Month: July 2021

Enlarge (credit: Pascal Deloche/Getty Images)

In what appears to be a first, a public figure has been ousted after de-anonymized mobile phone location data was publicly reported, revealing sensitive and previously private details about his life.

Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill was general secretary of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), effectively the highest-ranking priest in the US who is not a bishop, before records of Grindr usage obtained from data brokers was correlated with his apartment, place of work, vacation home, family members' addresses, and more. Grindr is a gay hookup app, and while apparently none of Burrill’s actions were illegal, any sort of sexual relationship is forbidden for clergy in the Catholic Church. The USCCB goes so far as to discourage Catholics from even attending gay weddings.

Burrill’s case is “hugely significant,” Alan Butler, executive director of the Electronic Information Privacy Center, told Ars. “It’s a clear and prominent example of the exact problem that folks in my world, privacy advocates and experts, have been screaming from the rooftops for years, which is that uniquely identifiable data is not anonymous.”

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  Samsung's invite. That's a black Galaxy Fold 3 and a purple/gray Galaxy Flip. [credit: Samsung ]

Samsung has sent out invitations for an August 11 product launch event. The invite might not look like much, but it strongly hints at what products we'll see: the Galaxy Z Fold 3 (the dark grey shape) and the Galaxy Z Flip 3 (the purple and light gray shape). It's clearly a foldables event, but we also might see the Galaxy Watch 4, the launch device for Google and Samsung's revamp of Wear OS.

Normally, Samsung's August launch event would point to the announcement of the S-Pen-equipped Galaxy Note, but all indications show that the Galaxy Note is dead this year. Samsung shipped an external S-Pen for the Galaxy S21 Ultra, and along with optional support for the Z Fold 3, that will have to be enough for fans of handwriting.

The Fold 3

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  The Fold 3, with a decidedly non-crazy camera block. [credit: 91mobiles ]

As usual, most of these devices have leaked already. 91 Mobiles has official press renders of the Galaxy Z Fold 3, which looks a lot like the Z Fold 2 from last year. Samsung's second swing at a tablet-like foldable was a nice refinement of the original Galaxy Fold, with a bigger front display and foldable glass on the inside.