicking and screaming into another notable privacy concession in Europe: The German Federal Cartel Office (FCO) has announced a new account center incoming which will see the tech giant provide users of its social networking services with a greater degree of choice over whether they allow it to combine data on […]

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Zoom brings local data storage to paying European customers

Zoom brings local data storage to paying European customers

Zoom has announced a slew of privacy-focused features and services, as the video communication company looks to appease customers concerned about where their data resides. With Europe pushing a digital sovereignty agenda, U.S. companies have been clambering to convince customers across the continent that they’re serious about handing over more control around data storage and […]

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Germany’s antitrust watchdog questions the future of behavioral advertising

Germany’s antitrust watchdog questions the future of behavioral advertising

Germany’s antitrust watchdog made some interesting comments vis-a-vis the programmatic advertising market yesterday — which question the appropriateness and sustainability of the (still dominant) tracking-and-profiling ad targeting business model. In a statement accompanying publication of a sectoral report (the full report is here in German), the Federal Cartel Office’s (FCO) president, Andreas Mundt, wrote: We […]

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Amazon’s Echo Show adds more accessibility features, including ‘Gestures’ and text-to-speech

Amazon settles with FTC for $25M after ‘flouting’ kids’ privacy and deletion requests

Amazon will pay the FTC a $25 million penalty as well as “overhaul its deletion practices and implement stringent privacy safeguards” to avoid charges of violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act to spruce up its AI. Amazon’s voice interface Alexa has been in use in homes across the globe for years, and any parent […]

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With Project Clover, TikTok touts new EU data privacy and security efforts

TikTok’s lead privacy regulator in Europe takes heat from MEPs

MEPs in the European Parliament took the opportunity of a rare in-person appearance by Ireland’s data protection commissioner, Helen Dixon, to criticize the bloc’s lead privacy regulator for most of Big Tech over how long it’s taking to investigate the video-sharing social media platform TikTok. This concern is the latest expression of wider worries about […]

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Proton launches family subscription plan for privacy app suite starting at $20 per month

Proton launches family subscription plan for privacy app suite starting at $20 per month

Privacy-centric software maker Proton has launched a new family plan starting at $19.99 (€19.99) per month, giving up to six family members access to its entire application suite. The move comes as the Swiss company looks to bolster its paying subscriber base and lock more people into its growing ecosystem of products. Founded in 2014, […]

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Meta ordered to suspend Facebook EU data flows as it’s hit with record €1.2BN privacy fine

Meta ordered to suspend Facebook EU data flows as it’s hit with record €1.2BN privacy fine

It’s finally happened: Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, has been hit with a formal suspension order requiring it to stop exporting European Union user data to the US for processing. The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) announced today that Meta has been fined €1.2 billion (close to $1.3BN) — which the Board confirmed […]

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