EFF at RightsCon 2025 | Electronic Frontier Foundation

EFF is delighted to be attending RightsCon again—this year hosted in Taipei, Taiwan between 24-27 February. RightsCon provides an opportunity for human rights experts, technologists, activists, and government representatives to discuss pressing human rights challenges and their potential solutions.  Many EFFers are heading to Taipei and will be actively participating in this year’s event. Several […]

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Building a Community Privacy Plan

Digital security training can feel overwhelming, and not everyone will have access to new apps, new devices, and new tools. There also isn’t one single system of digital security training, and we can’t know the security plans of everyone we communicate with—some people might have concerns about payment processors preventing them from obtaining fees for […]

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Protect Your Privacy on Bumble

Late last year, Bumble finally rolled out its updated privacy policy after a coalition of twelve digital rights, LGBTQ+, human rights, and gender justice civil society organizations launched a campaign demanding stronger data protections. Unfortunately, the company, like other dating apps, has not moved far enough, and continues to burden users with the responsibility of […]

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The Impact of Age Verification Measures Goes Beyond Porn Sites

As age verification bills pass across the world under the guise of “keeping children safe online,” governments are increasingly giving themselves the authority to decide what topics are deemed “safe” for young people to access, and forcing online services to remove and block anything that may be deemed “unsafe.” This growing legislative trend has sparked […]

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VPNs Are Not a Solution to Age Verification Laws

VPNs are having a moment.  On January 1st, Florida joined 18 other states in implementing an age verification law that burdens Floridians’ access to sites that host adult content, including pornography websites like Pornhub. In protest to these laws, PornHub blocked access to users in Florida. Residents in the “Free State of Florida” have now […]

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Global Age Verification Measures: 2024 in Review

EFF has spent this year urging governments around the world, from Canada to Australia, to abandon their reckless plans to introduce age verification for a variety of online content under the guise of protecting children online. Mandatory age verification tools are surveillance systems that threaten everyone’s rights to speech and privacy, and introduce more harm […]

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Australia Banning Kids from Social Media Does More Harm Than Good

Age verification systems are surveillance systems that threaten everyone’s privacy and anonymity. But Australia’s government recently decided to ignore these dangers, passing a vague, sweeping piece of age verification legislation after giving only a day for comments. The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024, which bans children under the age of 16 […]

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Canada’s Leaders Must Reject Overbroad Age Verification Bill

Canadian lawmakers are considering a bill, S-210, that’s meant to benefit children, but would sacrifice the security, privacy, and free speech of all internet users. First introduced in 2023, S-210 seeks to prevent young people from encountering sexually explicit material by requiring all commercial internet services that “make available” explicit content to adopt age verification […]

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We Called on the Oversight Board to Stop Censoring “From the River to the Sea” — And They Listened

Earlier this year, the Oversight Board announced a review of three cases involving different pieces of content on Facebook that contained the phrase “From the River to the Sea.” EFF submitted to the consultation urging Meta to make individualized moderation decisions on this content rather than a blanket ban as the phrase is a historical […]

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Digital Apartheid in Gaza: Big Tech Must Reveal Their Roles in Tech Used in Human Rights Abuses

This is part two of an ongoing series. Part one on unjust content moderation is here.  Since the start of the Israeli military response to Hamas’ deadly October 7 attack, U.S.-based companies like Google and Amazon have been under pressure to reveal more about the services they provide and the nature of their relationships with […]

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