Topic: data collection
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Can Your Vibrator Be Hacked?
App-connected smart devices, including intimate items like sex toys, collect sensitive usage data and location information through their companion apps, raising significant privacy concerns. Manufacturers may sell this collected customer data to third-party brokers, who can combine it with other ...
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Urban VPN Accused of Secretly Harvesting AI Chat Data
The Urban VPN Proxy browser extension secretly harvested users' private AI chatbot conversations from platforms like ChatGPT, sending data to external servers even when the VPN was off, contradicting its privacy claims. This covert data collection, enabled by default with no user opt-out, affecte...
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Urgent AI Privacy Settings You Must Update Now
Using AI services like ChatGPT involves the comprehensive recording and analysis of your inputs, including questions, images, and ideas, to refine the AI and personalize its responses. This collected data serves a dual purpose: enhancing the AI's intelligence and tailoring interactions to maintai...
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Your Online Reservations Reveal Your Dining Secrets
OpenTable's premium service now uses AI to generate customer tags based on dining habits, such as drink preferences and spending patterns, drawing from past restaurant visits. The system collects data through integration with point-of-sale systems, tracking orders and payments, and allows diners ...
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FTC: Sendit app tricked kids and illegally harvested their data
The FTC alleges Sendit engaged in deceptive practices by creating fake messages to trick young users into purchasing subscriptions and misrepresenting a $9.99 weekly charge as a one-time fee. Sendit is accused of violating child privacy laws (COPPA) by collecting personal data from users under 13...
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TikTok's New Privacy Policy: 3 Major Data Collection Changes
TikTok's new U.S.-based ownership, including Oracle, has led to mandatory updated terms that grant the platform significantly broader data collection powers, such as precise geolocation tracking. The revised policy explicitly categorizes user interactions with AI features as collectible data, log...
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Chinese Smart Home Apps: Apple Privacy Labels Often Misleading
Smart home apps, especially from China, exhibit major transparency failures, with significant discrepancies between Apple's App Store privacy labels, their own privacy policies, and their actual data collection behavior, misleading consumers. These applications collect extensive sensitive data, i...
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Google's Nest Thermostats Still Collect Your Data
Google continues collecting detailed sensor data from older Nest Learning Thermostats even after disabling their remote control features, including temperature adjustments and occupancy detection. Security researcher Cody Kociemba discovered this through the FULU bounty program, where he built op...
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Police Privacy Limits: How Far Is Too Far?
Advanced surveillance tools like drones and license plate readers spark debate over public safety versus privacy, with critics highlighting risks of extensive data collection and insufficient oversight that disproportionately affect marginalized groups. Data security and control are major concern...
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AI Startups Seize Control of Their Data Destiny
Startups are increasingly collecting proprietary data directly from human experts, recognizing that superior training data leads to better AI performance, as seen with Turing Labs using GoPro footage from artists and professionals. Companies like Turing and Fyxer prioritize high-quality, curated ...
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Uber Launches AV Labs to Power Robotaxi Data Collection
Uber is launching "Uber AV Labs", a new division to collect real-world driving data using sensor-equipped cars and share it with over twenty self-driving partners, addressing a key industry bottleneck in data collection. The company is positioning itself as a data provider, not returning to bui...
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5 Ways to Feed Your AI Quality Data for Better Results
High-quality data is essential for successful AI outcomes, as poor data leads to poor results, making the right data assets critical as companies adopt AI technologies. Experts recommend focusing on key data that delivers the most impact, adopting deliberate data governance, and creating flexible...
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OpenAI's ChatGPT Browser Sparks Privacy Concerns
OpenAI's Atlas browser integrates ChatGPT to redefine web navigation, initially launching exclusively on Apple computers to challenge established browsers like Google Chrome. The browser features an "agentic mode" that autonomously performs tasks such as shopping and reservations, acting as a per...
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Decode Your Marketing Data for Better Results
Marketing teams are overwhelmed by vast data volumes but often lack the resources or expertise to extract actionable insights, hindering growth and campaign performance. Artificial intelligence is emerging as a potential equalizer, automating tasks like reporting and predictive analytics to help ...
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Coco Robotics launches AI lab led by UCLA professor
Coco Robotics has launched a new AI research facility to utilize five years of data from its delivery robots, aiming to advance full autonomy and reduce costs. The lab is led by Professor Bolei Zhou, whose expertise in computer vision and robotics aligns with Coco's goals, and he is expected to a...
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Partiful Exposed User Locations in Uploaded Photos
Partiful has become a leading social event planning app, surpassing Facebook in popularity due to its retro designs and easy RSVP system, earning it Google's best app of 2024 award. The app faced scrutiny over data privacy, as it failed to strip location metadata from user-uploaded photos, potent...
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Anker Pays Eufy Users to Share Videos for AI Training
Anker's Eufy security cameras launched a program paying users $2 per video of theft incidents to collect data for improving AI detection of package and vehicle crimes. The initiative encouraged staged and real theft footage, raising privacy concerns due to past security breaches in similar user-d...
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EPA Halts Climate Pollution Tracking: Who Will Take Over?
The EPA has ended its Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, dismantling a 15-year system that provided essential emissions data from major industrial sources for shaping environmental policies. Experts warn that this move undermines the ability to design effective climate strategies, as no substitute...
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Unlock Unforgettable Customer Experiences with AI and Data
Truly memorable customer experiences require a human-centric strategic vision, as technology and data are only effective when guided by clear processes, with organizational obstacles often being more significant than technological ones. The primary challenges in leveraging data and technology inc...
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Why Walmart Still Doesn't Accept Apple Pay
Walmart does not accept Apple Pay or any NFC-based contactless payments in its U.S. stores, instead promoting its own Walmart Pay QR code system. The primary reason for this policy is data collection, as Walmart's proprietary payment methods allow it to build detailed customer shopping profiles, ...
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Gemini Takes the Lead
Google possesses a leading AI model (Gemini 3), proprietary hardware (TPUs), and full-stack control, giving it a significant technological and efficiency advantage over competitors. A landmark deal with Apple will integrate Gemini into Siri, providing massive daily user distribution and data coll...
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How Quilt Conquered the Heat Pump's Biggest Problem
Quilt's new three-zone heat pump, backed by $20 million in funding, uses real-world performance data from its installed devices to solve a key efficiency problem in extreme weather. The system maintains high efficiency by using a larger copper coil and a precisely controlled compressor, allowing ...
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Unlock IT & OT Observability with Open-Source Zabbix
Zabbix is an open-source monitoring platform that provides unified visibility across IT and OT environments, enabling early detection of security incidents through performance anomalies. The platform offers flexible data collection, scalable architecture, and extensive alert customization with au...
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What Your Browser Reveals About You
Browser fingerprinting combines seemingly harmless data points like system language and screen resolution to create a unique profile that can identify and track you online, even when using privacy tools. This technique gathers dozens of device and software details, such as operating system, fonts...
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Datacurve Secures $15M to Challenge ScaleAI
Datacurve raised $15 million in Series A funding to provide high-quality, specialized data for AI training, with backing from investors including professionals at DeepMind and OpenAI. The company uses a bounty system to engage software engineers in creating complex datasets, focusing on user expe...
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Google Fined $425M in Landmark Privacy Violation Case
A federal jury ordered Google to pay $425 million for continuing to collect user data even after individuals disabled tracking features, marking one of the largest penalties for digital privacy violations. The class action lawsuit, representing about 98 million users, accused Google of unlawfully...
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From Firefighting to AI: A Founder's Gold Mine
Sunny Sethi founded HEN Technologies, applying his materials science expertise to develop high-efficiency firefighting nozzles that dramatically improve suppression while conserving water. The company's core innovation is an integrated, data-driven ecosystem where smart hardware collects real-tim...
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Disney to Pay $10M for Illegally Collecting Kids' Data on YouTube
Disney will pay $10 million to settle FTC allegations that it mislabeled children's content on YouTube, enabling illegal data collection from young viewers. The mislabeling bypassed YouTube's child privacy protections, violating COPPA by allowing targeted ads and data gathering without parental c...
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Marketing's Data Dilemma: Owning Customer Info and Its Risks
Modern marketing success requires a foundational understanding of data technology and governance, as using customer data legally and ethically is mandatory, not optional. Marketing departments, not just IT or legal, own and are accountable for the customer data they acquire, requiring them to und...
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Apeiron Labs Raises $29M for Ocean-Exploring Underwater Robots
The world's oceans remain poorly understood due to a critical data gap in the deep subsurface, which impacts industries from fishing to national security. Apeiron Labs is addressing this with a fleet of low-cost, compact autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that can be easily deployed to collect...
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Google to Pay $135M for Android Data Collection
Google has agreed to a $135 million settlement to resolve a class action lawsuit alleging it collected Android users' cellular data without proper consent, even when apps were inactive or location services were off. The settlement mandates Google to simplify user controls over data transfers, obt...
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Moxie Marlinspike's Privacy-First ChatGPT Alternative
The widespread adoption of AI assistants raises major privacy issues, as personal conversations are often stored and analyzed by companies, potentially enabling targeted advertising within the chat interface. Confer, a new service from Signal's co-founder, offers a privacy-focused alternative by ...
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Tesla Granted 5-Week Extension in FSD Probe
The NHTSA has extended Tesla's deadline to comply with a broad information request for its safety probe into the Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta software, which is under investigation due to reports of traffic control violations. The regulator demands extensive data, including a full U.S. vehicle in...
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Moxie Marlinspike Aims to Revolutionize AI Like He Did Messaging
Moxie Marlinspike, creator of Signal, is leading a new open-source AI project called Confer, designed to prioritize user privacy in chatbot interactions through a secure, verifiable architecture. Confer uses a trusted execution environment (TEE) and local decryption keys to ensure conversations a...
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DuckDuckGo vs. Google: What Your Search Engine Says About You
DuckDuckGo prioritizes user privacy by not tracking searches or creating personal profiles, while Google's ecosystem relies on data collection for personalized results and targeted advertising. For general web queries, both engines provide accurate information, but Google offers more powerful int...
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Caterpillar Partners with Nvidia to AI-Power Construction Equipment
Caterpillar is partnering with Nvidia to integrate AI into its construction equipment, starting with a pilot on an excavator that uses Nvidia's Jetson Thor platform for an assistive system called Cat AI. The Cat AI system provides operators with real-time support, safety guidance, and data analys...
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Google Maps vs. Apple Maps: Which Navigation App Is Better?
Apple Maps prioritizes user privacy by not linking travel data to a personal account and obscuring location details over time, unlike Google Maps which collects extensive data for its advertising model. The app offers a driver-focused design with a clean interface and intuitive, human-like naviga...
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ISS in Real Time: 25 Years of Live Space Station Footage
The International Space Station marks 25 years of continuous human presence, providing extensive documentation of life and research aboard the orbiting laboratory through various media. A new online portal, ISS in Real Time, was created by NASA contractors to consolidate scattered public archives...
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I Tested OpenAI's Atlas Browser and I'm Still Confused
Atlas performs poorly in practical use, with features like a slow shopping assistant and ineffective content generation that fail to provide genuine utility to users. The browser's integration of ChatGPT offers no clear advantage over the standalone website, often delivering inaccurate or irrelev...
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Illinois Tests Electric School Buses as Power Grid Backup
Illinois is pioneering the use of electric school buses as mobile power storage units, employing vehicle-to-grid technology to send electricity back to the grid during peak demand. Commonwealth Edison is testing this pilot with three Chicago-area school districts, gathering data from bidirectiona...
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OpenAI Alerts Users to Mixpanel API Data Breach
OpenAI notified API users of a data exposure due to a security incident at its third-party analytics provider, Mixpanel, clarifying that its own systems were not breached. The exposed data may include user details like names, email addresses, approximate locations, and device information, but sen...
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Gain Executive Trust Beyond Marketing Attribution
Traditional marketing attribution is flawed because it relies on rigid metrics that misrepresent performance and fails to capture the complexity of actual customer purchasing behavior. Attribution models oversimplify customer journeys by ignoring upper-funnel influences like brand building and wo...
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Cloudflare & Giga Team Up to Connect Schools Globally
Cloudflare and UNICEF's Giga initiative are collaborating to provide real-time data on school internet connectivity, using Cloudflare's Speed Test and global network to help close the digital divide. The partnership addresses the challenge of 1.3 billion children lacking home internet and nearly ...
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ChatGPT Dominates the AI Chatbot Race - But Can It Last?
OpenAI's ChatGPT currently dominates the AI chatbot market with an 80.92% global share, but emerging competitors and shifting user habits challenge its long-term leadership. There is a significant shift in AI chatbot usage from desktop to mobile platforms, with mobile reach growing by 5.3% and ma...
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Adobe Analytics Bug Exposed Customer Data to Other Users
A software bug during a system upgrade on September 17, 2025, caused Adobe Analytics to inadvertently share customer data across different organizational accounts, affecting 3-5% of collected data. The incident impacted multiple Adobe services, including Data Collection and Customer Journey Analy...
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Apeiron Labs Raises $9.5M for Ocean-Exploring Autonomous Robots
Apeiron Labs is developing low-cost, compact autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to address the significant data gap in the subsurface ocean, which hinders industries like fishing, defense, and energy. The AUVs dive to 400 meters, collect data on temperature and salinity, and form persistent se...
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Fitbit Founders Launch Family Health Monitoring Platform
Former Fitbit co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman have launched Luffu, an AI-powered platform that centralizes family wellness data from various devices and apps. The system uses AI to organize data, answer personalized health questions, and proactively monitor for pattern changes to provide...
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Ex-Stripe Exec Lachy Groom's Startup Builds AI Robot Brains
Physical Intelligence is a well-funded startup pursuing general-purpose AI for robots through pure research, focusing on training versatile foundation models that can transfer skills across different hardware, akin to a "ChatGPT for robots." The company's strategy centers on **cross-embodiment le...
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Waabi Secures $1 Billion for Uber Robotaxi Expansion
Waabi secured a $1 billion investment, including a landmark partnership with Uber to deploy its self-driving technology for robotaxis, marking a major expansion beyond its original autonomous trucking focus. The company's strategy centers on a capital-efficient, generalizable AI architecture deve...
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TikTok's First Weekend Under US Ownership Hit by Outages
TikTok experienced significant technical disruptions during its first weekend under new U.S. ownership, with users reporting login failures, upload problems, and a malfunctioning comment section. Many users' personalized "For You" feeds appeared to reset, flooding them with generic content, which...
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