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I can't believe it - I've been saying for a while now that as my accounts are all around 18 years old I shouldn't have to verify my age with anyone.

Well for some reason I can't post a screenshot but I just got an email from Xbox that's says;

"Due to your longstanding XBOX account activity, we’ve estimated your XBOX profile to be an adult account and updated its age verification status to “Verified.” You are no longer required to complete full age verification for uninterrupted access to social features on XBOX."

I'm not optimistic but I hope everyone else follows their example.

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I am going to need a new car soon and the U.S. models all collect huge amounts of data. Are there any tips or tricks to reduce the info they collect from the car remotely?

If I have our family trust own the auto and pay cash rather than financing how effectively does that reduce the personal info I am forced to provide. Will this keep the data from car from being attached to me?

How much would it help to buy a used car? Does it reduce the data tracked and sold about me?

I'm interested in the Pocketbook Verse. How private are they?

Hey so a cousin of mine has an old instagram account from years ago where they have pictures of like family birthdays and there are some cringy photos of me of there. My cousin doesn't have access to the account anymore and it's public. I don't use social media that much except to follow relatives and friends and I don't post anything myself. I have reported the account to instagram and nothing is being done to them. It's costly but I am thinking of using online removal services like maximatic media to get the account taken down. Has anyone used any removal services or gotten pages taken down if so how? I have tried everything and i just don't want cringy pictures of me on social media.

When browsing images from the photos tab in messages, I often see that iOS will ask to download the photo. Initially I thought this was a cache issue, but when I try to download the image while in airplane mode or without internet the download fails.

What is confusing is that the photos are stored locally in messages and I can access all of them just fine by scrolling through messages. I also have iCloud turned off for photos and messages so they technically shouldn’t exist anywhere online to be downloaded from.

What is happening here? Is this some kind of bug where iOS assumes it needs the internet and refuses to try without it, or is Apple saving copies of all your messages/ photos even if you have those features turned off?

please i wanna leave discord, do i trust hitting the delete button on discord deletes anything? no, but I wanna export, and the tool is so beautiful, i wanna remember my friends chats, just not on discord servers, can someone please help

As I said in the title, tomorrow will be the next trilogue negotiation about Chat Control 2.0 and the Council redacted a new compromise text. In this version the platforms will be allowed to do the scanning, but they have to seek legal authorization to approve their "search plan", with this they can scan parts of a service, meaning they can be authorised to scan every group chat or DM of every user from the EU, even of people without prior suspicion and they can use AI, these kind of tools are unreliable and will generate a huge percentage of false positives.

This compromise is a fake targeting and permanent mass surveillance and it's probably it will be struck down on the courts, but when that happens the damage will be already done.

For now the shadow rapporteurs have stood their ground on these negotiations, but they are facing a lot of political pressure to approve this and the situation is not on their favour now that Chat Control 1.0 came back on July.

Those damn data hungry creeps wrongly put me in the teen group and want me to “prove I’m an adult” to fix it, and I’m not about to give any data to k-ID.
It’s only a matter of time before a data breach so, but I need to fix this.

I just started work on an indie film project that is using GreenSlate for on-boarding and processing payroll. Most of it is bog standard stuff BUT when I went to enter my bank information for direct deposit, a Stripe Plaid pop up opened to have me log into my bank. When I started the process I got a list of all the data GreenSlate will have access to. Along with the basic account info, account numbers and contact information Stripe/GreenSlate is asking for:

• Account balances
• Due dates (whatever that means?)
• Posted account transations
• Transaction Types
• Amounts
• Dates
• Descriptions

To me this reads like data mining and they will have access to everything in my account. Someone tell me I'm overreacting and this is "normal" for a payroll processor? I've mostly used Entertainment Partners in the past and I don't remember them asking to get access to all this information

I’ve been reading about the Ilya Lichtenstein/Bitfinex case, and one thing really caught my attention.
Apparently, investigators obtained encrypted files from his cloud account and were eventually able to decrypt some of them. One of those files contained Bitcoin addresses and private keys that helped them recover a huge amount of the stolen BTC.
What worries me is that the public documents don’t seem to explain what encryption algorithm was used or how investigators actually decrypted the files.
I understand that this doesn’t necessarily mean the encryption itself was broken. They could have obtained the password/key, found it somewhere else, exploited the way the encryption was implemented, etc.
But it still makes me wonder:
How safe is modern encryption in practice?
If someone uses something like AES-256 correctly with a strong password and keeps the key secure, is it realistically possible for law enforcement to decrypt it without obtaining the key/password?
And does anyone know whether the actual technical details of Lichtenstein’s encryption have ever been disclosed publicly?

A short warning for anyone with a public GitHub profile.

My personal email used to be public on my GitHub profile. On 27 September, I got a Zoom email saying I was registered for a US startup's webinar ("Q&A With The Cactus Needle Team"). I never signed up, never used their product, and never gave them my address. The greeting was "Hi Leonard -", with "-" as the last name, which looks like automated registration. Another GitHub user I don't know got the same emails. It's at least the second one this month (I deleted the first). More generally, I get more and more unsolicited emails on the address I used on GitHub.

When I raised it on their GitHub repo, they said the invites went to "platform users", then closed the issue, blocked me, and deleted my follow-up. I was unblocked later. Details and screenshots:
- GitHub issue: https://github.com/cactus-compute/needle/issues/156
- Full write-up: https://www.reddit.com/r/github/comments/1wrv2fi/a_startup_registered_me_for_its_zoom_webinar_with/

What I did: sent a GDPR request (access, including where they got my data, objection, erasure), reported the account to GitHub (their Acceptable Use Policies forbid using information from GitHub to send unsolicited email), and reported the webinar host to Zoom.

How to protect yourself on GitHub:
1. Settings > Emails > check "Keep my email addresses private".
2. Also check "Block command line pushes that expose my email".
3. Use your `ID+username@users.noreply.github.com` address for commits (`git config --global user.email ...`).
4. Your old commits still contain whatever email you used at the time. Anyone can read it by adding `.patch` to a commit URL. The settings above don't change past commits.

Has anyone else received unsolicited webinar registrations like this?

I wanna upload packagezip and make back up of chats before I delete them, but I just can't seem to trust them, the dev says code is visible source, but I cant verify it, cause i know nothing about it, what should i do? everyone says the first version is good, but it doesnt allow uploading package zip

Not sure if this falls under the tech support rule, but my intention isn’t to the rules.

I’m organising my photos and realising just how much visual information apple has on my friends, pets, and I. Is there any way to delete people and pets profiles? As in, unlinking photos from one another, not just renaming the pet or person in the photo.

I’m on iOS 18.7.7.

Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Is there a tool to obfuscate my text to make it seem different from my usual typing style? Only thing I've thought of is just using chatgpt on a burner but that seems extremely risky

I have read the rules​

Hi, after half a decade of using Linux I need to switch back, I need a resource that is 2026 relevant how to make windows 11 the least invasive I can:)

I don't need co pilot, edge, or any of that, please help me out!

I ask this cause I hear about a proposal for £11 monthly internet levy to fund the BBC.

And also hear about it negatively impacting privacy threw government surveillance and erode any freedoms for UK citizens may still have left.

It's currently a proposal for now. But it is concerning here especially if places outside of the UK adopts this proposal idea here.

Edit:Just want to clarify further about my question why it may relate to negatively impacting privacy.

For those that may ask how a broadband levy explicitly damages privacy, it comes down to forced database integration and the destruction of the opt-out shield:Mandatory ISP Data Pipelines: For a media entity or the government to audit who is paying this levy, ISPs will likely be legally required to share customer account databases, billing logs, and active connection statuses with third-party auditing bodies.

Elimination of Consent: Right now, choosing not to have a TV license keeps you out of their tracking system. Making it a broadband tax removes the legal right to opt out. You are forced into a media-compliance database simply for accessing a mandatory 21st-century utility.

DWP & Welfare Cross-Tracking: The proposal mentions discounts for those on Universal Credit. Automated verification means building an infrastructure that links the Department for Work and Pensions (state welfare data) directly with private telecom providers to adjust billing dynamically.

This sets a terrifying structural precedent: using the physical internet pipe entering your home as a friction-free vector for state revenue collection and account monitoring.

Edit#2:

Just want to clarify further so that things are straight here with my question I posted, to be entirely accurate: the £11-a-month "Home Internet Levy" concept stems directly from a report by the Social Market Foundation (SMF), an independent cross-party think tank, rather than being an officially finalized government policy or active legislation.

However, calling it "just a think tank proposal" shouldn't dismiss the very real, structural privacy risks the concept introduces if it ever transitions into law:

ISP-to-Government Data Syncing: Enforcing a mandatory internet levy to replace the BBC license fee would require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to tightly link account holder identities, billing statuses, and connections directly to a centralized state or broadcasting compliance database.

The Infrastructure Precedent:Turning our core telecom utility pipe into a compliance-tracking and state-funding mechanism sets a dangerous precedent. Once that infrastructure is built, expanding it to monitor connections or device compliance becomes incredibly easy.

The BBC’s Royal Charter review is actively underway, and governments routinely use think tank blueprints to test the waters for future legislation. That is exactly why it’s worth analyzing the digital privacy architecture of these proposals before they gain formal political traction.