Naviguer de manière un peu plus anonyme. C’est ce que proposera la version 52 du navigateur Firefox, grâce à une fonctionnalité directement importée de Tor Browser.

Le principe est simple : renvoyer aux sites qui la demandent une liste par défaut des polices de caractères installées sur la machine. De nombreux sites utilisent en effet cette information, combinée à d’autres (extensions, « user agent », contenu du dossier de téléchargements, etc.) pour établir l’empreinte unique de chaque machine.

The German Public TV station “Norddeutscher Rundfunk” reports that they were offered data that includes the surfing habits of three million German citizens. It seems this data was, at least partly, collected by the “Web of trust” (WOT) browser extensions. This is as bad as it sounds. The TV station was able to use this data to identify the browsing habits of individual persons – including high-ranking German and EU politicians.

Chrome/Firefox/Opera: When Privacy Badger launched a few years ago, it was already a great tool to block third-party trackers, speed up the web, and stop sites from watching your every move while you browse. The latest version is a huge improvement, in almost every way.

show-facebook-computer-vision-tags - A very simple Chrome Extension that displays the automated image tags that Facebook has generated for your images

The site shows users how Facebook categorizes them. It doesn’t reveal the data it is buying about their offline lives.

Find out what data Facebook stores about you. Join us in our fight for a social network that respects our right to privacy.

Social media giant Facebook has confessed to giving the personal details of thousands of its users to the British government this year.

Ladar Levison: For the first time, the founder of an encrypted email startup reveals how the FBI and the US legal system made sure we don't have the right to much privacy in the first place

A specialized unit inside mobile firm BlackBerry has for years enthusiastically helped intercept user data — including BBM messages — to help in hundreds of police investigations in dozens of countries, a CBC News investigation reveals.

BlackBerry gladly handed over subscriber and device information, communications, and even decrypted communications for law enforcement agencies in “dozens” of countries, according to a CBC report published Thursday that spoke to anonymous former employees in the company’s Public Safety Operations team, which works with law enforcement.

The company even offers global law enforcement a stock cover letter with checkboxes that indicate whether they wish to receive device and subscriber information, message logs, or “other,” which CBC reports as meaning decrypting messages secured with BlackBerry’s technology, which the company has touted for years.

Changes in default profile settings over time

Google recently announced that it would start including individual users' names and photos in some ads. This means that if you rate some product positively, your friends may see ads for that product with your name and photo attached -- without your knowledge or consent. Meanwhile, Facebook is eliminating a feature that allowed people to retain some portions of their anonymity on its website.

These changes come on the heels of Google's move to explore replacing tracking cookies with something that users have even less control over. Microsoft is doing something similar by developing its own tracking technology.