Even the FBI says you should use an ad blocker

Even the FBI says you should use an ad blocker

This holiday season, consider giving the gift of security with an ad blocker. That’s the takeaway message from an unlikely source — the FBI — which this week issued an alert warning that cybercriminals are using online ads in search results with the ultimate goal of stealing or extorting money from victims. In a pre-holiday […]

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Adtech’s compliance theatre is headed to Europe’s top court

Adtech’s compliance theatre is headed to Europe’s top court

For those watching the slow motion unpicking of surveillance advertising in the European Union here’s a fresh development on the long and winding road to a long-overdue legal reckoning: Multiple grounds for appeal lodged by industry body, the IAB Europe, against a breach finding earlier this year against its self-proclaimed “best practice” framework for obtaining […]

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One year later, Apple’s privacy changes helped boost its own ads business, report finds

One year later, Apple’s privacy changes helped boost its own ads business, report finds

A new report examing the impact of Apple’s privacy feature, App Tracking Transparency, indicates Apple’s ads business appears to have financially benefitted as a result of the feature’s launch. Now over a year old, App Tracking Transparency, or ATT, reached mass adoption in June 2021, allowing for a comparative year-over-year analysis of the post-ATT mobile […]

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Security-as-code startup Jit comes out of stealth with $38.5M in seed funding

Ravel emerges from stealth with privacy-first data tools based on scalable homomorphic encryption

The world has gotten a lot more serious about privacy and data protection, but in many cases business models that rely on personalization of one kind or another have struggled to keep up. Today, a startup out of Paris called Ravel Technologies is emerging from stealth with an approach it believes could be the missing […]

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DuckDuckGo removes carve-out for Microsoft tracking scripts after securing policy change

DuckDuckGo removes carve-out for Microsoft tracking scripts after securing policy change

A few months on from a tracking controversy hitting privacy-centric search veteran, DuckDuckGo, the company has announced it’s been able to amend terms with Microsoft, its search syndication partner, that had previously meant its mobile browsers and browser extensions were prevented from blocking advertising requests made by Microsoft scripts on third party sites. In a […]

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Sensitive data ruling by Europe’s top court could force broad privacy reboot

Sensitive data ruling by Europe’s top court could force broad privacy reboot

A ruling put out yesterday by the European Union’s top court could have major implications for online platforms that use background tracking and profiling to target users with behavioral ads or to feed recommender engines that are designed to surface so-called ‘personalized’ content. The impacts could be even broader — with privacy law experts suggesting […]

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Seedtag, the ex-Googler-founded, cookie-free, AI-based adtech startup, taps $250M+ in funding

Seedtag, the ex-Googler-founded, cookie-free, AI-based adtech startup, taps $250M+ in funding

As regulation, platform dynamics and consumer choice continue to eat into the adtech stalwart known as cookies, it’s leaving a gap in the market for advertising solutions that can work well without relying on cookie functionality. Today, an adtech out of Spain that’s doing just this has raised a big round of funding to double […]

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Apple says Lockdown Mode in iOS 16 will help block government spyware attacks

Apple says Lockdown Mode in iOS 16 will help block government spyware attacks

Apple said Wednesday it will bring a new “Lockdown Mode” to its upcoming iPhone and Mac software that will switch off certain features aimed at helping targeted individuals combat government-grade spyware. The technology giant said the new feature is an “extreme optional protection” for device owners who are more likely to be targeted by nation […]

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Uh oh! European carriers are trying to get into ‘personalized’ ad targeting

Uh oh! European carriers are trying to get into ‘personalized’ ad targeting

As Google works on reconfiguring its adtech stack to move away from cookie-based ad targeting to something else that’s not yet fixed but which it claims will be better for individual web users’ privacy — and after Apple’s move last year to lock down third-party tracking of app users on iOS, also on a claim […]

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UK finally opens antitrust probe of Google’s role in the adtech stack

UK finally opens antitrust probe of Google’s role in the adtech stack

The U.K.’s competition watchdog has just announced another investigation into Google over potential antitrust abuses around adtech. This is the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) second probe of Google’s adtech practices — after it said it would investigate an ad deal between Google and Facebook referred to internally as ‘Jedi Blue’, back in March. (That […]

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