Ads and tracking have turned TVs into privacy nightmares. Both are so widespread among smart TVs that I’ve written a guide for avoiding them. One recommendation in that guide is to use a computer monitor. But in recent years, monitors have become more capable of pushing ads and tracking users. Without more straightforward approaches from vendors, such as easily comprehensible privacy policies and avoiding inappropriate ads, monitors are dangerously encroaching…

Chinese retailer AliExpress has been caught fingerprinting visitors after one of the metrics—an outdated technique that measures inaudible sounds it sends to browsers—impeded a researcher’s ability to use his bluetooth headphones. Researcher Matthew Callaghan said he stumbled on the stealthy tracking by mistake. After loading the AliExpress homepage, audio from his phone stopped playing over his multipoint headphones, which accept connections from more than one device at a time. He…

Several months ago, Motorola and the makers of GrapheneOS announced a team-up that would expand support for the privacy-centric OS to beyond Google’s Pixel phones. The announcement, however, was bereft of details. Now, the creators of the OS have taken to Mastodon (naturally) to provide an update. Moto’s GrapheneOS phones are on track to launch in 2027, but they’ll cost a pretty penny. The upcoming Moto devices won’t ship with…

Logitech is facing a proposed class action lawsuit for not giving customers tariff refunds. In April 2025, Logitech raised the prices on 51 percent of its portfolio, with some prices increasing by as much as 25 percent. The complaint seeks to “recover monies that Logitech extracted from American consumers as offset for import tariffs that the United States Supreme Court has since declared unlawful, tariffs for which Logitech now stands…

Waymo has sharply increased its lobbying spending as it seeks to persuade US regulators to clear a path for fully autonomous taxi services, intensifying its battle with rival Uber over the future of robotaxis. The Alphabet-owned company spent more than $1 million between April and June on lobbying the federal government, more than double its outlay a year earlier, according to filings. That put Waymo’s spending close to Uber’s and…

A leading US distributor of China’s most popular humanoid robots and robot dogs now plans to produce its own robots at a facility on Long Island, New York. The business pivot comes amid the US government’s growing crackdown on foreign-made robots. The company RoboStore had previously become the main North American distributor for humanoid robots and quadruped robots from Unitree Robotics, a Chinese robotics company that produces some of the…

When someone uploads a photo to the people-search tool ClarityCheck, the website has a clear message: “Your reverse image search is private and secure.” New research, though, shows that the website left more than 9 million image files, including photographs of people’s faces, publicly exposed. And a second misconfiguration publicly exposed people’s email addresses and phone numbers. Overall, according to findings from independent security researcher Jeremiah Fowler, the exposed ClarityCheck database contained roughly…

Earlier this week, researchers outlined an attack that used a secret input provided by Microsoft 365 Copilot for enterprise to cause the AI assistant to exfiltrate a password present in the user’s inbox. Now, a separate team has devised a similar attack against Grok. The new data theft hack employs a deceptively simple trick to force the Elon Musk-owned large language model to steal user chats and other personal information….

Amazon wants to grow its Prime Air delivery drone service sixfold to reach nearly 500 cities and towns across the United States by the end of 2026. The planned expansions from Amazon and its rivals could make the convenience of delivery drone services available to tens of millions more people in the coming months—but will also test more communities’ tolerance for increased noise from daily drone flights. On August 19,…

A BIOS update for the Framework Laptop 13 with AMD Ryzen 7040-series processors is bricking the systems, multiple users have reported online. Framework started shipping pre-built Ryzen 7040-based Framework Laptop 13 computers and compatible motherboards in 2023. In June 2026, Framework released BIOS 3.20 for the devices. The update adds mainboard support for features, including a haptic touchpad and new speakers, for the higher-end Framework Laptop 13 Pro and fixes issues,…