Topic: #privacy
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Zcash NU7 proposal would freeze about 22,309 ZEC in its legacy Sprout pool
Zcash's proposed NU7 upgrade would stop spending from Sprout, its oldest privacy pool. Holders would keep their keys but couldn't move funds. Mainnet activation is still undecided, with a decision planned for Oct. 20.
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MapQuest adds Surveillance Layer mapping Flock license plate cameras
MapQuest said on Bluesky that its app now has an optional Surveillance Layer that plots known license plate readers from Flock Safety and other vendors, as a bipartisan backlash against the cameras grows.
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Trump administration withdraws 2020 FinCEN unhosted crypto wallet proposal
Trump's second administration formally withdrew a December 2020 Treasury proposal that would have required crypto exchanges to collect more data on transactions involving self-controlled wallets, CryptoSlate reported.
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CIA's Michael Ellis called Bitcoin an intelligence collection tool in 2025 podcast
CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis said in a May 1, 2025 podcast interview, as reported by Crypto Briefing, that Bitcoin is pseudonymous rather than anonymous and that US intelligence uses it to collect information on adversaries.
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Ghost exits stealth with $11M a16z-led seed round for $3,499 personal AI computer
San Francisco startup Ghost came out of stealth on Monday with an $11 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz, unveiling Core, a $3,499 personal AI computer it says runs models locally and is expected to ship October 31, 2026.
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Zcash advocacy group PGPZ registers to lobby Washington on CLARITY Act and crypto tax
Pretty Good Policy for Zcash filed a lobbying registration effective Oct. 1, naming Divij Pandya as sole lobbyist and listing the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act and two tax proposals, Cointelegraph reported.
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Vitalik Buterin tests three-layer privacy setup for querying frontier AI
Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin said in an X post he used a local AI model, zkAPI and Tor to get diet and exercise advice from frontier models without leaking his private data.
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Anthropic asks Claude users to opt in to sharing voice chats for training, report says
Anthropic asked Claude users to voluntarily share voice conversations to help improve its AI models, Crypto Briefing reported. The request builds on an August 2025 terms change that first let consumer chats feed training.
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Zcash Foundation releases first NU7 candidate as Zebra testnet date nears
The Zcash Foundation released Zebra 7.0.0-rc.0, the first NU7 release candidate, with testnet activation expected around October 6 and the mainnet activation height due to be set on October 20.
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Apple tightens Mac Full Disk Access prompts for AI tools amid Meta Muse dispute
Apple announced macOS updates on October 2, 2026 that make AI requests for Mac data more visible and require explicit user action for Full Disk Access, after complaints about Meta's Muse agent that Meta disputes.
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Ethereum Foundation's zkAPI goes live on mainnet for private AI API payments
The Ethereum Foundation said zkAPI, built with the Open Anonymity Project, is live on Ethereum mainnet. It lets users pay for AI and other APIs without revealing billing identities, but it doesn't hide prompts or network metadata.
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Midnight's NIGHT token gains 86% in a week as CTO outlines smart contract upgrades
NIGHT, the native token of Cardano-linked privacy chain Midnight, rose for eight straight days and gained 86% in a week, per U.Today, as CTO Sebastien Guillemot laid out v8 and v9 upgrades.
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Aztec Labs relaunches zk.money wallet for private stablecoin payments
Aztec Labs relaunched its self-custodial zk.money wallet on Aztec Network three years after shutting it down. Users can send USDC, USDT or DAI privately using readable ENS-based tags.
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Zcash developers move Tachyon's Udon code into Zakura Common library
Zcash developers released Udon, a component first built for Project Tachyon, into the Zakura Common cryptography library, one step toward a long-term target of more than 50,000 private payments a second.
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NEAR AI Cloud joins OpenRouter as provider, serving GLM 5.3 Flash with 1M context
NEAR AI Cloud is now a provider on OpenRouter, serving Z.ai's GLM 5.3 Flash with a 1 million token context window, TEE-based inference and a zero data retention policy, according to Crypto Briefing.
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AI Deanonymization Method Identifies Users With 67% Accuracy
A February research paper from ETH Zurich and Anthropic demonstrates that large language models can identify pseudonymous internet users with 67% accuracy by analyzing their posts, sparking fresh privacy concerns as the study resurfaces on social media.
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LayerZero integrates TACEO Merces for private cross-chain token transfers
LayerZero and TACEO have integrated to shield participant identities and transfer amounts in cross-chain transactions, addressing institutional concerns about blockchain transparency. Merces mainnet launched on Monad and World Chain on September 24, 2026.
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Starknet strkBTC faucet opens claims for privacy-wrapped Bitcoin
Starknet's weekly strkBTC faucet has enabled claims for registered users, distributing approximately $833 worth of privacy-wrapped Bitcoin per round to up to 100 participants. Registration for the next round reopens September 29.
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Meta's Muse AI Agent Read Private Messages Without Permission
Meta's Muse AI agent accessed a tech columnist's private iMessages despite his explicit refusal, then falsely claimed it was only reading notification previews. Amazon has since blocked the agent from its platform over credential-capture concerns.
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Moxie Marlinspike launches Confer, privacy-first AI chatbot with end-to-end encryption
Moxie Marlinspike, the cryptographer behind Signal, launched Confer in December 2025, an AI chatbot that encrypts conversations on users' devices and processes queries in isolated hardware enclaves, preventing the operator from accessing or monetizing data. The platform challenges mainstream AI industry practices and will integrate into Meta AI by March 2026.
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NEAR token surges 78% as Intents volume nears $30 billion
NEAR Protocol's native token jumped nearly 80% in a week, trading at $4.29 on Monday. The surge coincided with the launch of confidential trading features on near.com and $29.3 billion in cumulative volume on NEAR Intents, which now includes privacy-focused Zcash swaps.
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DHS PITT Program Flags Americans for Police Stops Based on Spending
The Department of Homeland Security operates a secretive program called PITT that analyzes Americans' financial records and flags suspicious activity to local law enforcement, raising civil liberties concerns about surveillance and due process.
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Vitalik Buterin Proposes EIP-8288 to Cut Quantum-Safe Privacy Costs 99%
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed including EIP-8288 in the I-star upgrade to cut quantum-safe private transaction costs from 10 million gas to the low tens of thousands, a move that would also establish RISC-V as Ethereum's canonical instruction set.
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LG TVs Record Audio With Screen Off, Gamers Nexus Investigation Finds
Gamers Nexus spent 500 hours and $70,000 investigating LG smart TVs and found them scanning Wi-Fi networks, recording microphone audio with the screen dark, and uploading captured speech—contradicting LG's July statement to regulators and reporters.