Omar Gama 🛡️priv/acc

🥖 The French government is accusing X of the very things the French government itself is doing: - Illegally collecting personal data - Processing personal data without proper security - Extracting data from automated systems - Violating the secrecy of electronic communications

Google Chrome is quietly downloading a roughly 4 GB AI model to many users’ computers without clear upfront consent. The file, called weights.bin, is part of Google’s Gemini Nano on-device language model and lands in the browser’s user data folder under OptGuideOnDeviceModel. It powers built-in AI tools such as “Help me write,” smarter tab suggestions, on-device scam detection, and page summarization. The download triggers automatically for devices meeting minimum hardware requirements, and Chrome often replaces the files if deleted. While the model processes data locally, installation happens in the background with minimal notification. The scale is noteworthy. Hundreds of millions or billions of installations add up to thousands of tonnes of carbon emissions globally from data transfer, even though each is a one-time event. To prevent or remove it, go to chrome://flags, disable the entries for the optimization guide on-device model and Prompt API, restart the browser, and manually delete the folder.

EU Vice-President “suggests”restricting VPNs to prevent citizens from circumventing EU's age-restrictions of the Internet EU Vice-President Henna Virkkunen is helping roll out a new EU age verification app. But the app can be bypassed with simple tools like a VPN When a reporter asked how the EU will stop kids from using VPNs to get around the rules, Virkkunen said: “It’s difficult, of course, to have the technological solutions that there’s no way to circumvent … it’s also an important part of next steps to look at [the issue] that it shouldn’t be circumvented.”