The Self blog

How much does your social media reveal about you?

A US academic has uncovered a 2.4-million-person database compiled using public information from social media. This is exactly what scares us at Self: a future where personal information can be acquired and misused at the drop of a hat.

The UK government’s new contract with Palantir should ring alarm bells the size of Big Ben.

How many apps know exactly where you are right now?

Vice dives into the murky supply chain and sale of location data gathered from apps whose users usually have no idea their location is being tracked, let alone sold to third parties.

How many of your {insert social media platform here} followers are real?

A report from Motherboard shows how one of their reporters was able to buy 250 followers on TikTok and quickly accumulate thousands of views and likes on one of their videos. Fake social media accounts have been around for years, but this shows that none of these tech companies have been able to get a firm grip on the issue.

“Alexa, how safe is my personal information?”

A security firm recently found that Alexa's web services had bugs that could give hackers access to someone's entire voice history, along with personal information including their home address.

“Hey Siri, what’s the definition of irony in the year 2020?”

A Zoom court hearing for a teenager accused of orchestrating last month's major Twitter hack was repeatedly ‘Zoombombed’ with pornography. The interruptions were so frequent that the hearing was eventually suspended.

Latest iPhone update will shame apps’ shameful grabs for personal data

Apple’s iOS 14 is currently in beta and due to be released in autumn. It includes a raft of new privacy-focused features which allow users more control over what data app developers can collect about them.

Blackbaud charity data attack exposes the fatal flaw in traditional databases

Over 120 charities in the UK and US, including the National Trust, have had their supporters’ data compromised after an attack on the cloud computing provider Blackbaud. The ransomware attack took place in May, but Blackbaud only informed its clients of the breach this month.

No green lights, no red lines: Do we trust COVID-19 tracing tech?

A recent report from the Ada Lovelace Institute presents some fascinating insights on what the general public think about various new COVID-19 technologies. As the title suggests, most people are neither completely for, nor against these technologies, but they do have concerns around specific sensitive issues.

Passwords are dying. What comes next?

It’s almost a monthly occurrence that a large, international corporation suffers a massive data breach. Combine this with the thousands of online banking, email & social media accounts that are hacked everyday and it seems like passwords are less secure than the spare key I leave in a flowerpot next to my front door.

How much is your data worth?

Why is there an active market on the dark web for personal information and why there are thousands of criminals out to get all of the personal data they’re able to steal from unsuspecting people?

Signal issues?

Signal, the messaging app which promises to encrypt everything and store none of your data, now wants access to your contacts. We think that's crazy.