All About Cookies

07/21/2026

Data brokers profit from your personal information without consent. See how many Americans are concerned, what steps they're taking, and why most feel powerless to stop it.

07/10/2026

Why your brand new secret Instagram account already knows everything about you

07/08/2026

Starting July 7, 2026, every new car sold in the European Union must include a driver monitoring camera aimed at your face.

Glance at your phone, your kids in the back seat, or the radio for too long, and the car will flash a warning light and sound an alert.

On top of being annoying, if footage from a system like this were ever exposed in a data breach or shared without your knowledge, it could reveal detailed patterns about your daily habits, your location, and who rides in the car with you.

None of this is a hypothetical worst case. In March 2024, The New York Times reported that GM, Honda, Acura, Kia, Hyundai, and Mitsubishi had all been sharing driver behavior data, including mileage, speed, hard braking, and rapid acceleration, with data brokers LexisNexis and Verisk.

Those brokers turned the raw data into "risk scores" and sold them to insurance companies. One driver saw his premium jump 21%.

While the intention behind the ADDW system is well-founded and it has the potential to reduce road accidents caused by driver distraction, its implementation has also raised legitimate privacy concerns.

Do you think the privacy tradeoff is worth it?

https://allaboutcookies.org/eu-mandatory-distracted-driver-system

The EU's new mandatory ADDW rules could make roads safer by altering distracted drivers, but its privacy safeguards and data handling rules remain a gray area.

06/26/2026

Reddit is now asking some users to verify their age using a government-issued ID or a selfie, and many users don't realize how much that actually means for their privacy.

Here's what's happening: Reddit recently received a £14.47 million fine from UK regulators for unlawfully processing children's personal data. In response, they've started rolling out stricter age verification through a third-party service called Persona. Reports suggest it's now appearing in parts of Europe and possibly beyond.

The concern isn't just about handing over your ID. It's about what happens to that data afterward:
* Who stores it
* How long they keep it
* Whether it can be breached

We've already seen what happens when third-party verification vendors are compromised: Discord exposed the government IDs of roughly 70,000 users through a third-party breach.

Reddit's CEO has said the platform prefers privacy-preserving verification methods and considers government ID "the least preferred" option. That's reassuring in principle, but users deserve to know what they're agreeing to before they tap "verify."

Before you upload anything, ask yourself: Do you know what this third party does with your data? Is there a way to limit what you share?

We looked at what Reddit's verification rollout actually looks like, why it's happening, and what it means for your privacy — including whether a VPN can still help you avoid it.

🔗 https://allaboutcookies.org/new-reddit-age-selfie-verification-eu-users

06/24/2026

Your phone is now a bigger identity theft risk than a scammer calling your number.

The Identity Theft Resource Center just released its 2026 Trends in Identity Report, and the findings mark a real turning point:

Unauthorized access to phones and computers jumped 78% year over year. For people between 35 and 64, getting hacked has now passed getting scammed as the most common way identities are stolen for the first time ever.

What makes this especially dangerous: device hacks are quiet. There's no obvious moment where something went wrong.

Malware running in the background can harvest your saved passwords and two-factor codes without a single suspicious email in sight. A quarter of identity theft victims said they had no idea how their information was taken.

Warning signs your phone may be compromised:
- Battery draining unusually fast, or the phone runs warm when idle
- Data usage spikes you can't explain
- Two-factor codes showing up that you never requested
- Apps you don't remember installing
- Settings changing on their own

What actually helps:
- Install pending OS updates now, and turn on automatic updates
- Use a password manager to replace reused passwords with unique ones
- Switch to an authenticator app for two-factor authentication instead of text messages
- Add identity monitoring. In our survey, 71% of monitored victims were alerted to theft by their service, versus just 20% of those without it

Read the full article to see a step-by-step response guide if you think your phone is already affected:

A new 2026 report reveals the #1 way identities are being stolen right now has changed, and most people aren't protecting themselves from it yet.

06/04/2026

Millions of Americans use VPNs to protect their privacy online. But a surveillance law up for renewal in Congress could create an unexpected twist.

According to lawmakers raising concerns about Section 702, routing your traffic through some VPN servers could make it appear "foreign," potentially exposing that data to broader intelligence collection without a warrant. The Senate is expected to decide whether to renew the law by June 12.

This doesn't mean using a VPN automatically puts you under surveillance. But it does raise an important question: Can a tool designed to improve privacy end up creating new privacy risks?

Would concerns like this change how you choose a VPN server location?

Read more: https://allaboutcookies.org/section-702-vpn-surveillance

Section 702 lets the government search your messages without a warrant, and your VPN may not protect you. Here's what to know before the June 12 vote.