Silicon Valley could well be built on the principle of scrapping principles. Now Elon Musk, perhaps the ultimate tech bro, is shredding another well-regarded convention with an original business strategy.
Privacy advocates have been calling for the United States to adopt strong consumer privacy protection laws along the lines of the EU's GDPR for a long time now, but the proposed Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act isn't the answer we're looking for.
In the wake of the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States, the US government enacted laws that weakened citizen privacy in the name of national emergency. This sent up many red flags for human rights and privacy advocates.
Mark Zuckerberg does not look comfortable on stage. Yet, there he was proclaiming that “the future is private”. If someone has to tell you that they care about your privacy, they probably don’t.
Not so long ago, the world was predicting the end for Facebook. Now it is no more. Gone from the face of the planet – never to be seen again. Except it isn’t.
Facebook has not disappeared. No, not even the damning ‘Facebook Papers’ can shut it down. Mark Zuckerberg stood up on stage, and announced that it had changed its name to: Meta.
We may think that we know the differences between privacy, security and anonymity, however we often mix them up. People will often criticize a product or service as “not private” when they really mean “not anonymous.” Privacy, security, and anonymity often complement each other, but they are not always dependent on each other, and they are definitely not the same thing. A service can be private without being anonymous, or even secure without being private. Which one should you prioritize?
It makes me smile when I come across someone struggling with the decision of whether to get a VPN. It makes me smile not because of the indecision and relative lack of knowledge, but because it wasn't so long ago I was in exactly the same position—perceiving VPNs to be some kind of extreme measure only the paranoid and the criminal resorted to. How wrong I was.
There’s a massive problem in the privacy world. Websites, social media accounts, and other platforms are constantly popping up out of nowhere, telling you to buy The Greatest Service Ever in order to solve all your privacy woes, whatever that may be. These websites often employ marketing teams to make sure their “reviews” are what you see first when you begin your research. Some of them are even operated by VPN providers themselves, operating under anonymous business entities to hide their bias, or doing it right out in the open, hoping you’ll mistake their advertising-filled press releases and blogs as insider knowledge of the VPN space.