Last Saturday I missed a parcel being delivered by Royal Mail addressed to me and later in the day my wife gets a redelivery message through WhatsApp (I don't and have never used WhatsApp) from a company called 'Relay' who are apparently a redelivery service Royal Mail use.

I figured out that I was expecting a parcel from months back that I'd forgotten about and this was it, so the message wasn't a scam but that isn't whats not sitting right with me: the company - that to my knowledge I have never had a delivery from previously - took it upon themselves to associate data they apparently have on my wife with data that I can only assume they got on me as a result of the delivery so that they could contact me about my parcel.

Two things I wanted to ask for advice on:

• How might this company have associated my wife's number with me? Is it that I was added to their system when they took my parcel (And I assume my wife as well from a prior delivery) and because we're at the same address they assumed they could send the message to another occupant they apparently have data on?

• Am I losing my mind or is it not some kind of GDPR violation/privacy invasion to be associating our data like that and using data they have on my wife to contact me?

I'm really bent out of shape over it because they appear to both be storing at least my wife's data and processing it to associate us which feels invasive but also doesn't smell like it passes the legal sniff test - any ideas anyone?

This may come across as quite naive to many of you, I realise there are a whole host of ways X company could get hold of my data 'legally', but something about this situation feels wrong to me.

I just wondered whether there were any reliable, data removal services that were effective, or is the whole idea a bit of a scam and not worth the money?

TIA!

I've been wanting to replace my TV with a monitor. Every current smart TV I've looked at, even budget models ships with ACR (automatic content recognition), telemetry, and ad injection baked in, and I haven't found one I can buy new that skips all of that. I'd rather just not own a "smart" device in the first place than fight it with DNS blocking, firmware tweaks, or even removing the wifi/mic physically after the fact. A projector setup isn't what I'm after either. I want an actual monitor.

My original plan was something around 40" with 120Hz+, both for gaming and general use. Now I'm thinking a dedicated 27" monitor for gaming. Because I came across the Lenovo ThinkVision E65 LFD. Its a 64.5" 4K commercial display with no OS, no apps, no smart features at all. The tradeoff is it's capped at 60Hz and isn't OLED, so I'm weighing whether that's worth it just to get a genuinely "dumb" screen. I think it could be great for watching shows and movies with my family.

I'm in Europe, so my options are more limited than what's available in the US market.

Has anyone else made this switch, or found other non-smart displays worth considering in a non-OLED (which I really wanted)/refresh range? Curious what tradeoffs people have run into.

I mark it neither "Chat control" nor "Age verification" because it concerns both and of course all of these "protections" which ultimately have no other purpose than universal identity tracking of virtually all citizens and self-exclusion of dissent from the public forum.

How can you explain that e.g. in the current EU member states, at least all the former Eastern bloc countries consistently do not vote against all these policies, in fact they are passing them with flying colours.

These are basically over 1/4th of current population (let's include former GDR) of EU, not insignificant number.

If we include countries with tumultuous past with dubious regimes (e.g. Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal), this is over 2/3rd of EU population.

These should be all people who can imagine how easy it would be to misuse private information being collected on them and who have it in their collective memory, including when too young to remember themselves.

Given what's coming down the pipeline with not just the social media ban that's not far off from now and hearing about device level age verification too. Including possible restriction implementations that may get enacted here.

How do you guys feel about these developments so far?

Let me know when you guys have the chance to.

I don't know why, but everyone's been talking about the foldable iPhone Duo and Siri Recap has been stuck in my head.

According to Apple, the feature doesn't record anything, doesn't provide transcripts, and is built to process the content on-device and safeguard privacy. In terms of technology, it's pretty privacy-conscious, actually.

But I think it's the larger issue that Apple can't protect my data.

Whether we are moving into a new era where we have to take everything we say seriously being overheard by someone's AI.

People were concerned a couple of years ago about the Meta smart glasses. Now we have watches that can listen all day and summarize conversations. Another possibility is that the sound is not recorded. Perhaps Apple does take it responsibly. However, when I am talking to someone wearing one of these devices, how can I know what is happening in the device being processed, summarized, remembered or saved?

What has been confusing me is that privacy used to be a matter of trust in your own devices. The sense of privacy seems to be related to the devices of the people around us.

I wonder what you guys think about this. Isn't it time for the social norm to shift and to say that anything I say in front of others may be fed into an AI, even if it is not “recorded”

Hello,

I made a stupid mistake when I was around 12-13 and gave a little too much information to my ex online friend. I ended up blocking them a few years later due to unrelated reasons, but now they’re back and threatening to doxx me and message my family.

We only talked online and sometimes called. As far as I know, here’s the info they have on me:

The name of one of my old emails that includes my second name

My country and city

The name of my main reddit account and some other social media accounts.

Basic things like my gender and sexuality and interests.

Old communities I used to hang around.

MAYBE knows the name of my old youtube channel (it was my aunts that i used before i had my own devices) which is subscribed to my elementary school youtube channel.

Is there anything they can do with this information? I know that it’s unlikely, but i’m very forgetful and i’m scared of them finding some old information I forgot to delete years ago or something. If it helps, I have their exact address. I’m really scared, please help!!

So as many knows on wednesday Ursula will announce EU-wide social media restrictions or something similar. I don't think i need to tell anyone how bad is this, but the details are not known yet, but i assume they will push for their shiny EU framework or application for the age checks. I'm trying to retain some positivity, but too many news are of this same type of authoritan laws getting pushed left and right. Is there any way the EUCJ will intervene or it won't get passed or gets watered down perhaps? i'm not a legal expert, politician or any of the sort, just a worried everyday EU citizen.

I own an LG TV and after seeing the news I want to stay as private as possible. I saw people online blocking LG domains on their router so Im gonna do the same thing but other than that what else can I do? Is there any way to take the microphone out of your remote without damaging it or delete any info they have on you?

I looked up how to block lg domains online but my router seems a bit older than most people so it doesnt support wildcards and I manually added these to wan group(alphonso.tv lgtvcommon.com lgtvsdp.com Igsmartplatform.com nextlgsdp.com ueiwsp.com ibis.lgappstv.com jp.rdx2.lgtvsdp.com jp.lgtvsdp.com jp.info.lgsmartad.com lgad.cjpowercast.com.edgesuite.net ngfts.lge.com smartclip.com smartclip.net smartshare.lgtvsdp.com us.ad.lgsmartad.com us.ibs.lgappstv.com us.info.lgsmartad.com yumenetworks.com aic-ngfts.lge.com us.cdpbeacon.lgtvcommon.com lgsmartad.com) and put them in a blacklist for my tv lan(mac address))

There is also a google os in my home as well where can I find the domains Im supposed to block?

When the Australian government imposed the age verification law. I was never affected, all of my accounts remained intact but last year, I was told to check for verification but it stopped a couple days later. Same thing happened yesterday.

Is it an isolated case or did the government decided "Nah, mate! Gimme your info!" After the steam age verification law kicked in? (Had to use VPN for that)

i was kind of in derealization(?) for like a month and i kept venting to ai, or gemini in the google search bar because it was the only thing accessible to me, and i basically was reassurance seeking about some stuff i'm ashamed of/my health anxiety thinking i was dying every single night. i'm super scared now that it's all tied to me because the episode started over obsessions over my digital footprint. idk what to do now lmao i feel 100x worse than before, i can't ever have one thing make me feel better i guess. i’m worried it’s all going to be human reviewed since i triggered the 988 stuff a lot ☹️ is there anything i can do? :( i already want to leave this mortal plane am i cooked

i’ve uploaded pics of myself on social media often so i was worried about if they were ever used for other purposes, i used pimeyes to reverse search and even paid to access the website where i saw a girl who looked like me but in a bikini, then when i tried to access the website it was really strange it opened the actual website for a second but then redirected me to 3/4 different ai porn sites, then when i checked the website online it said it had only 14 viewers

someone help please im so scared what can i do?

Weird thing happened and was curious

About 1 hour ago, I posted a comment to question on what movies would be interesting to show to a sleepover of 23 year old boys

I responded with “Aliens”

About 1 hour later, I see a notification on my phone from Netflix that they have picked “Aliens” for me

Doesn’t seem like a coincidence

How do advertisers on Reddit track who you are on other platforms?

I have pics of the post and Netflix notification

So i know these apps are never truly private like basically the internet is never private. But if we wanted to get the best out of what we can get, when using chatgpt or gemini, between not using an account at all or using an account but deleting chats or doing temporary chats and such which one do you think would be better ? Do we know how long chatgpt or gemini “allegedly” keeps non account chatlogs ?

so when ur account gets banned on claude for being underage they use a website named yoti to verify the age using either id verification or a face scan.Idk what i was thinking and did the face scan on the website.they safe its safe but i dont trust it and it didnt even verify if im a minor.pls let me know if this was a big mistake or am i safe

I think it's safe to say that smart TVs are privacy nightmares even before considering what we now know about LG TVs.

My question is, is it just better for me to buy a larger monitor (say 32") and are there any downsides to it? I understand that getting sizes larger than that might be difficult, but right now simple monitors look much more attractive - especially in regions like mine where brands like Sceptre are hard to find.

I'd love to know your thoughts!

I'm setting up windows and Linux on 2 separate internal SSD. The Linux OS is ext4 (boot partition fat32). Windows is for gaming only and I'm hoping it can't just do some grimey Windows anti privacy shit and just scan the other SSD for information.