The Federal Trade Commission's Office of Technology has issued a warning to automakers that sell connected cars. Companies that offer such products "do not have the free license to monetize people’s information beyond purposes needed to provide their requested product or service," it wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. Just because executives and investors want recurring revenue streams, that does not "outweigh the need for meaningful privacy safeguards," the FTC wrote.

In 2023, the Mozilla Foundation published an extensive report examining the various automakers' policies regarding the use of data from connected cars; the report concluded that "cars are the worst product category we have ever reviewed for privacy."

The FTC is not taking specific action against any automaker at this point. Instead, the blog post is meant to be a warning to the industry. It says that "connected cars have been on the FTC's radar for years," although the agency appears to have done very little other than hold workshops in 2013 and 2018, as well as publishing guidance for consumers reminding them to wipe the data from their cars before selling them.

The FTC says the easiest way to comply is to not collect the data in the first place.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/12670977

iPhone owners say the latest iOS update is resurfacing deleted nudes

The study (PDF), published this month by University of Chicago and University of Michigan researchers and reported by The Washington Post on Sunday, says:

In this paper, we provide causal evidence that RTO mandates at three large tech companies—Microsoft, SpaceX, and Apple—had a negative effect on the tenure and seniority of their respective workforce. In particular, we find the strongest negative effects at the top of the respective distributions, implying a more pronounced exodus of relatively senior personnel.

Dell, Amazon, Google, Meta, and JPMorgan Chase have tracked employee badge swipes to ensure employees are coming into the office as often as expected. Dell also started tracking VPN usage this week and has told workers who work remotely full time that they can't get a promotion.

Some company leaders are adamant that remote work can disrupt a company's ability to innovate. However, there's research suggesting that RTO mandates aren't beneficial to companies. A survey of 18,000 Americans released in March pointed to flexible work schedules helping mental health. And an analysis of 457 S&P 500 companies in February found RTO policies hurt employee morale and don't increase company value.

Telemetry was added to create an aggregate count of searches by category to broadly inform search feature development. These categories are based on 20 high-level content types, such as "sports,” "business," and "travel". This data will not be associated with specific users and will be collected using OHTTP to remove IP addresses as potentially identifying metadata. No profiling will be performed, and no data will be shared with third parties. (read more)

The Copy Without Site Tracking option can now remove parameters from nested URLs. It also includes expanded support for blocking over 300 tracking parameters from copied links, including those from major shopping websites. Keep those trackers away when sharing links!

Release Notes

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/12671116

Intel's new Thunderbolt Share provides file and screen sharing without hurting network performance

The NHTSA is probing Google-supported Waymo regarding crashes caused by its driverless taxi program and underperforming self-driving tech.

Cable is dead. Long live the cable bundle. Curious to see the pricing and if the bundle only includes ad tiered options.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/12631640

OLED monitor momentum expected to continue — analysts expect 1.34 million units shipped by year end

Apple and Google have teamed up to deliver support for unwanted Bluetooth tracking alerts in iOS and Android.