Source: New Zealand Privacy Commissioner – Blog
Welcome to our latest round-up of privacy stories in the news.
Landlords undeterred by warning ‘bad tenants’ lists could break the law
Landlords sharing unverified information about so-called ‘bad tenants’ online are boasting about membership growing and falsely claim they were given ‘the green light’ by the Privacy Commissioner. Privacy Commissioner John Edwards has announced his intention to crack down on landlords breaching the privacy of their tenants by collecting, retaining and disclosing personal information. Read more here.
Air NZ to trial digital health passport app
Air New Zealand will trial a new digital health passport to help people fly safely across the globe. The Travel Pass app was developed by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and will store health information, including Covid-19 test results and vaccinations. Air New Zealand says the app was designed with customer privacy at its heart. Read more here.
How Apple’s privacy update could affect New Zealand businesses
Apple’s new App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature will make it easy for iPhone users to opt out of having their online activity tracked but some New Zealand businesses are concerned it could weaken their ability to reach engaged customers. Certain businesses in New Zealand are said to rely on the targeted advertising of past customers as a major part of their operations. Read more here.
TikTok settles privacy lawsuit for $92 million
TikTok owner ByteDance has agreed to pay $92 million to settle a lawsuit alleging it hoarded users’ facial recognition data, resolving the latest accusations of privacy violations against the app. TikTok is accused of collecting users’ biometric data without sufficient warning and using it to target content and ads on the app. Read more here.
Google says it won’t use new ways of tracking users
Google has clarified its plans for targeted advertising, promising not to use other ways to track users around the internet when it removes support for cookies in the Chrome browser. Google says the move only applies to its own ad products, and it would not be restricting what can happen on Chrome by third parties. Read more here.
The dark side of China’s emotion-recognition tech
Emotion recognition technologies are supposedly able to infer a person’s feelings based on biometric signals. The technology goes beyond facial recognition but similarly involves the mass collection of sensitive personal data to monitor and profile people. Critics say the technology has serious implications for human rights and privacy and should be banned. Read more here.
Image credit: Upland Sandpiper via John James Audubon’s Birds of America
