Privacy newsletter - July 28, 2020

Welcome to the latest edition of the Privacy Insider Newsletter. Each week, we send you the latest and smartest news in the world of data privacy.

Here are the top stories from last week you might have missed:

1. The U.K. government‘s attempts at developing their contact tracing app have been a fiasco. They rejected Google and Apple’s “decentralized” approach to contact tracing data storage, instead deciding to build their own system. The government’s approach complicated data collection and eroded data privacy. As it turns out, governments aren’t the best at building technology. Link
   
   The U.K. is also being challenged on GDPR’s compliance over its contact tracing app. The government admits that they haven't carried out an assessment of its impact on privacy. Link
2. An Israeli company claims to have successfully adapted its facial recognition software to identify people wearing masks. Their system is already deployed worldwide in hospitals and airports, as well as by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Link
3. More examples of Twitter’s lax internal privacy practices are coming to light following their high-profile hack two weeks ago. More than a thousand people inside Twitter had the ability to control users’ accounts and change sensitive account settings. Link
   
   The report Osano released last week detailed ways that privacy laxity and security issues go hand-in-hand. Twitter’s recent incident is a case study about the perils of not having a culture of privacy at your business. Link
4. More than 500 data breaches were reported by charities last year in the U.K. alone. Non-commercial organizations tend to have poorer privacy practices and be more likely to experience data breaches. Link
5. People in the U.S. are incorrectly claiming that requiring face masks violates privacy rights protected by HIPAA. This is not true. Link
6. Consumer Reports released a white paper arguing that appropriate privacy protections are lacking for direct-to-consumer genetic testing providers. In some respects, privacy laws are stronger on your web traffic data than your DNA. Link