Welcome to the ‘papers, please’ internet
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the downward spiral of the internet, follow Adi Robertson. The Stepback…
Adam Mosseri’s ‘we’re totally not spying on you’ video is raising a lot of questions
Today, the same day that Meta announced that it will soon use your AI chats to personalize the ads it shows you, Instagram head Adam Mosseri made a “myth busting”…
The UK’s war on Apple encryption is back
The UK government is reportedly once again demanding that Apple provide it with backdoor access to encrypted iCloud user data, following claims that the effort had been abandoned in August.…
Tile’s lack of encryption could make tracker owners vulnerable to stalking
Security researchers are shining the spotlight on a serious security vulnerability that could enable stalkers to track victims using their own Tile tags, as well as other unwanted violations of…
Facebook gave our data to Cambridge Analytica and all I got was this $38.36
Remember back in 2023, when we told you how to get your cut of a $725 million class action settlement? A couple of years later, that money is going out.…
Signal’s first paid feature adds encrypted media and message backups
Signal is launching its first paid feature: the ability to make secure, end-to-end encrypted backups of your media history older than 45 days and of your text message history for…
‘Vibe-hacking’ is now a top AI threat
“Agentic AI systems are being weaponized.” That’s one of the first lines of Anthropic’s new Threat Intelligence report, out today, which details the wide range of cases in which Claude…