Ex-DOGE Employee Exploited Americans’ Private Data, Whistleblower Claims
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The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 261: Ian Goldberg on the Privacy Risks of Age Assurance Technologies
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 261: Ian Goldberg on the Privacy Risks of Age Assurance Technologies
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alright hot take but people under 16 without a job who use discord and pay for nitro and stuff out of their parents pocket is legitimately so anger inducing like no go outside and actually make friends
like dont spend money on people you barely know, spend money on people who actually care about you, like your friends, parents et cetera
and the fact that the parents are paying for it is scary like WHY ARE YOU SUPPORTING PARASOCIAL AND POSSIBLE PEDOPHILE BEHAVIOUR FOR YOUR CHILD
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CarGurus breach linked to ShinyHunters exposes 12.4M records
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If you’ve ever searched for a car on CarGurus, your personal information could now be circulating online. A hacking group known as ShinyHunters has published what it claims are 12.4 million records taken from CarGurus, a popular auto shopping platform used by millions of people each month.
The leaked data includes names, phone numbers, email addresses,…
CarGurus breach linked to ShinyHunters exposes 12.4M records
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WE KINDLY DID THE MAPPING FOR FREE
We Kindly Did the Mapping for Free — josephkravis.com
MindBucket™ · Cipher Signal · March 2026
We Kindly Did theMapping for Free
How 100 million Pokémon GO players unknowingly built a billion-dollar spatial AI dataset,
powered the next generation of delivery robots — and got Stardust in return.
Joseph Kravis
// josephkravis.com
// Awareness Without Arsenal
// ~1,800…
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Well, That’s Terrifying: Stores Can Change Prices Based on Who You Are
For the past week this story has been making the rounds on about every gaming related reporters posts. A site called PSprices which helps gamers track prices discovered experimental tags buried in the code of the PlayStation Store- labelled things like IPT_PILOT, IPT_OPR_TESTING, and IPT_LTM.¹ Like wow guys, real subtle. So Sony has been secretly testing different prices for the same products on different groups of live users since November 2025. Helldivers 2 went from $39.99 to $28.89 for some users. God of War Ragnarok was 12.5% off for some people and full price for others. As of this week it’s grown to 190+ games across 70+ regions, and the US just got added with the largest game set of any region.² All the meanwhile not a single peep out of Sony announcing that they were doing this live to real users. So people are rightfully up in arms about this, but y'all- Sony is far from the only company doing this. They just got caught doing it.
In 2024 the Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation into eight middlemen companies: Mastercard, JPMorgan Chase, Accenture, McKinsey, Revionics, Bloomreach, Pros Holdings, and Task Software.³ In January 2025, they published their findings- the pricing tools sold by these eight companies were being used by at least 250 retail clients.⁴ The FTC itself dubbed the practice “surveillance pricing.” They didn’t call it “dynamic pricing” or “personalized offers”- they called it surveillance pricing. Those are the FTC’s own words, because that’s exactly what it is. And then, after the study started gaining attention, the new FTC chair Andrew Ferguson shut down the public comment period- the part where regular people were supposed to get to weigh in on the findings.⁵
so who else is doing this?
The FTC didn’t publish the list of 250 retailers- citing trade secret protections under their 6(b) authority. (uh-huh) But we don’t need the list to know who’s doing it, because a lot of them have already been caught:
- Kroger - built the EDGE system with Microsoft: cameras on digital shelf displays designed for facial recognition to estimate your age and gender.⁶ Said they have “no plans” to use it.⁷ Sure. Senators Warren and Casey wrote to their CEO warning the system could “display the customer’s maximum willingness to pay."⁸
- Uber - a driver tracked 159 of his own trips on the same route. Uber’s cut ranged from 21% to nearly 66%. Same ride every time.⁹
- Delta - partnered with AI startup Fetcherr to offer, in president Glen Hauenstein’s own words, "a price that’s available on that flight, on that time, to you, the individual."¹⁰ Then told lawmakers they don’t use personal data.¹¹ Sure.
- Wendy’s - told investors they were spending $20 million on digital menu boards to test "dynamic pricing."¹² Walked it back within two weeks after the internet lost its mind.¹³ The menu boards are still there.
- Ticketmaster - dynamic pricing pushed Bruce Springsteen tickets to $5,000+ and Blink-182 tickets to $600+.¹⁴ Oasis tour pricing caused a massive controversy in the UK in 2024.¹⁵
- FIFA - announced dynamic pricing for 2026 World Cup tickets. Prices range from $60 to $6,730 and will change based on demand.¹⁶ Sixty dollars to nearly seven thousand. For the same seat.
- Amazon - making over 2.5 million price changes a day back in 2013.¹⁷ That was over a decade ago.
- Walmart - deployed digital price tags to over 2,300 stores.¹⁸ They say it’s not for dynamic pricing. But a digital tag changes in seconds. A paper one takes a person and a ladder.
The most annoying part of all of this is that your web browser is helping all of these fuckos get data on you without your consent. It hands over your screen size, location, installed fonts, timezone, language settings, and even your graphics card model. You don’t have to be logged in, accept cookies, or even have an account.
All the way back in 2010, the EFF found that 84% of browsers had a unique fingerprint just from that combination of traits alone.¹⁹ That was before modern techniques like canvas and WebGL fingerprinting even existed. By 2024, researchers found that combining browser and device fingerprints could uniquely identify 99.24% of users.²⁰ That’s right- companies can determine who you are with 99.24% accuracy without you ever signing in or agreeing to share anything with them. A 2025 study from Texas A&M and Johns Hopkins confirmed that over 10,000 of the top websites are actively fingerprinting their users, even after cookies have been cleared.²¹ All of these metrics combine into an ID that follows you without a single cookie. Clear your cookies, use incognito mode- doesn’t matter. The fingerprint still works.
There are many ways to get around this, but it’s far too long for a single Tumblr post. I wrote a more in depth article, which if you care to read, contains a buttload of info on what you can do to stop companies from harvesting data. In order from lightest time commitment to heaviest. Pick and choose what you want based on what suits your needs!
Surveillance Pricing: How to Stop the Algorithm from Altering Your Prices
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- PSprices: Sony A/B Testing Prices — original investigation discovering hidden pricing experiment tags in the PlayStation Store
- Outlook Respawn: Sony Expands PlayStation Store Pricing Test to 190 Games (Mar 11, 2026) — most current reporting; confirms 190+ games, 70+ regions, US inclusion via IPT_LTM tag, Helldivers 2 at $39.99 to $28.89 for test users
- FTC Issues Orders to Eight Companies (Jul 2024) — FTC press release naming the eight intermediary firms investigated
- FTC Surveillance Pricing Study (Jan 2025) — FTC press release on findings from their 6(b) investigation
- Retail Brew: New FTC Chair Shuts Down Public Comment on Retailers’ Surveillance Pricing (Jan 2025) — FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson closed the public comment period on surveillance pricing findings
- Microsoft: Kroger and Microsoft Partner to Redefine Customer Experience (Jan 2019) — partnership announcement for the EDGE shelf system
- Fast Company: Kroger Says It Has No Plans to Use Facial Recognition — Kroger’s denial after public backlash
- Warren & Casey Letter to Kroger CEO (Aug 2024, PDF) — Congressional letter raising concerns about EDGE system capabilities
- Levi Spires: 159 Identical Rides, 159 Prices — independent analysis by an Uber driver tracking fare variance on his own route
- Fortune: Delta Moves Toward Eliminating Set Prices in Favor of AI (Jul 2025) — reporting on Delta’s partnership with Fetcherr
- NBC News: Delta Assures Lawmakers It Won’t Personalize Fares — Delta’s official statement: "ticket pricing never takes into account personal data,” uses “aggregated instead of individualized data”
- NPR: No, Wendy’s Says It Isn’t Planning to Introduce Surge Pricing (Feb 2024) — coverage of the earnings call comments and subsequent walkback
- Restaurant Dive: Wendy’s Backtracks on Dynamic Pricing — timeline of the announcement and walkback
- Rolling Stone: Springsteen Fans Raged Over Ticket Prices (Jul 2022) — Ticketmaster dynamic pricing pushed tickets to $5,000+; Blink-182 tickets hit $600+
- BBC: Oasis Reunion Tour Ticket Pricing Fury (Sep 2024) — Ticketmaster dynamic pricing caused prices to double or more during the Oasis reunion sale, sparking a UK Competition and Markets Authority investigation
- ESPN: 2026 World Cup Tickets - FIFA Confirms Use of Dynamic Pricing (May 2025) — FIFA announces dynamic pricing for World Cup tickets, $60-$6,730 range
- Profitero: Amazon Makes More Than 2.5 Million Daily Price Changes (Dec 2013) — ecommerce analytics firm tracking Amazon’s repricing frequency
- WebProNews: Walmart Rolls Out Electronic Shelf Labels in 2,300 Stores — reporting on Walmart’s VusionGroup digital shelf label deployment
- Peter Eckersley, “How Unique Is Your Web Browser?” (EFF/Panopticlick, 2010) — foundational research on browser fingerprinting; 84% of browsers uniquely identifiable from a sample of ~500,000
- Assessing Web Fingerprinting Risk (WWW 2024) — cross-browser and device fingerprinting study; 99.24% of users uniquely identifiable when combining browser and device fingerprints
- Texas A&M / Johns Hopkins: Websites Are Tracking You Via Browser Fingerprinting (ACM WWW 2025) — 10,000+ top websites actively fingerprinting users; tracking persists after cookies cleared
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Smart glasses detector app warns if you’re being recorded
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Smart glasses are built to blend in. Most of the time, they look just like a normal pair of glasses. The difference is that some models can quietly take photos or record video without anyone nearby realizing it.
As these wearable cameras start showing up in everyday places, more people are wondering when they might be on camera. That concern helped…
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No more end to end encryptyion? Even more reasons to avoid the Zuch apps. Making it even more apparent he just doesn’t give a zuck about privacy
Meta to Shut Down Instagram End-to-End Encrypted Chat Support Starting May 2026
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We were sitting at their bar, but we also had a mocha and a cappuccino toward the end. Something about the flag and the security camera above it makes things feel relevant and eerie.
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Help protect the online and digital privacy of Canadians!
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Data brokers accused of hiding opt-out pages from Google
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If you have ever tried to opt out of a data broker site, you know the drill. You search. You scroll. You click through layers of legal jargon. Then you wonder if they even want you to find the exit door. Now we know the answer.
A U.S. Senate investigation found that several major data brokers placed code on their opt-out pages that blocked search…
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Meta to Shut Down Instagram End-to-End Encrypted Chat Support Starting May 2026
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If you’re tired of handing your valuable data to unknown third-parties, via apps (including this one), consider watching this video. The software does work, FYI (for me, it’s blocked an average of more than 14 tracking requests per minute).
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Government Enacts Political Party Anti-Privacy Rules With Bill C-4 Royal Assent Sprint
Government Enacts Political Party Anti-Privacy Rules With Bill C-4 Royal Assent Sprint
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had to get a new computer after my 4 year old laptop decided to stop charging… wish me luck with killing all the AI “features”
Stop downloading! I dont want them!!!
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A Tale of Two Bills: Lawful Access Returns With Changes to Warrantless Access But Dangerous Backdoor Surveillance Remains