Senators Ron Wyden and Edward Markey sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg demanding answers about privacy and safety risks tied to Meta's AI glasses, citing reports of covert filming, harassment and contractors reviewing footage of people undressing. They asked Meta detailed questions about accidental recording, tampering with recording indicators, blurring of faces and license plates, data access by employees and contractors, and whether human rights due diligence was done before launch, with a response deadline of November 26.
engadget.com
· 2026-10-30
General Motors has settled a lawsuit from 35 state attorneys general and Washington, D.C. over its OnStar Smart Driver program, agreeing to pay $220 million. Investigators found GM tracked driving behavior like speeding and hard braking from millions of customers between 2016 and 2024 and sold that data to brokers for insurance purposes, often without clear consent, and sometimes continued selling data on drivers it had mistakenly told were unenrolled. As part of the settlement, GM must limit data collection, undergo privacy audits, and add dealership training.
engadget.com
· 2026-10-30
A group of U.S. senators has launched an inquiry into Meta's smart glasses, seeking information on whether the company assessed potential human rights violations tied to the devices. The inquiry centers on due diligence Meta may or may not have conducted before releasing the product.
gizmodo.com
· 2026-10-29
A developer published 'dontallow', a small Swift utility that automatically clicks 'Don't Allow' on macOS's recurring 'find devices on local networks' prompt. The tool runs with no CPU usage while idle and persists across reboots, requiring a single Swift file and no external dependencies. According to the creator, the prompt resurfaces repeatedly because Chromium-based browsers like Chrome, Brave, Edge and Arc relaunch from randomized temp paths each time, causing macOS to treat them as new apps needing a fresh permission decision.
github.com
· 2026-10-29
General Motors has agreed to pay $220 million to settle claims from a coalition of 36 state attorneys general that it illegally sold driving and location data to brokers. The data, gathered through GM's now-discontinued Smart Driver program, allegedly reached insurers who used it to raise some customers' premiums, and states say drivers weren't properly informed they were enrolled. GM must now limit data collection and get explicit consent from drivers going forward.
theverge.com
· 2026-10-29
Efforts by lawmakers to ban or restrict virtual private networks have made circumvention tools harder to access, but have not succeeded in eliminating their use entirely, according to the report. Users continue finding workarounds even where VPNs face legal or technical crackdowns.
gizmodo.com
· 2026-10-29
Dayton's city council voted on August 25 to suspend Flock's license plate reader program amid privacy concerns, and the city told Flock on September 18 that no work orders should proceed. Despite this, Flock submitted a work order on September 17 and later reinstalled two cameras without city authorization, prompting Dayton's local government to post on Facebook on September 29 confirming residents had spotted the cameras and that police were ordered to remove them.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-10-29
Bluesky is preventing users from opening links to a leaked archive, published by Distributed Denial of Secrets, containing records on over 41,000 DHS employees and contractors, including names, contact details and internal group affiliations. The platform labels the links "malicious" and says it blocked access to the files rather than removing individual posts, citing violations of its rule against sharing personal contact information without consent. The DDoSecrets homepage itself remains accessible, and at least one third-party app built on Bluesky's network still allows the archive link to load without warning.
wired.com
· 2026-10-29
St. Lucie County, Florida found 12 unpermitted Flock Safety license-plate cameras during a countywide removal effort; five were later claimed by the Port St. Lucie and Fort Pierce police departments, while seven remain unclaimed and unexplained. County spokesperson Erick Gill said the county's priority was removal, not identifying owners, giving operators 30 days to take cameras down without facing questions.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-10-28
Discord will let search engines index conversations from its Discoverable Servers, communities with at least 1,000 members, of which it says there are about 63,000. The rollout starts November 16 with auto-generated Server Web Pages summarizing discussions, followed by mid-December indexing of eligible messages posted after that date; private servers, DMs and non-qualifying announcements are excluded.
bleepingcomputer.com
· 2026-10-28
Samsung and Google have not detailed how their upcoming Android XR smart glasses will address privacy concerns, even as rival makers introduce features like recording indicator lights and physical camera covers. Raven Resonance's Raven Prism glasses use both a light and a magnetic lens cover to signal when the camera is active, while HTC has pursued its own approach with the Vive Eagle glasses.
androidauthority.com
· 2026-10-28
A WIRED commentary argues that the modern internet has become toxic, citing Meta and Google settlements over privacy and mental health lawsuits, school smartphone bans, and new under-16 social media restrictions in several countries. It also points to generative AI flooding feeds with low-quality content and Oxford University Press naming 'rage bait' its 2024 word of the year amid reduced content moderation by platform owners.
wired.com
· 2026-10-28
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