In a recently published paper, researchers at the University of Washington demonstrate that practically anyone can spend a little cash and track, in relatively real time, the location of a human target. That's digital surveillance, made available to any and all with money on hand, brought to the masses by your friendly neighborhood Silicon Valley disrupters.

The idea is straightforward: Associate a series of ads with a specific individual as well as predetermined GPS coordinates. When those ads are served to a smartphone app, you know where that individual has been.

"The first step to enable location tracking using ads is to obtain the target’s MAID [Mobile Advertising ID] by sniffing their network traffic (see below), which allows us to specify ads to only be served to the target device," explain the study authors. "Then we create a series of ads, each targeted at that MAID, but each also targeted at a different GPS location. This creates a geographical grid-like pattern of ads. Then we can observe which of these ads gets served, and this indicates where the target actually was."

A new study out from health startup Cardiogram and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) suggests wearables like the Apple Watch, Fitbit and others are able to accurately detect common but serious conditions like hypertension and sleep apnea.

Cardiogram and UCSF previously demonstrated the ability for the Apple Watch to detect abnormal heart rhythm with a 97 percent accuracy. This new study shows the Watch can detect sleep apnea with a 90 percent accuracy and hypertension with an 82 percent accuracy.

I have some news: the Internet of Things is a mess. A hacked refrigerator sounds slightly scary, but a vibrator-controlling app that records all your sex sounds and stores them on your phone...

Criteo built itself into one of the star performers in the ad tech sector by using a technique called “retargeting”--serving ads to people who have already visited a website to remind them to return.

Retargeting relies heavily on dropping cookies to track users as they leave one website and continue browsing elsewhere on the web.

Have you ever written a comment, or Facebook status, before deciding not to post it? According to new Facebook research, 70 per cent of us do this regularly.

The study found that men are more likely to 'self-censor' their social network posts, compared to women, and this is especially the case if they have a lot of male friends.

More surprising, however, is the reason why the site knows this information - because it can track what you type, even if you never post it.

Multiple online user reports claim that the MantisTek GK2 mechanical keyboard's configuration software is sending data to an Alibaba server. One of the reports even includes an analysis of the software’s traffic, which seems to include how many times keys have been pressed.

Behind the Facebook profile you’ve built for yourself is another one, a shadow profile, built from the inboxes and smartphones of other Facebook users. Contact information you’ve never given the network gets associated with your account, making it easier for Facebook to more completely map your social connections.

TorMoil threatens Mac and Linux versions of Tor browser; Windows and Tails not affected.

An executive was responding to a tweet asking about ads which seem to be linked to real-life conversations.

It’s why something may cost less on your phone than your laptop.

Après le centre commercial parisien des Quatre Temps, c'est au tour du BHV de géolocaliser ses clients.

But what these services show us is even more alarming: US telcos appear to be selling direct, non-anonymized, real-time access to consumer telephone data to third party services — not just federal law enforcement officials — who are then selling access to that data.

A couple of years ago, I was heavily involved in analysing and reporting on the massive VTech hack, the one where millions of records were exposed including kids' names, genders, ages, photos and the relationship to parents' records which included their home address. Part of this data was collected via

We take a look at the analytics built into the OxygenOS, the flavour of Android built by phone manufacturer OnePlus.

Memari said he was working on a proposal for a bar that would install five tracking devices: one by the entrance, one on the roof, one near the cash register, and one in each of the bathrooms. That would allow the bar to know each person’s gender (from the bathroom trackers), how long they stay (“dwell time” is the official metric), and what they were there for (a drink outside or a meal inside). And targeted advertising for the pub could follow those people around London on Renew’s omniscient recycling bins.