Scams are more nuanced now. Deepfakes are more convincing. And at a time when one-click checkouts and real-time payments are the norm, security has soared far beyond being a mere ‘tech team problem’. In Mastercard’s January 2025 global survey of more than 5000 small business owners, 79 per cent said effective cybersecurity is critical to… Read more »
Melbourne compliance and data privacy startup SecurePII has raised US$3.5 million (A$5m) in Seed funding. The round was led by Sydney VC Tidal Ventures. SecurePII was founded by Jason Thals, Haydn Faltyn and Bill Placke, self-confessed skiers, mountain climbers, soccer players, cyclists, marathon runners, campers, golfers, paragliders and travellers who are “into motorbikes, sports cars, woodwork, Lego, science fiction,… Read more »
Right now, more than 311,000 Australian Facebook users can apply for a slice of a A$50 million compensation fund from tech giant Meta – the largest ever payment for a breach of Australians’ privacy. But the clock is ticking. Even if you’re eligible, you only have until December 31 2025 to make your claim. Similar… Read more »
Last week, Meta – the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp – unveiled a new “personal artificial intelligence (AI)”. Powered by the Llama 4 language model, Meta AI is designed to assist, chat and engage in natural conversation. With its polished interface and fluid interactions, Meta AI might seem like just another entrant… Read more »
Concerned about privacy? Your Amazon Echo devices will get creepier next week, when all Alexa conversations will be sent to the cloud after a policy change seemingly intended to feed data to the company’s souped-up generative AI (genAI) revamp. The policy change – which was announced in a recent email to customers – will see… Read more »
Transport for New South Wales has defended the use of technology to track commuters’ devices, often without their knowledge, after privacy concerns were raised by local media. The system, which uses Wi-Fi signals to collect data from devices such as mobile phones, is being trialled on a small number of Sydney light rail services for… Read more »
Recently, Channel 10’s ‘The Project’ aired a segment on inTruth Technologies, the company I founded in 2021 to tackle one of the most significant challenges of our world today; self awareness and mental health. inTruth is the first of its kind; a technology that can track emotion with clinical grade accuracy through consumer grade wearables.… Read more »
Australia’s new digital ID system promises to transform the way we live. All of our key documents, such as driver’s licences and Medicare cards, will be in a single digital wallet, making it easier for us to access a range of services. The federal government is still developing the system, with a pilot expected to… Read more »
Facebook acknowledged in a Senate inquiry yesterday that it is scraping the public photos of Australian users to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models. Facebook’s parent company Meta claims this excludes data from users who have marked their posts as “private”, as well as photos or data from users under the age of 18. Since… Read more »
Despite being drafted and tabled in the Australian Senate in 2022, the Action Initiation Bill was only passed last week. Action initiation would transform the Consumer Data Right (CDR) from merely a data-sharing framework into a dynamic system that empowers consumers to take action based on the insights they gain. The CDR was created to… Read more »
On Tuesday, Australia’s minister for government services, Bill Shorten, announced the federal government is developing a new digital identity and credential system. Known as the Trust Exchange (TEx), Shorten said the new system will be “world leading” and represents an “exciting step forward for Australia’s digital infrastructure”. But details about the system are scarce. Shorten… Read more »
Australia’s communications watchdog has imposed new rules on Telstra after the telecommunications giant was found to have leaked the details of more than 140,000 people who requested their phone numbers not be shared publicly. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) said it had issued Telstra with “a remedial direction” following an investigation of the… Read more »
Photos of Australian children have been used without consent to train artificial intelligence (AI) models that generate images. A new report from the non-governmental organisation Human Rights Watch has found the personal information, including photos, of Australian children in a large data set called LAION-5B. This data set was created by accessing content from the… Read more »
Two subsidiaries of social media giant Meta, Facebook Israel and Onavo Inc, have been fined $10 million each for misleading conduct, in breach of the Australian Consumer Law, over a virtual private network (VPN) service that was used to gather data on users and share it with Facebook’s marketing team. Consumer watchdog the ACCC launched… Read more »
The landmark three-year review of Australia’s Privacy Act has recommended significant new rights be handed to individuals, including to sue over privacy breaches, have their data erased and to opt out of targeted marketing. A widespread review of the Privacy Act was launched in 2020 by the former Coalition government on the back of a… Read more »
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