Nice article

https://nrkbeta.no/2020/12/03/my-phone-was-spying-on-me-so-i-tracked-down-the-surveillants/

The ongoing pandemic and the proliferation of NFC-enabled devices have boosted the popularity of contactless payments in brick-and-mortar stores. So, in October-November of this year, the share of mobile payment services in the total money turnover of card transactions increased to 23% against 18% a year earlier. At the same time, the share of transactions increased from 21% to 25%. In other words, now about every fourth card payment is made by Mordor slaves through a smartphone.

The leader of the contactless payment market in the Russian Federation is the Apple Pay service, but its share is significantly decreasing every year. During the period under review, 39% of transactions were made through Apple Pay, 35% through Google Pay, and 23% through Samsung Pay.

You need to understand that it is big reason we have Apple and Google deep into this, as they collect and sell and provide to the state all your information. With normal cards you need to make more work (like combine information from different card) and lot of it is legally challenging. Also having your smartphone allows company to have location, nearby Wi-Fi and more info also collected, including your eye or fingerprint.

All this information (all items your bough and extra) will be stored indefinitely, linked to all your search, activity while using smartphone and so on. Present AI systems at Google and Apple can guess that you started to use some stuff you bough, link this to your forum posts, chat messages, search requests and so on.

One ex Apple developer told me that it is few clicks of a mouse to see that boyfriend bough to girl (relations are part of AI systems, Apple products have special features for this) vibrator and see all related info that she posted after occasional usage (that Safary tracked). Few more clicks are company can listen and record all this girl do in privacy (of course this never happen with small ordinary guys, but if you are some business and politician or such guy - it will be good leverage).

Cloudflare is proposing a new DNS standard it developed with Apple that’s designed to help close a blindspot in my (and I’m sure many others’) internet privacy measures.

The protocol is called Oblivious DNS over HTTPS (ODoH), and it’s meant to help anonymize the information that’s sent before you even make it onto a website.

The protocol works by introducing a proxy server between you and the DNS server. The proxy acts as a go-between, sending your requests to the DNS server, and delivering its responses back without ever letting it know who requested the data.

Just introducing a proxy server, though, is only moving the problem up one level: if it has the request, and also knows you sent it, what keeps it from making its own log of sites you visited? That’s where the “DNS over HTTPS” (DoH) part of ODoH comes in.

Just one thing - it has nothing to do with privacy, as you can use VPN already for this.

But it has all to do with censorship of huge number of sites, as this guys will control all DNS requests.

Google will also have almost same DNS protocol implemented very soon in Chrome.

This guys now want to destroy all smaller sites they don't like.

Hackers have learned to embed Trojans and other malicious software into powerbanks. Victims' devices are infected without establishing an Internet connection; it is enough to briefly connect the gadget to an external charger with malware. The cybersecurity bureau of the Ministry of Public Security of China announced this on its WeChat page.

These modified external batteries are used to inject Trojans onto victims' devices. With their help, attackers can intercept and steal almost any information. Photos, videos, messenger messages, bank SMS messages and other information stored on the device - all this can fall into the hands of third parties. It should be noted that such malware can remain unnoticed for a long time, secretly sending data to third-party servers.

Users of devices running Android and iOS operating systems may face this problem. To avoid this, experts recommend avoiding the use of chargers installed in public places, as well as purchasing power banks supplied by large companies that are known in the market. For Android devices, it is recommended to disable "Developer Mode", as in this state the device is more vulnerable. You should also pay attention to what messages appear on the screen of the device when connected to a charger, since in some cases power banks may issue a request for obtaining certain permissions.

Wanted universal chargers with very complex protocol made by corporations only to cover it with 1000 patents? Here you go.