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"The Federal Trade Commission revealed today that only 20% of 400 mobile apps aimed at children included any privacy disclosures before or after downloads. The agency said it is investigating whether certain companies have violated laws protecting children online by failing to disclose the types of data gathered through apps and how those data are used. As the year draws to a close, regulators and lawmakers seem increasingly motivated to impose some clarity on the murky world of mobile apps. The FTC is expected to unveil an update to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act to require more transparency on data collection by mobile-industry players soon. In addition, the Department of Commerce will discuss a code of conduct for mobile privacy notifications next week."

"As part of our new privacy initiative, we'll discuss themes of social media, surveillance, ethics, and of course, privacy in Eggers' thought-provoking new novel. If you've read the novel (or even part of it) we hope you'll join the conversation!"

"From NSA sweeps to commercial services scraping our Web browsing habits, to all kinds of people tracking us through our smartphones, Angwin says we've become a society where indiscriminate data-gathering has become the norm. Angwin has covered online privacy issues for years, and in her new book she describes what she did to try to escape the clutches of data scrapers, even to the point of creating a fake identity."

"A proliferation of free, entertaining online content often leads parents, kids, and tech companies to overlook-or worse, disregard-data-privacy laws."

"The grand bargain of the digital age, in which consumers have traded their data for free services, is coming apart. And it may be too late to regain control of the personal data that's been bought, sold and leaked all over the web for the past three decades.  Why it matters: If information is power, our lackadaisical approach to safeguarding details about our lives has made a handful of companies more powerful than we ever expected, and it's made consumers more vulnerable than ever. Here's what it's come to: Autonomous vehicles collect images of everyone they pass on the street. Dozens of companies mine and sell location data from smartphone apps. App developers give personal details to major online platforms. Smart-home devices and digital assistants track your daily habits and have microphones. Genetic testing services share data with app developers and drug companies. Half of the country was impacted by the Equifax financial data breach."

"Smartphones and social media may be, in fact, transforming the experience of childhood and adolescence in some ways. But the hard (for many adults to hear) truth is that many of technology's effects on kids have less to do with screen time per se than they do with the decisions grown-ups are making - many of which place children's privacy at great risk. First, there's surveillance. Children are now under intense scrutiny from a young age, from platforms and advertisers, but also parents and other authority figures. Many public schools use online gradebooks, and sometimes app-based communication systems like Class Dojo. Depending on their settings, these systems allow parents to instantly see the score on every quiz, and a record of every time their child is disciplined or praised. Family dynamics vary; these updates may be the catalyst to an important conversation, an invitation to hover or get overly involved in a child's progress, or a prelude to harsh punishment."

"A change in the Child Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) means that children under the age of 13 can be shown ads targeted toward them when they're online. This could lead to Facebook lowering its age of admission. Drafted in 1998, well before MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and other social networks burst onto the scene, the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday updated COPPA. The amendments work to protect children online, noting that certain information cannot be collected without parental consent, such as geolocation information and photos. However, the act also notes that it's now OK to advertise to children under the age of 13 (which is Facebook's minimum age requirement):"

"ast September, Apple proudly rolled out a Screen Time feature that was designed to help people manage how much they use their devices, and even get away from them altogether with a related Downtime setting. This was a canny marketing move from the maker of the most attractive and addictive screen ever invented. And it came against the backdrop of Apple's unusually public campaign against Facebook in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Screen Time's promotional materials prominently featured both Facebook and Instagram, as if suggesting these two apps in particular might be a waste of your time. Never mind that Facebook's very real privacy liabilities aren't connected to how often you use the product. Apple had an opportunity to position itself on the higher ground of the branding battlefield, and it took it."

"Or how we sacrifice our privacy and receive nothing in return"

"NEWARK - The fifth-graders of Yolanda Bromfield's digital-privacy class had just finished their lesson on ­online-offline balance when she asked them a tough question: How would they act when they left school and reentered a world of prying websites, addictive phones and online scams? Susan, a 10-year-old in pink sneakers who likes YouTube and the mobile game "Piano Tiles 2," quietly raised her hand. "I will make sure that I don't tell nobody my personal stuff," she said, "and be offline for at least two hours every night." Between their math and literacy classes, these elementary school kids were studying up on perhaps one of the most important and least understood school subjects in America - how to protect their privacy, save their brains and survive the big, bad Web. Classes such as these, though surprisingly rare, are spreading across the country amid hopes of preparing kids and parents for some of the core tensions of modern childhood: what limits to set around technologies whose long-term effects are unknown - and for whom young users are a prime audience.

"The cost of being always available. The cost of having fragmented conversation. The cost of a rewired brain. The cost of our privacy. The literal, spiraling cost of buying the latest technology. For these and other economic reasons, sales of iPhones and other smartphones have recently plateaued and even declined. At the same time, some people have gone back to the simpler, less addictive phones used in the late 1990s and early 2000s: the flip phone, the "candybar" phone, and other basic "feature" phones that can only talk and text."

"How will life change when every noise becomes a search prompt?"

"Security experts warn that many Wi-Fi baby monitors - and other devices in the Internet of things - are vulnerable to hacking. In 2015, the security analytics company Rapid7 published a case study of baby monitors that found a number of security vulnerabilities. The risk is not just to privacy and peace of mind: A hacker could use a baby monitor to gain access to a home's network to get information off computers, possibly for financial gain."

"The searches we make, the news we read, the dates we go on, the advertisements we see, the products we buy and the music we listen to. The stock market. The surveillance society. The police state, and the drones. All guided by a force we never see and few understand. A series of calculation procedures that come together to constitute capitalism's secret ingredient - the all holy algorithm, that which binds and optimizes. Those strange numerical gods who decide whether or not you're a terrorist and what kids' toy is going to set the market on fire this Christmas. But what are they, where did they come from and how did they get so powerful?"

"As internet-connected devices and appliances accumulate, one academic foresees "the monetization of every move you make.""

"For more than a year, Facebook has endured cascading crises - over Russian misinformation, data privacy and abusive content - that transformed the Silicon Valley icon into an embattled giant accused of corporate overreach and negligence. An investigation by The New York Times revealed how Facebook fought back against its critics: with delays, denials and a full-bore campaign in Washington. Here are six takeaways."

"The promise of Facebook was to create a more open and connected world. But from the company's failure to protect millions of users' data, to the proliferation of "fake news" and disinformation, mounting crises have raised the question: Is Facebook more harmful than helpful? On Monday, Oct. 29, and Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2018, FRONTLINE presents The Facebook Dilemma. This major, two-night event investigates a series of warnings to Facebook as the company grew from Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room to a global empire. With dozens of original interviews and rare footage, The Facebook Dilemma examines the powerful social media platform's impact on privacy and democracy in the U.S. and around the world."

"Know that every border you cross, every purchase you make, every call you dial, every cell phone tower you pass, friend you keep, article you write, site you visit, subject line you type, and packet you route, is in the hands of a system whose reach is unlimited but whose safeguards are not." This's what Edward Snowden wrote to filmmaker Laura Poitras when he first made contact with her in 2013 regarding the NSA's tracking and interception systems. Yet, ever since Facebook came under closer public scrutiny following the 2016 election, Snowden's warning to Poitras reads increasingly like it could have been written about the social platform as well. We now know the seemingly unlimited reach of Facebook's data mining operation. We know that it has in the past, and may still, track what you write - and delete - from its site, monitor the websites you visit, where you go (even when you're offline), record the applications you and your friends install, and more. Somewhere, Facebook may even know how much money you have."

"Want to freak yourself out? I'm going to show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realizing it."