Microsoft Hates Security, "Surveillance Wages" Are a Thing Now, FBI Recovered Signal Messages From Notification History, and More!

Our top stories this week:

• Microsoft unexpectedly banned the accounts of VeraCrypt and Wireguard, making it impossible for those developers to push updates to users
• Employers are using your personal data to figure out the lowest salary you’ll accept
• Little Snitch has been ported to Ubuntu by the developer
• FBI Extracts Suspect’s Deleted Signal Messages Saved in iPhone Notification Database

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Updates from the Team

Interview w/Cindy Cohn (EFF Executive Director)

Recently Nate had the opportunity to sit down (in person!) with Cindy Cohn, who's been the executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation since 2015 (and working with them long before that). We talked about how to build a healthy privacy community, how to build a sustainable activism rhythm and avoid burnout, and her insight into the overall surveillance landscape. The video premieres on Sunday, and her book Privacy's Defender is out now.

News

This week we only published one recap about dating app OkCupid and how they sold millions of user photos for facial recognition training data. If you're online dating, be sure to read more.

OkCupid Settles After Selling 3 Million Photos to a Facial Recognition Company

The FTC has determined that OkCupid and their owner Match Group don’t have to pay a fine after settling a case in which they shared 3 million user photos and location information to a facial recognition firm.

Privacy GuidesFria Reyes

Sources

Microsoft Abruptly Terminated Accounts for VeraCrypt and WireGuard

Multiple popular open source projects - including VeraCrypt, WireGuard, Windscribe VPN and MemTest86 - suddenly reported this week that their accounts had been terminated with no warning. There seems to be a lot of conflicting information. Microsoft required developers to verify, but all these projects claim not to have received the notifications and the verification program appears closed. VeraCrypt reported being unable to appeal or contact a person while WireGuard said their appeal could take up to 60 days. Thankfully, today there was some good news: thanks to public pressure it appears Microsoft's executives have personally intervened to speed up the process and fix things.

Microsoft Abruptly Terminates VeraCrypt Account, Halting Windows Updates

Updates to VeraCrypt, a popular and long-running piece of encryption, are now thrown into doubt because of a seemingly unexplained Microsoft decision.

404 MediaJoseph Cox

Microsoft suspends dev accounts for high-profile open source projects

Microsoft has suspended developer accounts used to maintain multiple high-profile open-source projects without proper notification and no way to quickly reinstate them, effectively blocking them from publishing new software builds and security patches for Windows users.

BleepingComputerSergiu Gatlan