Privacy
Help Us Find the Apps That Sell Your Location
Send us screenshots or share your knowledge of the location data industry
Alfred Ng
Reporter
Alfred Ng is an enterprise reporter in Brooklyn covering privacy and surveillance. He’s interested in stories that highlight technology’s side effects and how they can be addressed.
Before The Markup, he was a senior reporter for CNET, covering cybersecurity and privacy, and a reporter for the New York Daily News, covering police and crime. His reporting demonstrated how technology’s claims to reduce crime were unfounded, both in neighborhoods and in schools using facial recognition.
Privacy
There’s a Multibillion-Dollar Market for Your Phone’s Location Data
A huge but little-known industry has cropped up around monetizing people’smovements
Ask The Markup
What Does It Actually Mean When a Company Says, “We Do Not Sell Your Data”?
Experts say the privacy promise—ubiquitous in online services and apps—obscures the truth about how companies use personal data
Ask The MarkupPrivacy
How Private Is My VPN?
VPNs promise privacy, but The Markup found their apps and websites full of trackers
Ask The Markup
What Is Congress’s Plan to Crack Down on Big Tech?
A group of bipartisan lawmakers hopes to pass antitrust legislation that takes aim at tech giants buying out competition and hoarding data
Privacy
This Manual for a Popular Facial Recognition Tool Shows Just How Much the Software Tracks People
One school using the software saw that a student’s face was captured more than 1,000 times during the week
Citizen Browser
After Repeatedly Promising Not to, Facebook Keeps Recommending Political Groups to Its Users
The company announced the policy as a way to stop spreading divisive content
Dark Patterns that Mislead Consumers Are All Over the Internet
Think you can tell a dark pattern from an ethically designed prompt? Take our quiz to find out
Citizen Browser
Senator Calls Facebook Response on Discriminatory Ads“Inadequate”
The exchange followed a Markup report showing Facebook allowed targeting by age for financialservices
Citizen Browser
Facebook Pledges to Remove Discriminatory Credit and Loan Ads Discovered by The Markup
The Markup’s Citizen Browser project found four companies targeting ads for financial products to specific age groups—a violation of Facebook policy and, potentially, civil rights laws
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