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"Personalisation is no longer reserved for commercial parties like Spotify and Netflix. For the last few years public services have hopped on this trend, but the BBC is now taking the lead by creating a central open-source recommendation and data control service called My PDS. "

Using Docracy's unique document change analysis, we are now tracking terms of service and privacy policies for hundreds of the world's top sites. See below for summaries of recent changes, or to see the complete terms for any of the sites we track.

"If you're having trouble accessing several parts of the Web today, it's because Amazon Web Services is having a bit of a glitch this morning."

"FACEBOOK. Instagram. Google. Twitter. All services we rely on - and all services we believe we don't have to pay for. Not with cash, anyway. But ad-financed Internet platforms aren't free, and the price they extract in terms of privacy and control is getting only costlier. A recent Pew Research Center poll shows that 93 percent of the public believes that "being in control of who can get information about them is important," and yet the amount of information we generate online has exploded and we seldom know where it all goes."

" "I Agree" is an art installation that prints the terms of service for common apps on scrolls of colored paper, creating a bar chart of the fine print that neither you, nor anyone else in the history of the world, has ever read. "

Christian Fuchs's talk on the public service internet

"57.10 Acceptable Use; Safety-Critical Systems. Your use of the Lumberyard Materials must comply with the AWS Acceptable Use Policy. The Lumberyard Materials are not intended for use with life-critical or safety-critical systems, such as use in operation of medical equipment, automated transportation systems, autonomous vehicles, aircraft or air traffic control, nuclear facilities, manned spacecraft, or military use in connection with live combat. However, this restriction will not apply in the event of the occurrence (certified by the United States Centers for Disease Control or successor body) of a widespread viral infection transmitted via bites or contact with bodily fluids that causes human corpses to reanimate and seek to consume living human flesh, blood, brain or nerve tissue and is likely to result in the fall of organized civilization."

In November, owners of the Aether Cone intelligent streaming audio device got a lump of coal for the holidays, when Aether, the manufacturer of the "smart speaker" announced it was going out of business.

"Facebook-owned messaging giant WhatsApp has announced a big change to its privacy policy which, once a user accepts its new T&Cs, will see it start to share some user data with its parent company - including for ad-targeting purposes on the latter service."

"Researchers have encountered a denial-of-service botnet that's made up of more than 25,000 Internet-connected closed circuit TV devices."

Large caches of data stolen from online cheating site AshleyMadison.com have been posted online by an individual or group that claims to have completely compromised the company's user databases, financial records and other proprietary information. The still-unfolding leak could be quite damaging to some 37 million users of the hookup service, whose slogan is "Life is short. Have an affair."

"Play with Experimental Extensions, you can create Scratch projects that connect with external hardware (such as electronic devices and robotics) and online resources (including web data and web services)."

Dating service OkCupid has cheerfully admitted to manipulating what it shows users, a month after Facebook faced a storm of protest when it revealed that it had conducted psychological experiments.

Privacy is a hot-button issue in the tech world. How will it fare in the age of pervasive computing - a world of billions of connected devices, systems, and services exchanging personal data?

Kromtech Security Researchers have discovered another publically accessible Amazon S3 repository. This time it contained medical data in 316,363 PDF reports in the form of weekly blood test results. Many of these were multiple reports on individual patients. It appears that each patient had weekly test results totaling around 20 files each. That would still be an estimated 150,000+ people affected by the leak.

Last week, security news site KrebsOnSecurity went dark for more than 24 hours following what was believed to be a record 620 gigabit-per-second denial of service attack brought on by an ensemble of routers, security cameras, or other so-called Internet of Things devices. Now, there's word of a similar attack on a French Web host that peaked at a staggering 1.1 terabits per second, more than 60 percent bigger.

Guard is a site that uses AI to read epically long privacy policies and then highlight any aspects of them that might be problematic.