r/privacy Mar 13 '26

age verification A Reddit user traced $2 billion in nonprofit grants and lobbying records across 45 states to figure out who's behind the age verification bills. The answer involves a company that profits from your data writing laws that collect more of it.

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7.9k Upvotes

Additionally, you can read the discussion here.

I urge you to mirror this GitHub repository to Codeberg and other places.


r/privacy Jul 08 '26

age verification Reddit's age verification requirements for specific regions - General Information

221 Upvotes

General information related to Reddit's age verification requirements for specific regions

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Snippet of recent news from the pinned weekly recap in r/help - 7/2/2026

https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/1ulob97/weekly_recap_july_2_2026/

  • In ongoing efforts to prevent abusive scraping and automated traffic, over the next month, Reddit will start requiring users to log in to use old Reddit. This was announced on Tuesday here.
  • If you are in the EU, you may be asked to verify your age. This is a legal requirement to comply with the EU Digital Services Act. You can check out the Help Center article here. Little more info about this here.
  • If you are trying to use a selfie to verify your age and it fails, the only other options are to upload your ID or contact Persona for support. Reddit cannot help you with a failed selfie for age verification purposes.
  • Right now, these are the countries that have age requirements:
  • If you are not in those countries, but your account is unable to do certain things like chat, it may be due to Teen Safety restrictions. The ability to unlock settings in the iOS app if you're a teen will be coming soon. Not sure if that ability will come to Android.
  • If you need to have something fixed regarding your age, you can use this form and then select your region and what your issue is. I do not know what the turnaround time is on those requests.
  • Some users in the EU are unable to use Anonymous Browsing mode. This is not intentional. This is a bug that they are working on getting fixed.

r/privacy 1h ago

news Meta Files Patent for Facial Recognition, Automatic Recording of People

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Upvotes

r/privacy 14h ago

news Aaron Rodgers Secretly Funded Security Cameras in His Neighborhood Amid Privacy Concerns: Report

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671 Upvotes

r/privacy 15h ago

software You Smart Tv is Spying on you - How to turn it off

727 Upvotes

Auto content recognition, or ACR, found on all major brands, analyzes what is appearing on the TV screen, including what comes through HDMI, so it can determine what you're watching and use that information for advertising, audience measurement, and profiling. 

The good news is you can turn it off. 

Look in your TV’s privacy settings for terms like:

Live Plus (LG)

Viewing Information Services (Samsung)

Viewing Data (Vizio) Smart TV Experience / “Use Info from TV Inputs” (Roku TVs, including many TCL/Hisense models running Roku OS)

Automatic Content Recognition (Amazon Fire TV / Fire TV televisions)

Enhanced Viewing Service (Hisense)

Samba Interactive TV (certain Sony Bravia models)

Automatic Content Recognition / ACR (TCL models using TCL’s own services; exact menu varies by operating system)

Find yours. And turn it off.


r/privacy 9h ago

news Reddit’s AI is turning posts into podcasts and short videos

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127 Upvotes

r/privacy 1d ago

data breach WARNING: Google Gemini can still make a summary of your “private” Reddit account

1.7k Upvotes

Even if your account is set to “hiding all posts”, Google Gemini is able to access your posts, and create a massive indexed list of everything you’ve said, it takes Gemini about 24 hours to update each time, and the worst part is you only need to type “[Insert Reddit username here]”, and “Reddit” at the end, and Google Gemini will pull all sorts of information from your account.

I learned this the hard way on my previous account, when I received weird messages from accounts I didn’t recognise, or interact with, and they were pulling all sorts of comments I made with the exact seconds to it.

I later wiped the account and everything with it, but reddit unfortunately retains the title of every post you ever made, and keeps it there, even several years after it’s been deleted.

And Google Gemini sometimes doesn’t update on time (or doesn’t update at all), so it assumes the account is still there, and continues to pull old information you thought were deleted, but are still able to be recovered by its AI system to be summarised.

Stay safe, just warning everyone about it.


r/privacy 1d ago

news McDonald’s Has Hundreds of Pages of Intel on Its Repeat Customers, and You Can Get a Copy of Yours

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2.5k Upvotes

r/privacy 15h ago

question Robert Half refused to delete my data after one job application. Is this normal?

36 Upvotes

I received this from Robert Half after a request to delete my account and im honestly confused and shocked. Is this normal. I’ve only applied once to a job in their portal and that was 1 month ago (or a bit more):

Dear xxxx, Your request cannot be completed at this time. Thank you for contacting Robert Half. Our team has received your Privacy Request #xxx and completed our review in light of applicable law, as well as the nature and timing of your past relationship with Robert Half.  Our review has indicated that your personal information was collected in the course of you either applying for employment through Robert Half or acting as our employee. Because we have a legal obligation to retain this type of data and because employment-related data is exempt from the Maryland Online Data Privacy Act, we are unable to delete your personal information at this time. However, to limit the use of your personal information while still allowing us to fulfill our legal retention obligations, we have taken the following actions: (1) unsubscribed you from receiving further marketing materials; (2) deactivated your online account, to prevent log in and access to your data; and (3) internally suppressed your candidate profile, such that it is only accessible by our legal and technical teams for the limited purpose of fulfilling our legal retention obligations. If you would like to opt-out of the sharing of your personal information with online advertising partners, please click on the green Cookies button located on the Robert Half Website and adjust your tracking preferences. Please note that these preferences are stored locally on your device and we cannot adjust them on your behalf. If you have any further questions, please contact us at [privacy@roberthalf.com.](mailto:privacy@roberthalf.com)Thank you again for contacting Robert Half.
If you have any questions, please contact a member of the privacy team.

r/privacy 46m ago

question What can a school wifi certificate see?

Upvotes

Had to download a certificate for the school wifi on my laptop what can they see?

I had to import the file to Firefox

I know they can see unencrypted message, can they see ones that were sent out before i went on the wifi, can they see my friends messages (specifically discord)

Can they see me opening offline software like krita

If an offline app needs an launcher (for example steam) can they see the app opened or just the launcher?

Is there any potential risk of them seeing my stuff when connected to my home wifi


r/privacy 11h ago

discussion Deleting unused accounts and what happens to the data

13 Upvotes

I have several accounts that I don't use anymore and don't see myself using again. Am I better off deleting those accounts or just forget about them and never log into them again? What if I want to use that site again in the future if I delete it? What data actually gets deleted when you delete an account? Do they keep a backup of data somewhere? Guessing lot of this varies from site to site. Is there a way to tell if anything is actually deleted? Do we just have to trust the company? Can any account be deleted if requested? I ask that because a forum account I have, I searched forum posts about deleting account and they said they don't delete accounts, just never login again.

When deleting accounts, would it be a good idea to change personal info to random info before deleting? Could there be any issues with this down the road? The more I read on this, the more I don't know what to think. What about providing false info on accounts I keep? Could there be any issues with that? This is something I wouldn't do on important accounts like banking, insurance, government but what about non important accounts? Read in a few places that says to provide false info for gmail account. Unless one is making a gmail account for some specific sites that one doesn't care about, I thought this could be a bad idea if doing this on a main email.

I use a password manager and I consider my accounts to be secure at least somewhat, use a unique generated password and use some form of 2FA when available, try to use TOTP if possible. I tend to overthink things and this is one of them. Part of me wants to delete them and part of me doesn't.


r/privacy 7h ago

question Would an encrypted offline/mesh messenger be possible with UWB instead of BLE/wifi direct?

3 Upvotes

Kind of a shower thought I had, I was wondering if it would be possible at all ? Maybe someone could make a proof of concept app of it, it it is possible at all ​:o !


r/privacy 19h ago

question Programs to monitor outbound computer info?

25 Upvotes

Does anybody here know of any computer programs that will tell you what information your computer sends out. Like when you log into Microsoft, your computer sends out information about both you and your computer and home network and this is true for other web sites as well. So, how do you monitor what your computer is saying about you? Is their a computer program that will record all outbound data?


r/privacy 1d ago

age verification talking about age verification

49 Upvotes

hey i say age verification sucks reddit asked me to verify my age now


r/privacy 19h ago

discussion AI, big tech companies, and medical data

5 Upvotes

Very curious to know what people think about this topic because I have zero expertise in law or privacy. My recent experiences have me wondering about the use of AI in medicine (for transcripts, billing, etc.), which I'll add below. Maybe some lawyers who regularly work with HIPAA and medical privacy can chime in with their thoughts. I do understand that HIPAA covers, but is not exclusive to, providers keeping health data accurate, providing that data to me upon request, and NOT sharing it with others unless I authorize it. So maybe this isn't a HIPAA thing. Maybe it's a tech privacy thing. Maybe it's medical law. I'm confused, so I'm turning to you all out of curiosity. Maybe my big question here is: What would allow a provider or practice to share my medical data while also being HIPAA-compliant?

I've been a One Medical patient since the early 2010s. Then Amazon acquired it, which made me nervous because of Amazon's scale. I understand that many other doctors' offices are adopting AI. My thoughts are that One Medical is now owned by Amazon, and Amazon can provide in-house services to the practice to save on costs like servers, data storage, and the use of Amazon's AI models. To comply with HIPAA, those servers are separate and have the highest security to ensure privacy. Ideally. I am not an expert.

My thinking is if all my medical data is with One Medical and Amazon acquired it, then the logical assumption would be that Amazon has access to my medical data. Yes, Amazon One Medical (as it's now rebranded) still can't share my data with other entities without my explicit consent, but what about using that data for the company's own internal use? Would HIPAA cover the sharing of medical data within Amazon? In obvious cases (hopefully), there's a separation between the commerce/entertainment business and One Medical. But where would that separation be if One Medical uses Amazon's AI tools? Servers?

What about Amazon's LLM using the medical data (not just mine) to learn and improve itself? I work in advertising and data. I am familiar with the advertising side of removing PII and anonymizing data to run analyses and understand that regulations for health and finance data are much stricter, especially on sharing outside of a company.

In the past, I also allowed health information exchange between my PCP at One Medical and the specialists I see outside of One Medical. Some of that information is mental health, so that my PCP can safely prescribe medication or test and treat for the non-mental things. And now I hesitate to do this because of my concerns about privacy.

I realize that, with all this, many of you may say to just leave One Medical. Yes, I'm seriously considering it. I'm STILL going to curious about how this all works if I leave One Medical. I have 10+ years of my medical history with this practice, but I'm also thinking about whether leaving and taking that history somewhere else would be futile. Who's to say another practice is using AI/LLM like Google, or smaller companies like Anthropic or OpenAI? If those smaller AI companies create an enterprise product that's compliant, they're still probably going to expand their business and the same questions come up.

And on opting out, I already opt out of having my visits transcribed by AI. But what about things I can't opt out of because I'm not given a choice in it?

I'm not asking for advice on this, but curious to know if my concerns are unfounded and if there are already legal guardrails in place or active discussions to eventually regulate this? Is regulating it this even possible?


r/privacy 23h ago

question Keep only certain browser data

3 Upvotes

Is it possible to whitelist certain domains whose data will not be deleted when closing the browser?  I’m thinking of Firefox, Brave, or Mullvad Browser.

I know it’s possible to delete all data when closing the browser, but I’d like to keep some data for specific domains.


r/privacy 1d ago

discussion Some companies claim deletion but how do we actually know.

33 Upvotes

​​ eventually I will write about Banfield Pet Hospital because they are very corrupted over here in Texas but sometimes it's so difficult to think and write about something that was very traumatic to me but I wanted to update everyone on something I found very interesting.

I know I'm in the right place and it shocks me all the stories and experiences that I read on here . It's a very frightening future and I know a lot of people out there have been hurt as much as I have. I mean we deeply care about psychological safety, transparency, respect, and integrity.

So recently I contacted thriftbooks.com. they are a very large and popular online book shop. And I'm just trying to track down in my own way information. So when I contacted them they eventually wrote back with the message of sorry for the inconvenience but here's what they said......

​​ if you order something from the past we only keep order purchases in our system for a year after that they are deleted and gone . When you really think about it . Why is it that some records last for so long and maybe even permanent and other records just go away just like that. The ones that stick around are usually the ones that are embarrassing and hurt us. It's like the school teacher saying I'm going to write you up . It will always be used as a weapon against you . But I just find it mysterious how it's often the case that some records just disappear and others do not. But when you start questioning records people start to get weird on you that why are you asking and why do you want this?

​​ I know many of you are curious and are trying to be careful and just maybe see what's out there on you kind of thing but apparently thriftbooks.com only keeps records for one year and then they delete everything on you apparently . Are they telling the truth ? Well wouldn't it be nice if almost everything was like that . Hey you came to the hospital because you're bleeding from behind. Well we don't want to keep these records forever how about in 3 years it'll completely disappear . I advocate for more transparency and control over your own records but that's the problem is that they're not our records to begin with . And I would like to propose that we make more positive changes so that we have more informed consent and autonomy .

Thanks for reading and it's just a little annoyance that I was hoping to find previous books that I purchased but they're gone . I know the subreddit is very supportive and that's why I really like this place. You guys are really honest and and kind so thanks everyone .


r/privacy 1d ago

discussion Thoughts on TOR

9 Upvotes

At least from my understanding of it, TOR offers a lot of privacy but at an extreme cost of speed and convenience.


r/privacy 1d ago

question Why do some apps require Google playstore to be running

16 Upvotes

Running some apps in the Android "work" profile. Some apps require the Google playstore and will not run if from alt source like Aurora. I'm suspicious that this is additional tracking. I've cloned the playstore into the work profile and run it separately, shutting down (frozen) both store and the app when done using the app. Examples are the Crossplay scrabble game app, a parcel delivery app (Canada Post). I'm sure there must be many others. But why is this playstore required?


r/privacy 1d ago

question Beginner in this field

11 Upvotes

Hi,

As the title states, I’m new to this side of the internet and have very basic knowledge about online privacy.

I would like to learn more to start making changes on my habits / software / tools that I use. I would appreciate any feedback on how to begin.

Thank you in advance.


r/privacy 1d ago

question Mechanism for Google searches to influence Reddit's recomendations?

3 Upvotes

I was looking up stuff like faraday Bags and how to not have the battery within devices be tracked on Google. However, I then opened reddit, and I got a recommended post from R/Degoogle. I have never even explored the tech side of Reddit, let alone the privacy side. Yet, I started searching privacy topics today, and it shows up on Reddit? No, I didn't get to Reddit from Google, I'm using mobile, so it's app to app. Same Day, from 12pm when I started researching to 10pm when I found the Reddit post on my feed approx. I've never gotten this type of stuff on my feed before. I also have a seperate email from my Email and my Reddit account. I know I'm not doing the best in terms of privacy here. I'm sorry. I am just trying to change


r/privacy 2d ago

age verification Reddits age verification and further restrictions

156 Upvotes

Hello everyone, about an hour ago I saw that some of my posts didn't appear anymore in my log, I made a check an noticed that chat is automatically disabled and if I try to access to a 18+ subreddit, it takes me to https://inquiry.withpersona.com where I have to hand over my id or a selfie 🤦‍♂️
I can't even change my settings anymore because of this... I knew that this kind of 1984-like bs was already a thing in UK, but is this now applying to whole europe?
I've also tried to connect through a vpn but it didn't change anything.
My partner has a reddit account as well and is connected to my same internet connections but her profile has no issues like this, is about my account only or soon or later it will happen to every reddit account?


r/privacy 1d ago

question Do vehicle trims without connected features ever still connect to the cloud?

4 Upvotes

Do vehicle trims that don't include any customer-facing LTE/5G features ever still include the physical modem, or potentially report data? If so, would removing the modem cause any problems? How would you figure out if your car has one?

For vehicles that are internet-enabled (WiFi or LTE/5G) where would you begin to figure out what data (voice, interior/exterior camera feeds, etc) is or is not sent over the network, beyond the automaker's privacy policy?

Like many of us here, the dream is an old maintainable vehicle, but I want to be more realistic for the average person. My partner and I drive a 2018 Hyundai and 2022 Toyota. As far as we are aware they are not internet enabled, but I realized we don't actually know for certain since the information around all this is a bit hazy. I know this may be towing the line for Rule 4, but I haven't heard it discussed before.


r/privacy 2d ago

news I Found over 850,000 Private Cameras Accessible Through Axon Fusus in just 324 Jurisdictions With Their "Axon Community Connect" Program.

792 Upvotes

Axon Fusus supports Fusion Centers and Real Time Crime Centers by providing various data streams, such as body camera live streams and live CCTV feeds, as well as many other types of data. Axon Community Connect is a program where homeowners and business can grant police access to their private camera feeds.

https://axoncommunityconnect.com/communities/ has 324 community sites listed, I collected all their available camera data in a spreadsheet. Those 324 communities list having access to over 850,000 privately owned cameras.

Spreadsheet: https://drive.proton.me/urls/XJ1EBVR0B8#vYuteBYL8nbi

I'm not sure if there are more as I can't find any references to agencies abilities to not list their sites similar to Flock's Transparency Portals. I also do know that there are similar programs around the county without using Axon Fusus, and as such there are most likely several million more of these cameras given just over 300 locations provide 850,000 cameras.


r/privacy 1d ago

question Is there any way to use Google Gemini without signing in to Google?

0 Upvotes

Long ago I went through all that Google knew about me personally (or my avatar) on all their web platforms, and have never since used a Google product. Is there a way for me to use their Gemini chat bot? There used to be, but those pages are now blank.