The items we buy say a lot about our lifestyles, our finances, and our domestic lives. If you have an Amazon account, the amount of data that the retail giant collects is astonishing. Many people don’t know you get much more just free two-day shipping with a Prime account. With these different areas collecting data about you, if you are trying to maintain some semblance of your privacy, you’ll definitely want to check these five not-so-obvious settings. 1. Remove your Amazon public profile We don't often think of our "Amazon profile." However, that's precisely what it is. Your profile is created automatically, whether you want it or not, and it contains comments, ratings, public Wish Lists, biographical information, and other site interaction. This profile doesn't include your purchases or your browsing history, but it's very informative. If you want to control what activity is visible on your public profile, do the following: 1. Put your cursor ...

Your private emails are being read by third-party Gmail app developers, an investigation into data privacy has revealed. Developers behind a number of popular online services designed to work with Gmail trawl through private messages sent and received from your email address, it claims. It is common practice for some of these third-party app creators to instruct employees to read personal emails. One app, which is designed to help users manage their Gmail inbox, lets employees read 'thousands' of emails, the Wall Street Journal investigation found. According to experts, this 'dirty secret' is now common practice among some firms. The revelation comes just a few months after it was revealed political data firm Cambridge Analytica had siphoned private data from third-party apps on Facebook. According to the investigation into Gmail, the hugely-successful Google email client allows third-party developers to scan the inbox of anyone who installs their app. Th...

Firefox released a security upgrade after it emerged that the NSA was exploiting vulnerabilities in the browser to gain access to computers using Tor, a sophisticated anonymity tool. But Mozilla insisted that Lightbeam itself will not compromise the privacy of users who agree to upload and share data. Lightbeam will not log IP addresses, the information will be aggregated anonymously and the software can be uninstalled, Mr Surman promised. Lightbeam initially will only be available for desktop browsers. Apple has reportedly rejected from its store apps by developers which incorporate “cookie tracking” technology. “The whole mobile environment is closed,” Mr Surman said. “You have to go through Google and Apple for apps.” Just who is looking over your shoulder when you browse the Internet? Tomorrow, web users will be given a new tool to shine a light on the commercial organisations which track your every movement online. Lightbeam, a download produced by Mozilla, the US free software ...

Any change to Facebook, whether it's a tweak in its site design or an overhaul of its privacy settings, generates a groan or two. In another effort to improve its users' experience on the social network, Facebook is getting rid of an old and sometimes glitch-prone privacy option that will now render every Facebook user searchable to any other user. The old privacy setting -- called "Who can look up your Timeline by name?" -- gave users the option to not appear in Facebook search results. If Mark Zuckerberg himself wanted to keep all Facebook users from looking up his Timeline and activity via the Facebook search bar, he could toggle the setting so that only friends, or friends of friends, could do so. However, according to Facebook's Chief Privacy Officer Michael Richter, that led to some problems with the search function itself. "People told us that they found it confusing when they tried looking for someone who they knew personally and couldn't find t...

Apple 5S owners are now using their NIPPLES to unlock the device's fingerprint scanner First it was the paw of a cat, then it was a man's toe. Now, the latest body part being used to unlock Apple's iPhone 5S fingerprint scanner is a nipple.  A number of videos have appeared online that appear to show male and female nipples being pressed onto the phone's TouchID sensor.  The capacitive sensor can be used with any skin part, as long as a heartbeat and body temperature can be detected, to unlock the device.  One owner of the new iPhone 5S said: 'I'm glad Apple's scanner recognises nipples - it just goes to show how ridiculous the premise is in the first place. 'Now if anyone tries to mug me, they'll have to cut one of my nipples off if they want to use my phone, and I'm not telling them which one.' The latest Apple handset comes with technology which means they can be accessed by placing the owner's finger on the c...