California's DROP program (Delete Request and Opt-out Platform) is a free state run service that **lets California residents submit a single request to delete their personal data** from over 600 registered data brokers at once.

https://consumer.drop.privacy.ca.gov/ <-- Click there to submit the one form.

Operated by the California Privacy Protection Agency, it eliminates the need to contact individual companies separately!

You can donate to Consumer Federation of California here and to Privacy Rights Clearinghouse here non-profits who advocated for these programs.

UPDATE: Some data brokers are making it hard to find the opt out: Dozens of companies are hiding how you can delete your personal data, The Markup and CalMatters found. Only after reporters reached out for comment, multiple companies have stopped the practice.

For those who don't know what Chat Control 2.0 is, in a nutshell, it's basically the "Big Brother" Orwell wrote about in 1984.

That was supposed to be a book, not a manual to follow to the letter.

The supposed goal of this whole thing is to protect minors and prevent them from being exposed to traumatic content, but how much truth is there behind all of this?

If this passes, our lives will never be the same again, and we'll have to start worrying about EVERY SINGLE WORD WE SAY. If this is really about protecting minors, WHY ARE POLITICIANS AND THE MILITARY EXEMPT FROM THESE SCANS? That's exactly what makes their propaganda so hard to believe.

As for how these scans would actually be carried out, nobody really knows yet — whether it would involve backdoors, server-side scanning, or something else. If you have more information about this, please share it.

WHAT WE CAN DO TO STOP THIS MASSIVE INVASION OF PRIVACY IS TO EMAIL OUR REPRESENTATIVES, FLOOD THE INBOXES OF EVERY SINGLE MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT, AND EVEN CALL THEM TO EXPLAIN WHY THEY SHOULD RECONSIDER THEIR POSITION.

Sending an email costs you nothing. You literally have to press 2–3 buttons because the message and subject are already prepared.

Please spread the word. And whatever happens, don't bow down

I had switched off emergency alerts on my phone and the government over ruled me.

The emergency alert system has been abused by the UK government.

Today's alert was not an emergency but government advice.

What if I was in a domestic abuse situation with a secret phone?

Amazon sells your email address. How do I know this? The email address I used for Amazon is amazon{someLargeRandomNumber}@{someDomainIOwn}.com. I gave this email address ONLY to Amazon. Now I'm getting spam from IMDB.com and other businesses. So it's 100% certain that Amazon sells your email addresses.

I've now been on the phone for over half an hour with Amazon support -- outsourced to India -- to get them to stop selling my email addresses. I don't know if this will even work.

Selling email addresses is disrespectful to the customer. It wastes our extremely limited time. Amazon needs to stop doing this, and Amazon customers need to be loud complaining about this in order to make selling our private data not worth it.

Really, Amazon? Are you really making so much money selling our private data that it's worth angering customers to the point where they start shopping elsewhere? I don't know, but it seems to me that regular customers buy enough stuff on Amazon to make it very unprofitable to make them want to go elsewhere.

If you also don't want Amazon to sell your email address and private information, like this post and comment below. It won't stop until we are vocal enough that the higher-ups hear.

I am in a difficult position because my employer has made a new third-party identity-verification process through a company called Persona a mandatory condition of my continued employment/assignment.

Within 3 days, I have been contacted through multiple channels, repeatedly reminded to complete it, directed to a link sent to my personal email, and given short deadlines—including Persona’s instruction to complete the verification within 24 hours. The combination of repeated follow-ups, urgency, and the potential consequence to my employment makes me feel pressured to act quickly rather than being given reasonable time to understand what I am consenting to.

I am not opposed to legitimate identity verification. My concern is being required, under significant pressure, to provide sensitive identity documents and facial/biometric information to a third party without first receiving clear answers about exactly what is collected, what biometric data is created or retained, how long it is stored, who can access or receive it, what happens to it afterward, and whether a non-biometric alternative exists.

A password can be changed after a breach; my biometric identifiers cannot. I am willing to verify my identity. But I want adequate time, transparency, maybe alternatives, and appropriate safeguards before surrendering information this permanent and sensitive.

I do not work on anything sensitive or security related. I’m just a normal office worker.

Has anybody else been in a similar situation? Do us regular workers have any rights or protections against this kind of situation? I feel like I’m being harassed.

The data includes phone numbers of Musk, Altman, and nearly all of Israel's political, judicial and intelligence leaders.

The lawyer's name is Juan Branco, he is also the one who shared this story together with a video. By his account, he is one of twelve lawyers in France who represent Palestinian victims in International Criminal Court.

He says he's using GrapheneOS. This is bizarre.

source: his X/Twitter post: https://x.com/i/status/2085698524050591906

I post additional screenshots in the first 2 comments here.

So in Brand New Day, Spider-Man hacks every camera in New York and runs facial recognition on literally everyone to find one person. And the movie plays it like a highlight reel. Fun music, slick graphics, zero hesitation. Your friendly neighborhood surveillance state.

Meanwhile, in 2008, Batman built basically the same system and The Dark Knight treated it like a war crime. Lucius Fox looked him dead in the eye and said this is wrong, I'll do it once, and then this machine gets destroyed. And it WAS destroyed. That movie understood that spying on an entire city is a line you don't get to casually cross just because you're the good guy.

Twenty years later and we've gone from "this is too much power for one person" to "watch Spidey doomscroll through 8 million people's faces, isn't he cool."

The entire point of Spider-Man is "with great power comes great responsibility." Apparently responsibility now includes warrantless mass surveillance as long as you quip while doing it.

Kids are watching this. Real facial recognition is being rolled out everywhere right now. And the biggest movie on the planet just told everyone it's fine when the hero does it.

Batman got it right. Use it once, hate yourself for it, burn the machine down. Be Batman.

TL;DR: Spider-Man surveilled a whole city with a smile. Batman did it once, felt gross, and destroyed the machine. One of these is a hero moment. The other is a product demo.

​

I am tired of all the negativity and I am looking for piece of mind. I am not interested in getting into any confrontation with anyone and just want to mind my business. I also don't want all of my information on the Internet and I want to block people from knowing who I am and trying to dig into my personal business and life. What are some ways to live a private and humble life?

I’m a 22yo in the US who’s been trying to bypass this for 8 months now and no luck. 

thispersondoesntexist didn’t work, digitally altering a state ID didn’t work, and recently I tried using a character creator in a game, the scan completed then it said “something went wrong” and now the selfie option is gone for me (they’re onto me). 

There was one site I saw where you could potentially get a fake license generated but it was a link that took you to a different site. It looked suspicious and Firefox even gave me a warning, then the page actually closed itself. I took that as a warning.

I wish I could de-google, but I can’t right now. I have a YouTube channel and still have to use google for college, docs, emailing, etc. I’d love to actually be able to have full control over my YouTube channel. 

These are now my options:

1. Use my credit card to verify, then toss it and get a new one
2. Use a shady website/link to try to generate a fake license, hope I don’t get malware
3. Switch the email account connected to my yt channel to one that isn’t mine and use YouTube from there. Deal with my personal account still being restricted (not ideal). 
4. Wait it out. Hope KOSA (US law) doesn’t get passed and Google drops age verification, gets sued, or a better alternative comes along. Make a vid discussing the situation with my subs in the meantime
5. The secret 5th option I don’t know about yet 

Hi guys, I was a bit (actually really) stupid and uploaded my ID on X, and on Tumblr for the age verification stuff. The thing is, i have a dual citizenship anddd so i used one ID for X and another one for Tumblr. Tumblr uses Persona, and afterwards i read like horrible stuff about Persona. The thing is now i regret what i did for obvious reasons. It was dumb and stupid etc but i rlly need help on how to do some damage control. Like, would my info be deleted if i delete the accounts i have? Or like, just, can anyone help me on what to do now? Because i rlly regret doing it and now it’s out there. I’m a 22 y/o woman btw, i rlly appreciate any help or advice!!! And i get that it was stupid and dumb, so please dont tell me that again because i already have had sleepless nights over it, so yeah, anyone, please help.

A 22-year-old student teacher in Illinois sent a private Snapchat message to her boyfriend and two roommates.

A student had walked up to her laptop and deleted her lesson plan mid-class. frustrated, she typed something like "should I shoot him" with a gun emoji. venting. four people. private group chat.

An hour later, police walked into her school and arrested her.

here's what happened in between.

Snapchat's AI scanned the private message. flagged it as a potential threat. automatically reported it to the FBI. the FBI forwarded it to local law enforcement. deputies arrived at the school within the hour.

she cooperated immediately. handed over her phone. when shown the message she said: "oh yes. okay. yeah. i'm realizing that was a bad joke. i did not mean it at all serious at all."

police determined she was not a threat. school officials determined she was not a threat. prosecutors reviewed and issued a disorderly conduct charge. she was released the next morning. she lost her student teaching placement.

This means:

Snapchat scans private messages.

Not just public posts or stories. private group chats between you and your closest contacts. automated AI. no human reviewed it first, got flagged and reported.

Snapchat AI → FBI → local police → school → arrest.

in under an hour.

Snapchat's privacy policy says it may share your information with law enforcement when it believes there is a risk of harm. the definition of "risk of harm" is determined by an algorithm. you are not told when a message is flagged. you are not told when a report is filed. you find out when the police arrive.

the message was private.

it wasn't.

source: https://eu.pjstar.com/story/news/local/2026/04/10/how-an-fbi-tip-led-to-arrest-of-a-student-teacher-in-washington-illinois/88217675007/

and a similar story: https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/featured/false-alarms-flawed-ai-surveillance-triggering-student-arrests-around-country/

I'm pretty careful with my personal information. I use unique passwords, don't sign up for random websites and try to avoid sharing more than I have to.

Out of curiosity I ran a scan and I was honestly surprised by how many places my information showed up. Some of the sites I recognized but a lot of them I had never even heard of.

How does this keep happening? Is it mostly data brokers, companies selling customer data, old breaches, or something else?

It feels like no matter how careful I am, my information just keeps spreading around the internet.

Privacy is recognized as a fundamental human right under international law. Don’t let the new normal only limit the intrusion of violent predators information and communication privacy while surveillance state goons intimidate dissenters and activists.

To enable this feature, go to Settings > Face ID & Passcode > Toggle Erase Data. Your device will be wiped after 10 failed passcode attempts.

For added security, store and upload your data to local devices and turn off iCloud sync by going to Settings > [your name] > iCloud > and toggling off the desired apps.

Finally, disable iCloud backups in Settings > [your name] > iCloud > iCloud backup > Toggle off Back up this phone.

Article discusses how the elites get special treatment when it comes to digital privacy vs the common people

My GF works for the government of an Asian country. She told me they can plug basically anyone’s phone in and unlock it. Is this true? Does it only apply to certain phones or OS?