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The IT Privacy and Security Weekly Update.Author: R. Prescott Stearns Jr.
Into year five for this award-winning, light-hearted, lightweight IT privacy and security podcast that spans the globe in terms of issues covered with topics that draw in everyone from executive, to newbie, to tech specialist. Your investment of between 15 and 20 minutes a week will bring you up to speed on half a dozen current IT privacy and security stories from around the world to help you improve the management of your own privacy and security. Language: en-us Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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EP 279.5 Deep Dive. Spill, with the IT Privacy and Security Weekly Update for the week ending Feb 17th
Episode 279
Thursday, 19 February, 2026
We open with China’s 8.7 billion-record megaleak, framing misconfigured infrastructure as a planetary-scale risk rather than a local breach. Lenovo’s U.S. class action then shows how invisible web trackers can quietly “spill” American browsing data to China, while South Korea’s heavy fines against Louis Vuitton, Dior, and Tiffany illustrate that even luxury brands now pay real money when they mishandle customer information.The focus then narrows to individuals: a 17.5M-user Instagram dataset on underground forums, malicious GenAI Chrome extensions posing as helpers while siphoning data, and a decade-old Apple zero-day likely leveraged by commercial spyware all demonstrate how ordinary accounts and devices can become rich sources of exploitable data. Together they highlight a world where “just contact details,” browser add-ons, and long-lived bugs can escalate into serious compromise.From there, the update shifts into ambient surveillance and manipulation: Meta’s planned facial-recognition “Name Tag” for Ray-Ban smart glasses pushes identification into public spaces and raises new concerns about children and bystanders, while AI-saturated products from Google, Meta, and others quietly convert intimate conversations and searches into highly targeted ad fuel. It closes with a Shakespeare quote about guilt “spilling” itself and a sign-off urging listeners to “pour with a steady hand,” tying the spill metaphor back to handling data, tools, and trust more carefully in everyday digital life.
