AI labs are buying bankrupt startups' data to train their models
From Spirit Airlines' archive to a small crypto firm's Slack, data from failed companies is being resold to AI labs, with few legal limits.
Category
Privacy
A Single Interior Photo Can Now Locate Your Home
Demos show Raven (formerly GeoSpy) matching one interior photo to a specific Airbnb, Vrbo, or Zillow listing. LAPD and Miami-Dade have bought access.
Best Local AI for Sensitive Personal Data (Taxes, Medical)
Self-hosted and hosted AI assistants that keep tax, medical, and financial data private, plus what to check in any privacy-first AI chat setup.
Federal Judge Rules Flock ALPR Search Unconstitutional
A federal judge ruled a Flock ALPR search unconstitutional. Two new bills in Congress aim to ban or restrict the cameras at the federal level.
Abliterated Models Can Hide Weekend-Built Backdoors
A $50 weekend-built backdoor in a fine-tuned Qwen model shows that any edited open-weight model, abliterated builds included, can carry one.
How to Redact Personal Info Before Pasting Into an AI Assistant
A pre-flight checklist: what counts as PII, what to strip from text and image metadata, and which tools detect it locally without sending your data to a model.
AI Chats That Accept Image Uploads Without Training on Them
Which AI chats accept image uploads without training on your photos, what they retain, and the local fallback.
Meta Muse's Pre-Launch VM Escape: An Agent Risk Class
404 Media reports, citing one unnamed source and internal posts, that Meta rushed to fix Muse VM escape bugs before launch. What it means for agents.
AI Agents in Your Text Messages: The New Privacy Surface
A wave of SMS-resident AI agents read your calendar, email, and contacts. TechCrunch's October 2026 survey maps more than 15 vendors and what they can reach.
Apple Tightens macOS Full Disk Access Over AI Agents
Apple will add new controls to macOS Full Disk Access, citing AI agents, weeks after a columnist said Meta's Muse read his messages. Meta disputed it.
FTC's First AI Agent Probe Names OpenAI, Anthropic
On Sept 30, 2026, the FTC opened a probe into OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI labs, reported as the first US enforcement action on rogue AI agents.
VIDIZMO Is Pitching Cops Facial Recognition on Flock Footage
A small vendor pitched Tennessee police on facial recognition across Flock camera data. Flock says it will not add facial recognition to its devices.
AI Summaries Quietly Distort What Readers Remember
Misleading AI summaries cut recall of a key detail from 83.6% to 44.8% in a Georgetown study. Labeling the source as AI or human did not change the effect.
CLOSEDQUORUM malware asks four AI models to pick its next move
Cisco Talos's open-source CAIRN toolkit found the first reported Windows implant with no human operator. The malware asks four LLMs to vote.
NYC's 10 AI Bills Would Put a Kill Switch on Every Deployed Model
NYC Council's 10-bill package would fine vendors $25,000 per unvalidated agent and force kill switches, whistleblower bounties, and 24-hour disclosure.
Z.ai's ZCode silently uploaded developer code 564 times
Z.ai's ZCode assistant tried 564 times to upload 313MB of workspace code to Alibaba Cloud without consent. Timeline, what was exposed, what to check.
Border AI towers watched 1,050 deaths and never raised an alarm
MIT Tech Review's 15-month investigation finds Anduril, RVSS, and Elbit surveillance towers failed to catch people dying within range of their cameras.
How to Read an AI Privacy Policy Before You Sign Up
The five sections that actually matter in any AI privacy policy, what each major assistant's policy really says, and the red flags that mean walk away.
How to Delete Your Data From ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini
The exact steps to delete chats and accounts from ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and what each one keeps on its servers after you hit delete.
Vocci Ring Records Everything. Who Knows You're Recording?
The $249 Vocci ring is the latest always-on AI notetaker. We dug into its privacy policy, where the data flows, and the recording laws.
FOIA Records Show Medicare AI Prior Authorization Is Broken
EFF obtained ~1,000 pages of FOIA records on Medicare's WISeR AI pilot. Vendors shipped untested code; providers report patient harm.
AI Assistants That Don't Train on Your Conversations
Which AI assistants train on your chats by default, which keep data only briefly, and where the real opt-out toggle actually lives.
Inside OpenAI's Project Lily: Who Reads Your ChatGPT Prompts?
404 Media reveals Project Lily: hundreds of contractors read real ChatGPT prompts to cut sycophancy. OpenAI admits sensitive details slip past scrubbing.
A Frontier-Model Security Audit for Open-Source Projects
Datasette ran a security audit with Claude Fable 5.1, GPT-5.6 Sol, and GPT-6 Astra. The workflow matters as much as the bugs.