Privacy
GAO Warns Retirement Plans May Sell Your Data; Apple Reverses Hide My Email Change
Retirement plans may share or sell personal data, Apple backs down on Hide My Email domain change, and Hollywood police share plate data widely.
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GAO Report Says Retirement Plans May Share or Sell Americans’ Personal Data
A new Government Accountability Office report warns that the personal information of Americans enrolled in employer-sponsored retirement plans may be shared or sold for marketing purposes. The GAO found that over 126 million people are enrolled in such plans, which hold more than $9 trillion in assets, and that external service providers often receive sensitive data like birth dates, Social Security numbers, and account balances. The report reviewed privacy disclosures from 31 service providers, finding that 29 either explicitly allowed data sharing or did not specify whether participant data could be shared for marketing, and 17 did not limit their ability to sell data to third parties or data brokers. Only 12 of the 31 providers offered participants an opt-out option.
Retirement plans may be sharing or selling Americans’ personal data, watchdog warns →
Apple Reverses Hide My Email Domain Change After User Backlash
Apple has reversed a planned change to its Hide My Email feature, confirming that the iCloud+ privacy tool will continue using the icloud.com domain instead of moving to a separate private.icloud.com address. The company made the decision after users argued that the proposed change would have made it easier for websites and apps to block Hide My Email addresses. Because aliases currently share the same domain as standard iCloud accounts, services that block disposable addresses risk blocking legitimate users, but a separate domain would have allowed platforms to filter out all Hide My Email addresses cleanly.
Hollywood Police Share License Plate Data With Over 360 Agencies
The Hollywood Police Department shares data from its network of more than 100 automated license plate reader cameras with over 360 law enforcement agencies across dozens of states. The department confirmed the scope after providing a full list of partner agencies, which includes the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, the Miami Police Department, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and agencies as far away as Nebraska. The city of roughly 143,000 residents uses Flock and Motorola Solutions cameras that store plate numbers, times, dates, and locations in searchable databases, and has spent more than $5.5 million on the program over 11 years.
Hollywood Police Share License Plate Data With Over 360 Agencies Nationwide →
Supreme Court Denies Verizon’s Appeal in FCC Location-Data Case
The Supreme Court has declined to hear Verizon’s appeal, leaving in place a $47 million FCC penalty tied to the carrier’s disclosure of real-time device-location data without customer consent. The court issued the denial in a routine order list without giving a reason, likely ending Verizon’s remaining opportunity to recover the payment. In 2024, the FCC fined Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile a combined $196 million for providing customers’ live location information to data aggregators that later resold it to other businesses.
US Supreme Court denies Verizon’s $47 million refund bid in FCC location-data case →
Nigel Farage Calls for UK to Scrap GDPR
Nigel Farage has called for the UK to scrap GDPR as part of his stated approach to data protection regulation for the country. The proposal would remove the current comprehensive data protection framework that governs how personal data is processed and stored. No further details were provided about what would replace the regulation.