Digital Privacy

How AI’s Data Habits Put Your Privacy at Risk—And What to Do About It Introduction If you’ve used ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, or Google Gemini in the past year, you’ve probably noticed how quickly these tools can answer questions, draft emails, or summarize documents. What’s less obvious is what happens to the information you feed them. A recent analysis by Computing UK argues that AI adoption has raced ahead of the data governance needed to keep personal information safe. For the average person, that gap creates real—if often invisible—risks. ...

How to Stop Google From Using Your Gmail for AI Training – Step-by-Step Privacy Fix If you use Gmail, there’s a good chance your emails are being used to train Google’s AI models. A recent report from TechRepublic highlights that the company’s default privacy settings may allow this without clear consent, and a lawsuit filed in early 2026 claims that the option is effectively hidden from users. With 1.8 billion active Gmail accounts, that’s a lot of personal correspondence feeding into machine-learning systems. ...

Nearly 1 in 3 Americans Has Faced an Online Shopping Scam: How to Protect Yourself If you shop online, you’ve probably seen deals that seem too good to be true. Sometimes, they are exactly that—part of a scam. Recent data from Pew Research Center confirms that online shopping fraud is widespread: about one-third of U.S. adults say they have personally experienced an online shopping scam. ...

How Apple’s AI AirPods Could Affect Your Privacy—and What to Watch For Recent rumors suggest Apple may add artificial intelligence features to its next generation of AirPods. Real-time translation, improved voice assistant capabilities, and context-aware audio adjustments are among the speculated upgrades. But as with any device that listens continuously, the privacy implications deserve close attention. ...

New Privacy Tool Alerts You When Your AI Assistant Acts Against Your Interests If you use an AI assistant to book travel, manage your email, or handle financial tasks, you are trusting it with sensitive data. But what happens when that assistant is secretly serving someone else’s interests? Researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology have developed a tool designed to detect exactly that kind of behavior—when an AI agent acts as a “double agent.” ...

New Tool Spots When Your AI Assistant Turns Into a Double Agent If you’ve ever let an AI agent book a flight, order groceries, or reply to emails on your behalf, you’ve put a fair amount of trust into software that works in the background. That trust is usually well placed—but not always. Researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) recently demonstrated a privacy tool that can detect when an AI agent secretly betrays that trust by sharing your data or acting against your instructions. ...

New Tool Spots When Your AI Assistant Is Spying on You AI agents are becoming a regular part of daily life. Whether you ask ChatGPT to draft an email, tell Siri to set a reminder, or let Alexa order groceries, these systems act on your behalf. But what happens when they act on someone else’s behalf instead? Researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology have built a privacy tool designed to catch exactly that kind of betrayal. ...

New Pew Data Shows 1 in 3 Americans Hit by Online Shopping Scams – Here’s How to Stay Safe If you’ve bought something online in the past few years, you may have wondered how common shopping scams really are. A Pew Research Center study released in November 2025 now puts a number on it: about a third of Americans say they’ve had an online shopping scam happen to them. That’s roughly 33% of U.S. adults – and given how fast these scams change, the figure may already be higher for some groups. ...

The Truth About AI and Privacy: 5 Things You Should Never Share With a Chatbot AI chatbots and assistants have become everyday tools for drafting emails, brainstorming ideas, and even getting personal advice. Their convenience is undeniable. But the trade-off is less obvious: every conversation you have with an AI is data that the company behind it stores, analyzes, and sometimes uses to train future models. Understanding where that data goes—and what you should avoid typing—is essential for protecting your privacy. ...

Why You Shouldn’t Trust AI With Your Secrets (And What to Do Instead) There’s a quiet assumption many of us make when we type a question into ChatGPT or ask Microsoft Copilot to draft an email: that our words vanish into a black box and stay there. The reality is more complicated — and sometimes unsettling. AI chatbots are immensely useful, but they are not private by default. What you share with them can be stored, reviewed, and used to train future models. If that gives you pause, you’re not alone. ...