When AI and Secure Chat Meet, Users Deserve Strong Controls Over How They Interact

EFF update
5 hours 3 minutes ago

Both Google and Apple are cramming new AI features into their phones and other devices, and neither company has offered clear ways to control which apps those AI systems can access. Recent issues around WhatsApp on both Android and iPhone demonstrate how these interactions can go sideways, risking revealing chat conversations beyond what you intend. Users deserve better controls and clearer documentation around what these AI features can access.

After diving into how Google Gemini and Apple Intelligence (and in some cases Siri) currently work, we didn’t always find clear answers to questions about how data is stored, who has access, and what it can be used for.

At a high level, when you compose a message with these tools, the companies can usually see the contents of those messages and receive at least a temporary copy of the text on their servers.

When receiving messages, things get trickier. When you use an AI like Gemini or a feature like Apple Intelligence to summarize or read notifications, we believe companies should be doing that content processing on-device. But poor documentation and weak guardrails create issues that have lead us deep into documentation rabbit holes and still fail to clarify the privacy practices as clearly as we’d like.

We’ll dig into the specifics below as well as potential solutions we’d like to see Apple, Google, and other device-makers implement, but first things first, here’s what you can do right now to control access:

Control AI Access to Secure Chat on Android and iOS

Here are some steps you can take to control access if you want nothing to do with the device-level AI features' integration and don’t want to risk accidentally sharing the text of a message outside of the app you’re using.

How to Check and Limit What Gemini Can Access

If you’re using Gemini on your Android phone, it’s a good time to review your settings to ensure things are set up how you want. Here’s how to check each of the relevant settings:

  • Disable Gemini App Activity: Gemini App Activity is a history Google stores of all your interactions with Gemini. It’s enabled by default. To disable it, open Gemini (depending on your phone model, you may or may not even have the Google Gemini app installed. If you don’t have it installed, you don’t really need to worry about any of this). Tap your profile picture > Gemini Apps Activity, then change the toggle to either “Turn off,” or “Turn off and delete activity” if you want to delete previous conversations. If the option reads “Turn on,” then Gemini Apps Activity is already turned off. 
  • Control app and notification access: You can control which apps Gemini can access by tapping your profile picture > Apps, then scrolling down and disabling the toggle next to any apps you do not want Gemini to access. If you do not want Gemini to potentially access the content that appears in notifications, open the Settings app and revoke notification access from the Google app.
  • Delete the Gemini app: Depending on your phone model, you might be able to delete the Gemini app and revert to using Google Assistant instead. You can do so by long-pressing the Gemini app and selecting the option to delete. 
How to Check and Limit what Apple Intelligence and Siri Can Access

Similarly, there are a few things you can do to clamp down on what Apple Intelligence and Siri can do: 

  • Disable the “Use with Siri Requests” option: If you want to continue using Siri, but don’t want to accidentally use it to send messages through secure messaging apps, like WhatsApp, then you can disable that feature by opening Settings > Apps > [app name], and disabling “Use with Siri Requests,” which turns off the ability to compose messages with Siri and send them through that app.
  • Disable Apple Intelligence entirely: Apple Intelligence is an all-or-nothing setting on iPhones, so if you want to avoid any potential issues your only option is to turn it off completely. To do so, open Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri, and disable “Apple Intelligence” (you will only see this option if your device supports Apple Intelligence, if it doesn’t, the menu will only be for “Siri”). You can also disable certain features, like “writing tools,” using Screen Time restrictions. Siri can’t be universally turned off in the same way, though you can turn off the options under “Talk to Siri” to make it so you can’t speak to it. 

For more information about cutting off AI access at different levels in other apps, this Consumer Reports article covers other platforms and services.

Why It Matters  Sending Messages Has Different Privacy Concerns than Receiving Them

Let’s start with a look at how Google and Apple integrate their AI systems into message composition, using WhatsApp as an example.

Google Gemini and WhatsApp

On Android, you can optionally link WhatsApp and Gemini together so you can then initiate various actions for sending messages from the Gemini app, like “Call Mom on WhatsApp” or “Text Jason on WhatsApp that we need to cancel our secret meeting, but make it a haiku.” This feature raised red flags for users concerned about privacy.

By default, everything you do in Gemini is stored in the “Gemini Apps Activity,” where messages are stored forever, subject to human review, and are used to train Google’s products. So, unless you change it, when you use Gemini to compose and send a message in WhatsApp then the message you composed is visible to Google.

If you turn the activity off, interactions are still stored for 72 hours. Google’s documentation claims that even though messages are stored, those conversations aren't reviewed or used to improve Google machine learning technologies, though that appears to be an internal policy choice with no technical limits preventing Google from accessing those messages.

By default, everything you do in Gemini is stored in the “Gemini Apps Activity,” where messages are stored forever, subject to human review, and are used to train Google’s products.

The simplicity of invoking Gemini to compose and send a message may lead to a false sense of privacy. Notably, other secure messaging apps, like Signal, do not offer this Gemini integration.

For comparison’s sake, let’s see how this works with Apple devices.

Siri and WhatsApp

The closest comparison to this process on iOS is to use Siri, which it is claimed, will eventually be a part of Apple Intelligence. Currently, Apple’s AI message composition tools are not available for third-party apps like Signal and WhatsApp.

According to its privacy policy, when you dictate a message through Siri to send to WhatsApp (or anywhere else), the message, including metadata like the recipient phone number and other identifiers, is sent to Apple’s servers. This was confirmed by researchers to include the text of messages sent to WhatsApp. When you use Siri to compose a WhatsApp message, the message gets routed to both Apple and WhatsApp. Apple claims it does not store this transcript unless you’ve opted into “Improve Siri and Dictation.” WhatsApp defers to Apple’s support for data handling concerns. This is similar to how Google handles speech-to-text prompts.

In response to that research, Apple said this was expected behavior with an app that uses SiriKit—the extension that allows third-party apps to integrate with Siri—like WhatsApp does.

Both Siri and Apple Intelligence can sometimes run locally on-device, and other times need to rely on Apple-managed cloud servers to complete requests. Apple Intelligence can use the company’s Private Cloud Compute, but Siri doesn’t have a similar feature.

The ambiguity around where data goes makes it overly difficult to decide on whether you are comfortable with the sort of privacy trade-off that using features like Siri or Apple Intelligence might entail.

How Receiving Messages Works

Sending encrypted messages is just one half of the privacy puzzle. What happens on the receiving end matters too. 

Google Gemini

By default, the Gemini app doesn’t have access to the text inside secure messaging apps or to notifications. But you can grant access to notifications using the Utilities app. Utilities can read, summarize, and reply to notifications, including in WhatsApp and Signal (it can also read notifications in headphones).

This could open up any notifications routed through the Utilities app to the Gemini app to access internally or from third-parties.

We could not find anything in Google’s Utilities documentation that clarifies what information is collected, stored, or sent to Google from these notifications. When we reached out to Google, the company responded that it “builds technical data protections that safeguard user data, uses data responsibly, and provides users with tools to control their Gemini experience.” Which means Google has no technical limitation around accessing the text from notifications if you’ve enabled the feature in the Utilities app. This could open up any notifications routed through the Utilities app to the Gemini app to be accessed internally or from third-parties. Google needs to publicly make its data handling explicit in its documentation.

If you use encrypted communications apps and have granted access to notifications, then it is worth considering disabling that feature or controlling what’s visible in your notifications on an app-level.

Apple Intelligence

Apple is more clear about how it handles this sort of notification access.

Siri can read and reply to messages with the “Announce Notifications” feature. With this enabled, Siri can read notifications out loud on select headphones or via CarPlay. In a press release, Apple states, “When a user talks or types to Siri, their request is processed on device whenever possible. For example, when a user asks Siri to read unread messages… the processing is done on the user’s device. The contents of the messages aren’t transmitted to Apple servers, because that isn’t necessary to fulfill the request.”

Apple Intelligence can summarize notifications from any app that you’ve enabled notifications on. Apple is clear that these summaries are generated on your device, “when Apple Intelligence provides you with preview summaries of your emails, messages, and notifications, these summaries are generated by on-device models.” This means there should be no risk that the text of notifications from apps like WhatsApp or Signal get sent to Apple’s servers just to summarize them.

New AI Features Must Come With Strong User Controls

As more device-makers cram AI features into their devices, the more necessary it is for us to have clear and simple controls over what personal data these features can access on our devices. If users do not have control over when a text leaves a device for any sort of AI processing—whether that’s to a “private” cloud or not—it erodes our privacy and potentially threatens the foundations of end-to-end encrypted communications.

Per-app AI Permissions

Google, Apple, and other device makers should add a device-level AI permission, just like they do for other potentially invasive privacy features, like location sharing, to their phones. You should be able to tell the operating system’s AI to not access an app, even if that comes at the “cost” of missing out on some features. The setting should be straightforward and easy to understand in ways the Gemini an Apple Intelligence controls currently are not.

Offer On-Device-Only Modes

Device-makers should offer an “on-device only” mode for those interested in using some features without having to try to figure out what happens on device or on the cloud. Samsung offers this, and both Google and Apple would benefit from a similar option.

Improve Documentation

Both Google and Apple should improve their documentation about how these features interact with various apps. Apple doesn’t seem to clarify notification processing privacy anywhere outside of a press release, and we couldn’t find anything about Google’s Utilities privacy at all. We appreciate tools like Gemini Apps Activity as a way to audit what the company collects, but vague information like “Prompted a Communications query” is only useful if there’s an explanation somewhere about what that means.

The current user options are not enough. It’s clear that the AI features device-makers add come with significant confusion about their privacy implications, and it’s time to push back and demand better controls. The privacy problems introduced alongside new AI features should be taken seriously, and remedies should be offered to both users and developers who want real, transparent safeguards over how a company accesses their private data and communications.

Thorin Klosowski

Civil Disobedience of Copyright Keeps Science Going

EFF update
6 hours 8 minutes ago

Creating and sharing knowledge are defining traits of humankind, yet copyright law has grown so restrictive that it can require acts of civil disobedience to ensure that students and scholars have the books they need and to preserve swaths of culture from being lost forever.

Reputable research generally follows a familiar pattern: Scientific articles are written by scholars based on their research—often with public funding. Those articles are then peer-reviewed by other scholars in their fields and revisions are made according to those comments. Afterwards, most large publishers expect to be given the copyright on the article as a condition of packaging it up and selling it back to the institutions that employ the academics who did the research and to the public at large. Because research is valuable and because copyright is a monopoly on disseminating the articles in question, these publishers can charge exorbitant fees that place a strain even on wealthy universities and are simply out of reach for the general public or universities with limited budgets, such as those in the global south. The result is a global human rights problem.

This model is broken, yet science goes on thanks to widespread civil disobedience of the copyright regime that locks up the knowledge created by researchers. Some turn to social media to ask that a colleague with access share articles they need (despite copyright’s prohibitions on sharing). Certainly, at least some such sharing is protected fair use, but scholars should not have to seek a legal opinion or risk legal threats from publishers to share the collective knowledge they generate.

Even more useful, though on shakier legal ground, are so-called “shadow archives” and aggregators such as SciHub, Library Genesis (LibGen), Z-Library, or Anna’s Archive. These are the culmination of efforts from volunteers dedicated to defending science.

SciHub alone handles tens of millions of requests for scientific articles each year and remains operational despite adverse court rulings thanks both to being based in Russia, and to the community of academics who see it as an ethical response to the high access barriers that publishers impose and provide it their log-on credentials so it can retrieve requested articles. SciHub and LibGen are continuations of samizdat, the Soviet-era practice of disobeying state censorship in the interests of learning and free speech.

Unless publishing gatekeepers adopt drastically more equitable practices and become partners in disseminating knowledge, they will continue to lose ground to open access alternatives, legal or otherwise.

EFF is proud to celebrate Open Access Week.

Kit Walsh

Opt Out October: Daily Tips to Protect Your Privacy and Security

EFF update
6 hours 16 minutes ago

Trying to take control of your online privacy can feel like a full-time job. But if you break it up into small tasks and take on one project at a time it makes the process of protecting your privacy much easier. This month we’re going to do just that. For the month of October, we’ll update this post with new tips every weekday that show various ways you can opt yourself out of the ways tech giants surveil you.

Online privacy isn’t dead. But the tech giants make it a pain in the butt to achieve. With these incremental tweaks to the services we use, we can throw sand in the gears of the surveillance machine and opt out of the ways tech companies attempt to optimize us into advertisement and content viewing machines. We’re also pushing companies to make more privacy-protective defaults the norm, but until that happens, the onus is on all of us to dig into the settings.

All month long we’ll share tips, including some with the help from our friends at Consumer Reports’ Security Planner tool. Use the Table of Contents here to jump straight to any tip.

Table of Contents

Tip 1: Establish Good Digital Hygiene

Before we can get into the privacy weeds, we need to first establish strong basics. Namely, two security fundamentals: using strong passwords (a password manager helps simplify this) and two-factor authentication for your online accounts. Together, they can significantly improve your online privacy by making it much harder for your data to fall into the hands of a stranger.

Using unique passwords for every web login means that if your account information ends up in a data breach, it won’t give bad actors an easy way to unlock your other accounts. Since it’s impossible for all of us to remember a unique password for every login we have, most people will want to use a password manager, which generates and stores those passwords for you.

Two-factor authentication is the second lock on those same accounts. In order to login to, say, Facebook for the first time on a particular computer, you’ll need to provide a password and a “second factor,” usually an always-changing numeric code generated in an app or sent to you on another device. This makes it much harder for someone else to get into your account because it’s less likely they’ll have both a password and the temporary code.

This can be a little overwhelming to get started if you’re new to online privacy! Aside from our guides on Surveillance Self-Defense, we recommend taking a look at Consumer Reports’ Security Planner for ways to help you get started setting up your first password manager and turning on two-factor authentication.

Tip 2: Learn What a Data Broker Knows About You

Hundreds of data brokers you’ve never heard of are harvesting and selling your personal information. This can include your address, online activity, financial transactions, relationships, and even your location history. Once sold, your data can be abused by scammers, advertisers, predatory companies, and even law enforcement agencies.

Data brokers build detailed profiles of our lives but try to keep their own practices hidden. Fortunately, several state privacy laws give you the right to see what information these companies have collected about you. You can exercise this right by submitting a data access request to a data broker. Even if you live in a state without privacy legislation, some data brokers will still respond to your request.

There are hundreds of known data brokers, but here are a few major ones to start with:

Data brokers have been caught ignoring privacy laws, so there’s a chance you won’t get a response. If you do, you’ll learn what information the data broker has collected about you and the categories of third parties they’ve sold it to. If the results motivate you to take more privacy action, encourage your friends and family to do the same. Don’t let data brokers keep their spying a secret.

You can also ask data brokers to delete your data, with or without an access request. We’ll get to that later this month and explain how to do this with people-search sites, a category of data brokers.

Tip 3: Disable Ad Tracking on iPhone and Android

Picture this: you’re doomscrolling and spot a t-shirt you love. Later, you mention it to a friend and suddenly see an ad for that exact shirt in another app. The natural question pops into your head: “Is my phone listening to me?” Take a sigh of relief because, no, your phone is not listening to you. But advertisers are using shady tactics to profile your interests. Here’s an easy way to fight back: disable the ad identifier on your phone to make it harder for advertisers and data brokers to track you.

Disable Ad Tracking on iOS and iPadOS:

  • Open Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking, and turn off “Allow Apps to Request to Track.”
  • Open Settings > Privacy & Security > Apple Advertising, and disable “Personalized Ads” to also stop some of Apple’s internal tracking for apps like the App Store. 
  • If you use Safari, go to Settings > Apps > Safari > Advanced and disable “Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement.”

Disable Ad Tracking on Android:

  • Open Settings > Security & privacy > Privacy controls > Ads, and tap “Delete advertising ID.”
  • While you’re at it, run through Google’s “Privacy Checkup” to review what info other Google services—like YouTube or your location—may be sharing with advertisers and data brokers.

These quick settings changes can help keep bad actors from spying on you. For a deeper dive on securing your iPhone or Android device, be sure to check out our full Surveillance Self-Defense guides.

Tip 4: Declutter Your Apps

Decluttering is all the rage for optimizers and organizers alike, but did you know a cleansing sweep through your apps can also help your privacy? Apps collect a lot of data, often in the background when you are not using them. This can be a prime way companies harvest your information, and then repackage and sell it to other companies you've never heard of. Having a lot of apps increases the peepholes that companies can gain into your personal life. 

Do you need three airline apps when you're not even traveling? Or the app for that hotel chain you stayed in once? It's best to delete that app and cut off their access to your information. In an ideal world, app makers would not process any of your data unless strictly necessary to give you what you asked for. Until then, to do an app audit:

  • Look through the apps you have and identify ones you rarely open or barely use. 
  • Long-press on apps that you don't use anymore and delete or uninstall them when a menu pops up. 
  • Even on apps you keep, take a swing through the location, microphone, or camera permissions for each of them. For iOS devices you can follow these instructions to find that menu. For Android, check out this instructions page.

If you delete an app and later find you need it, you can always redownload it. Try giving some apps the boot today to gain some memory space and some peace of mind.

Tip 5: Disable Behavioral Ads on Amazon

Happy Amazon Prime Day! Let’s celebrate by taking back a piece of our privacy.

Amazon collects an astounding amount of information about your shopping habits. While the only way to truly free yourself from the company’s all-seeing eye is to never shop there, there is something you can do to disrupt some of that data use: tell Amazon to stop using your data to market more things to you (these settings are for US users and may not be available in all countries).

  • Log into your Amazon account, then click “Account & Lists” under your name. 
  • Scroll down to the “Communication and Content” section and click “Advertising preferences” (or just click this link to head directly there).
  • Click the option next to “Do not show me interest-based ads provided by Amazon.”
  • You may want to also delete the data Amazon already collected, so click the “Delete ad data” button.

This setting will turn off the personalized ads based on what Amazon infers about you, though you will likely still see recommendations based on your past purchases at Amazon.

Of course, Amazon sells a lot of other products. If you own an Alexa, now’s a good time to review the few remaining privacy options available to you after the company took away the ability to disable voice recordings. Kindle users might want to turn off some of the data usage tracking. And if you own a Ring camera, consider enabling end-to-end encryption to ensure you’re in control of the recording, not the company. 

Tip 6: Install Privacy Badger to Block Online Trackers

Every time you browse the web, you’re being tracked. Most websites contain invisible tracking code that lets companies collect and profit from your data. That data can end up in the hands of advertisers, data brokers, scammers, and even government agencies. Privacy Badger, EFF’s free browser extension, can help you fight back.

Privacy Badger automatically blocks hidden trackers to stop companies from spying on you online. It also tells websites not to share or sell your data by sending the “Global Privacy Control” signal, which is legally binding under some state privacy laws. Privacy Badger has evolved over the past decade to fight various methods of online tracking. Whether you want to protect your sensitive information from data brokers or just don’t want Big Tech monetizing your data, Privacy Badger has your back.

Visit privacybadger.org to install Privacy Badger.

It’s available on Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera for desktop devices and Firefox and Edge for Android devices. Once installed, all of Privacy Badger’s features work automatically. There’s no setup required! If blocking harmful trackers ends up breaking something on a website, you can easily turn off Privacy Badger for that site while maintaining privacy protections everywhere else.

When you install Privacy Badger, you’re not just protecting yourself—you’re joining EFF and millions of other users in the fight against online surveillance.

Tip 7: Review Location Tracking Settings

Data brokers don’t just collect information on your purchases and browsing history. Mobile apps that have the location permission turned on will deliver your coordinates to third parties in exchange for insights or monetary kickbacks. Even when they don’t deliver that data directly to data brokers, if the app serves ad space, your location will be delivered in real-time bid requests not only to those wishing to place an ad, but to all participants in the ad auction—even if they lose the bid. Location data brokers take part in these auctions just to harvest location data en masse, without any intention of buying ad space.

Luckily, you can change a few settings to protect yourself against this hoovering of your whereabouts. You can use iOS or Android tools to audit an app’s permissions, providing clarity on who is providing what info to whom. You can then go to the apps that don’t need your location data and disable their access to that data (you can always change your mind later if it turns out location access was useful). You can also disable real-time location tracking by putting your phone into airplane mode, while still being able to navigate using offline maps. And by disabling mobile advertising identifiers (see tip three), you break the chain that links your location from one moment to the next.

Finally, for particularly sensitive situations you may want to bring an entirely separate, single-purpose device which you’ve kept clean of unneeded apps and locked down settings on. Similar in concept to a burner phone, even if this single-purpose device does manage to gather data on you, it can only tell a partial story about you—all the other data linking you to your normal activities will be kept separate.

For details on how you can follow these tips and more on your own devices, check out our more extensive post on the topic.

Tip 8: Limit the Data Your Gaming Console Collects About You

Oh, the beauty of gaming consoles—just plug in and play! Well... after you speed-run through a bunch of terms and conditions, internet setup, and privacy settings. If you rushed through those startup screens, don’t worry! It’s not too late to limit the data your console is collecting about you. Because yes, modern consoles do collect a lot about your gaming habits.

Start with the basics: make sure you have two-factor authentication turned on for your accounts. PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo all have guides on their sites. Between payment details and other personal info tied to these accounts, 2FA is an easy first line of defense for your data.

Then, it’s time to check the privacy controls on your console:

  • PlayStation 5: Go to Settings > Users and Accounts > Privacy to adjust what you share with both strangers and friends. To limit the data your PS5 collects about you, go to Settings > Users and Accounts > Privacy, where you can adjust settings under Data You Provide and Personalization.
  • Xbox Series X|S: Press the Xbox button > Profile & System > Settings > Account > Privacy & online safety > Xbox Privacy to fine-tune your sharing. To manage data collection, head to Profile & System > Settings > Account > Privacy & online safety > Data collection.
  • Nintendo Switch: The Switch doesn’t share as much data by default, but you still have options. To control who sees your play activity, go to System Settings > Users > [your profile] > Play Activity Settings. To opt out of sharing eShop data, open the eShop, select your profile (top right), then go to Google Analytics Preferences > Do Not Share.

Plug and play, right? Almost. These quick checks can help keep your gaming sessions fun—and more private.

Tip 9: Hide Your Start and End Points on Strava

Sharing your personal fitness goals, whether it be extended distances, accurate calorie counts, or GPS paths—sounds like a fun, competitive feature offered by today's digital fitness trackers. If you enjoy tracking those activities, you've probably heard of Strava. While it's excellent for motivation and connecting with fellow athletes, Strava's default settings can reveal sensitive information about where you live, work, or exercise, creating serious security and privacy risks. Fortunately, Strava gives you control over how much of your activity map is visible to others, allowing you to stay active in your community while protecting your personal safety.

We've covered how Strava data exposed classified military bases in 2018 when service members used fitness trackers. If fitness data can compromise national security, what's it revealing about you?

Here's how to hide your start and end points:

  • On the website: Hover over your profile picture > Settings > Privacy Controls > Map Visibility.
  • On mobile: Open Settings > Privacy Controls > Map Visibility.
  • You can then choose from three options: hide portions near a specific address, hide start/end of all activities, or hide entire maps

You can also adjust individual activities:

  • Open the activity you want to edit.
  • Select the three-dot menu icon.
  • Choose "Edit Map Visibility."
  • Use sliders to customize what's hidden or enable "Hide the Entire Map."

Great job taking control of your location privacy! Remember that these settings only apply to Strava, so if you share activities to other platforms, you'll need to adjust those privacy settings separately. While you're at it, consider reviewing your overall activity visibility settings to ensure you're only sharing what you want with the people you choose.

Tip 10: Find and Delete An Account You No Longer Use

Millions of online accounts are compromised each year. The more accounts you have, the more at risk you are of having your personal data illegally accessed and published online. Even if you don’t suffer a data breach, there’s also the possibility that someone could find one of your abandoned social media accounts containing information you shared publicly on purpose in the past, but don’t necessarily want floating around anymore. And companies may still be profiting off details of your personal life, even though you’re not getting any benefit from their service.

So, now’s a good time to find an old account to delete. There may be one you can already think of, but if you’re stuck, you can look through your password manager, look through logins saved on your web browser, or search your email inbox for phrases like “new account,” “password,” “welcome to,” or “confirm your email.” Or, enter your email address on the website HaveIBeenPwned to get a list of sites where your personal information has been compromised to see if any of them are accounts you no longer use.

Once you’ve decided on an account, you’ll need to find the steps to delete it. Simply deleting an app off of your phone or computer does not delete your account. Often you can log in and look in the account settings, or find instructions in the help menu, the FAQ page, or the pop-up customer service chat. If that fails, use a search engine to see if anybody else has written up the steps to deleting your specific type of account.

For more information, check out the Delete Unused Accounts tip on Security Planner.

Tip 11: Search for Yourself

Today's tip may sound a little existential, but we're not suggesting a deep spiritual journey. Just a trip to your nearest search engine. Pop your name into search engines such as Google or DuckDuckGo, or even AI tools such as ChatGPT, to see what you find. This is one of the simplest things you can do to raise your own awareness of your digital reputation. It can be the first thing prospective employers (or future first dates) do when trying to figure out who you are. From a privacy perspective, doing it yourself can also shed light on how your information is presented to the general public. If there's a defunct social media account you'd rather keep hidden, but it's on the first page of your search results, that might be a good signal for you to finally delete that account. If you shared your cellphone number with an organization you volunteer for and it's on their home page, you can ask them to take it down.

Knowledge is power. It's important to know what search results are out there about you, so you understand what people see when they look for you. Once you have this overview, you can make better choices about your online privacy. 

Tip 12: Tell “People Search” Sites to Delete Your Information

When you search online for someone’s name, you’ll likely see results from people-search sites selling their home address, phone number, relatives’ names, and more. People-search sites are a type of data broker with an especially dangerous impact. They can expose people to scams, stalking, and identity theft. Submit opt out requests to these sites to reduce the amount of personal information that is easily available about you online.

Check out this list of opt-out links and instructions for more than 50 people search sites, organized by priority. Before submitting a request, check that the site actually has your information. Here are a few high-priority sites to start with: 

Data brokers continuously collect new information, so your data could reappear after being deleted. You’ll have to re-submit opt-outs periodically to keep your information off of people-search sites. Subscription-based services can automate this process and save you time, but a Consumer Reports study found that manual opt-outs are more effective.

Tip 13: Remove Your Personal Addresses from Search Engines 

Your home address may often be found with just a few clicks online. Whether you're concerned about your digital footprint or looking to safeguard your physical privacy, understanding where your address appears and how to remove or obscure it is a crucial step. Here's what you need to know.

Your personal addresses can be available through public records like property purchases, medical licensing information, or data brokers. Opting out from data brokers will do a lot to remove what's available commercially, but sometimes you can't erase the information entirely from things like property sales records.

You can ask some search engines to remove your personal information from search indexes, which is the most efficient way to make information like your personal addresses, phone number, and email address a lot harder to find. Google has a form that makes this request quite easy, and we’d suggest starting there.

Day 14: Check Out Signal

Here's the problem: many of your texts aren't actually private. Phone companies, government agencies, and app developers all too often can all peek at your conversations.

So on Global Encryption Day, our tip is to check out Signal—a messaging app that actually keeps your conversations private.

Signal uses end-to-end encryption, meaning only you and your recipient can read your messages—not even Signal can see them. Security experts love Signal because it's run by a privacy-focused nonprofit, funded by donations instead of data collection, and its code is publicly auditable. 

Beyond privacy, Signal offers free messaging and calls over Wi-Fi, helping you avoid SMS charges and international calling fees. The only catch? Your contacts need Signal too, so start recruiting your friends and family!

How to get started: Download Signal from your app store, verify your phone number, set a secure PIN, and start messaging your contacts who join you. Consider also setting up a username so people can reach you without sharing your phone number. For more detailed instructions, check out our guide.

Global Encryption Day is the perfect timing to protect your communications. Take your time to explore the app, and check out other privacy protecting features like disappearing messages, session verification, and lock screen notification privacy.

Tip 15: Switch to a Privacy-Protective Browser

Your browser stores tons of personal information: browsing history, tracking cookies, and data that companies use to build detailed profiles for targeted advertising. The browser you choose makes a huge difference in how much of this tracking you can prevent.

Most people use Chrome or Safari, which are automatically installed on Google and Apple products, but these browsers have significant privacy drawbacks. For example: Chrome's Incognito mode only hides history on your device—it doesn't stop tracking. Safari has been caught storing deleted browser history and collecting data even in private browsing mode.

Firefox is one alternative that puts privacy first. Unlike Chrome, Firefox automatically blocks trackers and ads in Private Browsing mode and prevents websites from sharing your data between sites. It also warns you when websites try to extract your personal information. But Firefox isn't your only option—other privacy-focused browsers like DuckDuckGo, Brave, and Tor also offer strong protections with different features. The key is switching away from browsers that prioritize data collection over your privacy.

Switching is easy: download your chosen browser from the links above and install it. Most browsers let you import bookmarks and passwords during setup.

You now have a new browser! Take some time to explore your new browser's privacy settings to maximize your protection.

Tip 16: Give Yourself Another Online Identity

We all take on different identities at times. Just as it's important to set boundaries in your daily life, the same can be true for your digital identity. For many reasons, people may want to keep aspects of their lives separate—and giving people control over how their information is used is one of the fundamental reasons we fight for privacy. Consider chopping up pieces of your life over separate email accounts, phone numbers, or social media accounts. 

This can help you manage your life and keep a full picture of your private information out of the hands of nosy data-mining companies. Maybe you volunteer for an organization in your spare time that you'd rather keep private, want to keep emails from your kids' school separate from a mountain of spam, or simply would rather keep your professional and private social media accounts separate. 

Whatever the reason, consider whether there's a piece of your life that could benefit from its own identity. When you set up these boundaries, you can also protect your privacy.

Come back tomorrow for another tip!

Thorin Klosowski

【辺野古新基地建設①】地盤改良工事が長期中断　頓挫の可能性も＝北上田 毅さん寄稿（沖縄平和市民連絡会）

日本ジャーナリストクラブ（JCJ）
6 hours 26 minutes ago
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EFF Backs Constitutional Challenge to Ecuador’s Intelligence Law That Undermines Human Rights

EFF update
7 hours 15 minutes ago

In early September, EFF submitted an amicus brief to Ecuador’s Constitutional Court supporting a constitutional challenge filed by Ecuadorian NGOs, including INREDH and LaLibre. The case challenges the constitutionality of the Ley Orgánica de Inteligencia (LOI) and its implementing regulation, the General Regulation of the LOI.

EFF’s amicus brief argues that the LOI enables disproportionate surveillance and secrecy that undermine constitutional and Inter-American human rights standards. EFF urges the Constitutional Court to declare the LOI and its regulation unconstitutional in their entirety.

More specifically, our submission notes that:

“The LOI presents a structural flaw that undermines compliance with the principles of legality, legitimate purpose, suitability, necessity, and proportionality; it inverts the rule and the exception, with serious harm to rights enshrined constitutionally and under the Convention; and it prioritizes indeterminate state interests, in contravention of the ultimate aim of intelligence activities and state action, namely the protection of individuals, their rights, and freedoms.”

Core Legal Problems Identified

 Vague and Overbroad Definitions

The LOI contains key terms like “national security,” “integral security of the State,” “threats,” and “risks” that are left either undefined or so broadly framed that they could mean almost anything. This vagueness grants intelligence agencies wide, unchecked discretion, and fails short of the standard of legal certainty required under the American Convention on Human Rights (CADH).

Secrecy and Lack of Transparency

The LOI makes secrecy the rule rather than the exception, reversing the Inter-American principle of maximum disclosure, which holds that access to information should be the norm and secrecy a narrowly justified exception. The law establishes a classification system—“restricted,” “secret,” and “top secret”—for intelligence and counterintelligence information, but without clear, verifiable parameters to guide its application on a case-by-case basis. As a result, all information produced by the governing body (ente rector) of the National Intelligence System is classified as secret by default. Moreover, intelligence budgets and spending are insulated from meaningful public oversight, concentrated under a single authority, and ultimately destroyed, leaving no mechanism for accountability.

Weak or Nonexistent Oversight Mechanisms

The LOI leaves intelligence agencies to regulate themselves, with almost no external scrutiny. Civilian oversight is minimal, limited to occasional, closed-door briefings before a parliamentary commission that lacks real access to information or decision making power. This structure offers no guarantee of independent or judicial supervision and instead fosters an environment where intelligence operations can proceed without transparency or accountability.

Intrusive Powers Without Judicial Authorization

The LOI allows access to communications, databases, and personal data without prior judicial order, which enables the mass surveillance of electronic communications, metadata, and databases across public and private entities—including telecommunication operators. This directly contradicts rulings of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which establish that any restriction of the right to privacy must be necessary, proportionate, and subject to independent oversight. It also runs counter to CAJAR vs. Colombia, which affirms that intrusive surveillance requires prior judicial authorization.

International Human Rights Standards Applied

Our amicus curiae draws on the CAJAR vs. Colombia judgment, which set strict standards for intelligence activities. Crucially, Ecuador’s LOI fall short of all these tests: it doesn’t constitute an adequate legal basis for limiting rights; contravenes necessary and proportionate principles; fails to ensure robust controls and safeguards, like prior judicial authorization and solid civilian oversight; and completely disregards related data protection guarantees and data subject’s rights.

At its core, the LOI structurally prioritizes vague notions of “state interest” over the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms. It legalizes secrecy, unchecked surveillance, and the impunity of intelligence agencies. For these reasons, we urge Ecuador’s Constitutional Court to declare the LOI and its regulations unconstitutional, as they violate both the Ecuadorian Constitution and the American Convention on Human Rights (CADH).

Read our full amicus brief here to learn more about how Ecuador’s intelligence framework undermines privacy, transparency, and the human rights protected under Inter-American human rights law.

Paige Collings

【Bookガイド】10月の“推し本”紹介＝萩山 拓(ライター)

日本ジャーナリストクラブ（JCJ）
1 day 6 hours ago
　ノンフィクション･ジャンルからチョイスした本の紹介です(刊行順･販価は税別)◆今尾恵介+金田章裕『地図と読む 日本の街道』帝国書院 10/9刊 1800円日本各地にある街道の地理的、歴史的な変遷をたどる道案内。古代から残る街道、江戸時代に整備された街道、鉄道開通後の近代の街道…など、時代ごとに解説する。 地図や地理関連の本を多数執筆する著者ならではの視点で読み解く一冊。〓著者の今尾氏は1959年横浜市生まれ。地図研究家。現在、地図情報センター評議員を務める。地図や地形、鉄道..
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