• Privacy Picks
  • Posts
  • Self-Driving Cars, Venmo Settings, Google's New privacy Tools

Self-Driving Cars, Venmo Settings, Google's New privacy Tools

Plus: Privacy Settings for Threads and "Proof of Personhood" in Worldcoin

Author

Patrick Hess
August 11, 2023

It’s been big news in the privacy sphere, with many critics arguing that the bill lacks safeguards against overbroad surveillance and weakens privacy rights. On the other hand, the Indian government claims the bill will revolutionize data protection and prevent the misuse of personal data.

For an expert analysis of India’s new privacy bill, I recommend reading these insightful observations from Omar Tene, a partner at Goodwin and Senior Fellow at the Future of Privacy Forum.

Now on to some privacy picks.

In this issue:

  • 🚘 Privacy implications of autonomous vehicles

  • 👛 Reviewing your Venmo privacy settings

  • 🌍 WorldCoin’s “proof of personhood”

  • 🔎 Google’s new privacy tools

  • 🧵 Protecting your privacy on Threads

Privacy v.s. Self-Driving Cars

A lot has been said about the potential safety issues with autonomous vehicles, but what about all the privacy implications?

This article raises several inevitable privacy concerns to consider as more self-driving, data-consuming cars hit the road in the coming years:

With innovations often come unintended consequences—one of which is the massive collection of data required for an autonomous vehicle to function.

The “massive collection of data” can be derived from you as the driver, including your whereabouts and daily routines, or external data points, such as the activities of pedestrians.

This data-intensive tech raises several questions, such as:

  • Who’s storing the data, and for how long?

  • How well is the data protected against breaches?

  • How easily can law enforcement access this data?

Also, how will authorities such as the CPPA regulate this technology?

They’ve already made it clear that the privacy practices of connected vehicles are on their agenda.

It’s Probably Time to Review Your Privacy Settings on Venmo

If you have a Venmo account but haven’t used it in a while (like me), you might unknowingly be sharing your contact list with the app’s entire user base.

As this article points out, Venmo was developed over ten years ago, when social media was still novel and built-in privacy features were merely an afterthought.

For example, one of the app's main features was the ability to post your personal transactions to a public feed. And sharing your phone’s contact list with the public is the default setting.

While the public feed is gone, you can still click on someone’s profile and see their transactions with strangers. And someone can do the same to you unless you make the transaction private. 

Also, if you don’t want to share your highly sensitive contacts list with the whole world, make sure you toggle the Friend’s list setting to “Private”.

Worldcoin and “Proof of Personhood”

Worldcoin, Sam Altman’s cryptocurrency project and digital identification platform (which is it?), aims to create a global financial network by verifying a user’s "personhood" through iris scans.

Personhood is a new concept for me, so I needed a good overview, which I found on Decrypt: Worldcoin wants to “create a massive network of users that have verified that they are humans, rather than bots or AI algorithms.”

As the article explains, users obtain a “WorldID” by having their irises scanned by a device called the Orb, which generates a unique IrisCode. The IrisCode is saved on Worldcoin's decentralized blockchain to prevent fraud and manipulation.

As you can imagine, a platform built on biometric data such as iris scans raises some major privacy red flags, and critics are concerned that Worldcoin collects more personal information than it discloses.

Google’s New Privacy Tools

You may have noticed that Google has released a few new privacy features to help us manage how our personal information appears in their search results.

It’s hard not to feel like the cat’s out of the bag at this point, but these features are a step in the right direction. This article explains the new privacy options, including:

  • An updated tool that allows users to request removal of their personal info, such as phone numbers and home addresses, from search results;

  • An alert feature when your contact info appears so you can quickly request removal;

  • The blurring of explicit images, such as adult or violent content, and the option for users to request the removal of explicit images that may have been uploaded to a website.

Like many privacy controls, you’ll need to take action to make the requests and set the alerts.

How to Set up privacy and security in threads

Are you using Meta’s new Threads platform? After an initial surge in new users, the app has slumped a bit.

But millions of people have signed up, and privacy experts are now concerned about Thread’s handling of personal information given Meta’s track record of privacy violations in the EU and U.S.

Bottom line: don’t expect the default settings on a platform like Threads to be aligned with your privacy interests.

This article points out some specific privacy concerns with Threads and provides excellent tips on making your Threads account more private and secure.

For starters, you’ll learn where to find privacy and security settings within the app, notification settings, security settings, and other privacy settings.