Smartphones with Qualcomm chips are sending personal data to Qualcomm without user consent, circumventing Android's protective mechanisms and raising privacy concerns.
Even privacy-focused phones like Fairphone contain the AMSS blobware, which shares personal data with Qualcomm XTRA Service.
Nitrokey's NitroPhone uses GrapheneOS to prevent Google from obtaining and storing IP addresses, ensuring personal information is not shared with Qualcomm.
Qualcomm admits to exfiltrating data through its iZat chipsets, which includes geolocation, Wi-Fi network name, and a list of installed apps, and is used for ad targeting and unspecified security objectives
Privacy organizations like NOYB are advocating against tech giants infringing on GDPR compliances
The EU suppressed a 300-page study that found piracy doesn't harm sales (2017)
The EU paid €360,000 for a study on the impact of piracy on sales of copyrighted material but never released the 304-page report, possibly because it found no "robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online copyright infringements."
The only negative correlation found was that for every ten recent top films watched illegally, four fewer films are consumed legally.
The report was only made public after Julia Reda, a member of the European Parliament, obtained it through an EU Freedom of Information access to document request.