Author: Spencer Dailey

Apple · Privacy

Apple’s Private Relay will thwart ISPs’ gross mishandling of our browsing histories and rock the surveillance establishment in countries where it’s available

Spencer Dailey

Internet Service Providers selling out customers’ privacy is awful, old news On April 3, 2017, Trump did what no one asked for, except for an army of telco lobbyists: he quietly signed an order from Congress to explicitly allow ISPs to sell users’ browsing history without users’ permission. There was no photo shoot or fanfare:… Continue reading Apple’s Private Relay will thwart ISPs’ gross mishandling of our browsing histories and rock the surveillance establishment in countries where it’s available

Browsers · Security

When Chrome extension developers sell out, users get pwned. Why is there not the option to disable automatic updates for specific extensions, as with Firefox? (Plus, a DIY workaround)

Spencer Dailey

From a Stack Overflow question: “a hacked version of a Google Chrome extension I use was distributed via Chrome’s automatic extension updates. Is it possible to stop Google Chrome from automatically updating extensions?” The answer is there’s not an easy way to disable them in Chrome. But there should be, and this post explains why.… Continue reading When Chrome extension developers sell out, users get pwned. Why is there not the option to disable automatic updates for specific extensions, as with Firefox? (Plus, a DIY workaround)

imessages

Your iPhone (and iCloud backups) are full of gigabytes-worth of old iMessages that are virtually impossible to read

Spencer Dailey

[Find lively discussions of this post on Reddit and Hacker News.] Many iPhone owners have iMessages from years ago that they can’t access. For example, my wife and I simply want to read the first few messages that we exchanged in 2017, but we can’t. A friend of mine recently had to prove she had… Continue reading Your iPhone (and iCloud backups) are full of gigabytes-worth of old iMessages that are virtually impossible to read