23&Me has filed for bankruptcy.
If you've used their service you might want to delete your data. Now. No telling where the data will end up, who will aquire it and what they'll do with it.
Log in, select your account, then Settings, then scroll down to the download & delete section.
In a world where tech giants clash, let's not forget the importance of data security and our right to privacy. #AI #DataRights
Think companies can collect & sell your data without your say? Think again.
Under CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act), you have rights:
Request your data be deleted See what companies have collected about you Opt out of data sales
Even if you’re not in California, CCPA may still protect you. Start using your rights today.
One of the things I've been advocating for years - and where I want to raise my voice even louder - is the importance of owning your data. #OwnYourData
Over the past few days, I’ve come across two examples of how misinformation is causing immense damage, leading people to believe that there's no alternative but to hand over their data to big corporations, putting themselves entirely in their hands.
- A well-known lawyer, just before a meeting, warned about using Teams and its new "virtual assistant," which joins conferences before anyone else and transcribes everything. When I pointed out that it would be wise to use alternative tools (like Jitsi, for example, but there are others), he abruptly ended the conversation, saying, "We've lost this war. There's no alternative anymore."
That wasn’t the right moment for a detailed discussion, so I just noted that alternatives do exist - but if no one starts using them, and if we passively accept certain behaviors from certain companies, things will never improve for us.
- Just now, I received another one of those emails that hurt more in the heart than in the wallet: "Our e-commerce is taking off, so we’re moving it to Shopify to better manage our growth."
I replied, trying to explain that handing over a growing e-commerce business to a third-party company (right now, they have full access to their own server - meaning all their databases, data, etc., are under their control) means losing ownership of it. Prices could change at any moment, contract terms could shift negatively, and, worst case scenario, if Shopify itself faced issues (which seems impossible today, but think of giants like Kodak), they could lose everything. Of course, they’ll do what they think is best, but I feel obligated to warn them.
Luckily, others are making the opposite choice. But I keep wondering: since these big platforms aren’t exactly cheap, rather than "selling themselves" to them just for (potentially) fewer headaches, wouldn’t it be worth paying someone (not me, of course, but someone working exclusively for them) to handle these things - ensuring they retain full ownership of their business and their data?
Should be a law: if you run a web app that stores user data behind a login, you are required either to allow users to scrape their data (no anti-scraping tech blocking authenticated users) or to provide an API they can use to access it at no additional charge.
It should literally be illegal to lock users data into your site and prevent them from implementing their own automation to access it.
#tech #web #dataOwnership #dataRights
Data Privacy and Protection Day: an overview of the Brazilian scenario
#politics #brazil #DataRights
https://www.mattosfilho.com.br/en/unico/data-protection-day-2025/
Brazil’s New International Data Transfer Regulations
https://www.mattosfilho.com.br/en/unico/brazil-data-transfer-regulations/
After 15 years of fighting to make the web safer and more accessible, co-founders Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the #WWW) and Rosemary Leith will shut down the World Wide Web Foundation.
https://webfoundation.org/docs/2024/09/Public_letter_WWWF.pdf
Listen to me interview my #CambridgeAnalytica case solicitor Ravi Naik to discuss the matter of #DataRights in the age of #AI for Tech Policy Press Podcast https://techpolicy.press/data-rights-in-the-age-of-ai
Worth paying attention to push for data sovereignty being made by #Indigenous people across North America
The rights to govern their own data is grounded in the experience of what happens when another power wields control — and provides a cautionary tale for all us now whose own behavioural data (and more) has become the fuel of our digital economies
An article on why consumers should be able to see the full contents of the loan applications submitted by dealers to lenders. Written by Tom Oscherwitz, one of the team where I work.
(Its free access, but you have to create a login to see it 
#ConsumerRights #DataProtection #DataRights
https://www.americanbanker.com/opinion/the-cfpbs-data-access-requirements-should-apply-to-auto-loans
"Open Rights Group’s report reveals the systemic abuse of data that we at Prevent Watch have documented over the last nine years and emphasises the urgent need to prioritise individual rights, particularly children’s rights, over speculative pre-crime interventions.”
Dr Layla Aitlhadj, Director and Senior caseworker at Prevent Watch.
Find out more now 
#Prevent #DataProtection #Surveillance #DataRights #ukpolitics
Has anyone tried, or looked into, the Permission Slip app from Consumer Reports?
Is it worth sharing my PII with, in order to facilitate account deletions, do-not-sell requests, etc from a bunch of other companies?
We brought together 26 civil society groups to call for the #DPDIBill to be scrapped in an open letter to the UK government.
The Bill will seriously weaken #datarights and could particularly harm people from marginalised communities.
"People’s rights – not government control or the profits of corporations – should be the basis of any new #dataprotection legislation.”
ORG's @abigail
We published our report into the Information Commissioner's Office's failure to protect #privacy and #datarights during the pandemic.
The ICO repeatedly failed to act over breaches of #dataprotection law by the UK government.
"We are still feeling the implications of this negligent data governance with the continued sharing of public health data with companies such as #Palantir."
ORG's @abigail
3.Gender/Sexuality: Women were objectified and seen as a medium for reproduction. Women were displaced from positions of power to foster the individualistic and sexist perspective of capital accumulation via family and education; male-dominant societies were fostered and encouraged; and
4.Knowledge and subjectivity: the enforcement of European epistemic ideologies over other ways of knowing to makesense of all the oppression. This power imbalance reinforces epistemic ideologies over others, which erases several cultural identities, perpetuating racist and sexist practices to hold hegemonic power.
These four characteristics of European colonial ideology, working together, have created huge socioeconomic inequalities and disparities worldwide.
#NetworkCultures #DataRights #DataSovereignty
Tierra Comun Network
@networkcultures
Resisting Data Colonialism – A Practical Intervention a new Open Access book by Tierra Comun Network published by
@networkcultures
"AI raises the stakes... data is not only used to make decisions about you, but rather to make deeply powerful inferences about people and communities."
Beware greater automated decision-making with fewer safeguards over our data.
The fight for algorithmic justice is imperiled by the #DataGrabBill.
#HandsOffOurData #DataGrab #GDPR #DPDI #DPDIBill #dataprotection #privacy #ukpolitics #humanrights #datarights #digitalrights #AI #codedbias #facialrecognition
https://themarkup.org/hello-world/2023/11/18/unmasking-ai-and-the-fight-for-algorithmic-justice
Unregulated facial recognition produces racial injustice
Underpinned by biased algorithms and trained by partial datasets, AI generates false matches disproportionately weighted to overpoliced communities.
The #DataGrabBill will only make it worse by further weakening regulatory oversight and increasing automated decision-making.
#HandsOffOurData #GDPR #DPDI #DPDIBill #dataprotection #privacy #ukpolitics #humanrights #datarights #AI #facialrecognition
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/20/does-a-i-lead-police-to-ignore-contradictory-evidence
