Top News – TikTok allegedly still sharing data with China; Uber receives €10 million fine and more

Uber fined €10 million fine for violating the privacy of its drivers

The Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP), in cooperation with the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL), imposed a €10 million fine on Uber following an investigation that found that Uber failed to provide drivers with information under the ‘right to access’ request, by providing incomplete information in their privacy statement regarding data transfers outside the EU, for not making the request form easily accessible for drivers and for failing to mention the right to data portability in their privacy statement. Read more

French DPA imposes €75,000 fine for failure to obtain valid consent

French data protection authority CNIL imposed a fine on Tagada Media, a company that specializes in lead generation, for violating the GDPR. Investigations found that the company’s online forms did not allow free, informed, and unambiguous consent to be obtained and even used dark patterns to encourage users to agree to the transmission of data. It was also found that the company did not maintain a record of processing activities. Read more

AI ‘poisoning’ tool Nightshade well received by users

Nightshade, a new, free tool created by researchers at the University of Chicago, received 250,000 downloads within the first five days of its release. Nightshade alters artwork posted online by ‘shading’ them on a pixel level to show the ML algorithm entirely different content. It is speculated that the tool has been downloaded by users across the globe. The same team earlier released a tool, ‘Glaze,’ to prevent AI models from learning an artist's signature ‘style.’ Read more

New Zealand releases PIA toolkit

On the 1st of February, the New Zealand Office of the Privacy Commissioner released a toolkit to help organizations create and evaluate Privacy Impact Assessments, PIAs. The toolkit includes guides to successfully complete a PIA, template documents, templates to check if a full assessment is needed, and a risk and mitigation table template to help identify, describe, and manage potential privacy risks in organization projects. Read more

American’s data shared with TikTok's parent company in China

According to several employees, unsecured data is still being sent to TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, after claiming it has walled off American data. Project Texas, an initiative launched to protect US user data by storing it in Oracle servers in Texas, has allegedly been struggling to keep up with the constant tweaks from ByteDance employees. Staff members claimed that they received instructions to send data via internal messaging channels and computers provided by ByteDance, going against policy. Read more