10,000
Data points on you that are bought and sold by data trackers without your knowledge *
Privacy Matters
It’s time to take your privacy back.
Privacy. Is there really such a thing anymore in the age of surveillance capitalism, smartphones and social media? How concerned should you be about what’s going on with technology and data? What can you do to protect your own personal privacy?
We want to keep you informed of privacy matters and help you navigate real threats from hype. We’ll provide a sampling of articles that are relevant and helpful in understanding one or more pieces of the privacy puzzle.
And we’ll publish the research we’re doing to understand how apps and devices are collecting your data.
Privacy In The News
May 15, 2026
Hackers have breached tank readers at US gas stations; officials suspect Iran is responsible
US officials suspect Iranian hackers are behind a series of breaches of systems that monitor the amount of fuel in storage tanks serving gas stations in multiple states, according to multiple sources briefed on the activity.
May 11, 2026
GM Just Paid a Record Penalty for Breaking California Privacy Law
General Motors has agreed to pay $12.75 million in penalties for selling driving data of California motorists to data brokers, allegedly without consent
Apr 28, 2026
Maryland Is The First State To Ban Dynamic Pricing, Which Uses AI And Other Data To Up Prices At Stores
If consumers are wondering why they’re paying higher prices for certain items at major retailers and grocery stores, it might be due to “dynamic pricing,” a practice that uses artificial intelligence and other data to increase costs. Maryland legislators have passed a bill to become the first state to ban the practice.
Why privacy matters.
Is privacy a right or a privilege? How is it defined in law and in the U.S. Constitution? Is it legally enforceable?
Here’s a primer on constitutional rights and privacy laws.
Does privacy matter? Here are 10 reasons why it does.
Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who broke the Edward Snowden story in The Guardian in 2013, explains in this TED Talk why you need to care about your privacy even if you’re “not doing anything you need to hide.”
689,003
Facebook users secretly manipulated in “emotional contagion” experiment **
What data is collected about you?
If you’re an average American, you check your phone every 12 minutes. But the average app is checking the phone for that average American’s data every second.
Data is big business. U.S. companies alone spent an estimated $19+ billion in 2018 acquiring and analyzing consumer data. And the amount of data that’s readily available on the average American is staggering.
The amount of personal data being collected on individuals is increasing at an astonishing rate: “In 2017, data giant Acxiom provided up to 3,000 attributes on 700 million people. In 2018, the number was 10,000, on 2.5 billion consumers.”
200 trillion
Number of predictions of user behavior per day by Facebook’s AI framework ***
Is collecting personal data legal?
Mass surveillance. The U.S. government is doing it. We know that. Your every online move, call, text, purchase, and picture is collected, searched, then stored potentially forever in massive databases. Does that make it legal?
Companies are doing it too. Not to mention foreign governments. All these juicy databases are big fat targets for hackers, and social media provides the perfect way in. One in five organizations worldwide has been infected by malware distributed through social media.
Who’s responsible for your data, and where are the legal limits and accountabilities in all of this? Well, the laws are different everywhere, and yet the Internet knows no borders.
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) went into effect Jan. 1, 2020. This site explains the basics of the law.
The CCPA is potentially an important new law that heralds further regulation of and limits to data collection that may end up extending well beyond California.
This article explains how a journalist used the CCPA to see what information the controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI keeps on, well, everyone.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of 2016 extended the same data protection rights across the EU and regardless of where data is processed, impacting global companies.
The legal battle for privacy protections in Australia isn’t going well.
The UK has seen a tremendous expansion of government surveillance powers through recent legislation.