Privacy News Round-Up #68 šŸŒļø

• Is your smartphone being tracked? Here’s how to tell (Is your smartphone being tracked? Here’s how to tell | Domestic violence | The Guardian): An expert in digital forensics and family violence says surveillance by spyware is rare – more often it happens via everyday features such as location sharing.

• Encrypted Chat App ā€˜Session’ Leaves Australia After Visit From Police (Encrypted Chat App ā€˜Session’ Leaves Australia After Visit From Police): After federal police came to an employee’s house to ask questions, encrypted messaging company Session has decided to leave Australia and switch to a foundation model based in Switzerland.

• Two Students Created Face Recognition Glasses. It Wasn’t Hard. (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/24/technology/facial-recognition-glasses-privacy-harvard.html): A Boston man had a strange encounter at a subway station. A month later, he discovered he was the star of the students’ viral video. [paywalled]

• Oracle’s $115 million privacy settlement faces some opposition from class members (https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/oracles-115-million-privacy-settlement-faces-some-opposition-class-members-2024-11-01/): Oracle and the plaintiffs’ lawyers who negotiated a $115 million privacy settlement with the tech giant will face opposition when a U.S. judge in California considers final approval of the proposed deal.

• Blacklight Query - a Tool to Scan Websites for Privacy at Scale (https://themarkup.org/blacklight/2024/10/16/blacklight-query): Inspect batches of websites for user-tracking tech with this new open-source command-line tool.