Privacy is a right. This is a fact in many states, and it’s one of our fervent beliefs at Consumer Reports. But that doesn’t mean privacy is easy. Anyone who’s tried to make their digital life more private knows how much effort it requires. We create data in nearly every interaction we have with companies. Keeping track and chasing after
Today the Innovation Lab is thrilled to launch a new testing app for the Data Rights Protocol: OSIRAA v0.5. The app is available on GitHub and ready for collaborators to use. OSIRAA stands for Open Source Implementers' Reference of an Authorized Agent. Members of the DRP consortium can use this app to test their implementation of the Data Rights Protocol,
We’re seeking a professional with great communication skills and a passion for privacy to join the Digital Lab team on a short-term contract basis. This is a good opportunity for an early career technologist who wants to work on an experimental product, or a mid- or late- career professional looking to get experience in public interest technology for the first
We’re seeking a full stack software engineer with an entrepreneurial spirit and a passion for privacy to provide contract engineering support to the Digital Lab team. This is a remote opportunity for a seasoned engineer who wants to work on an experimental product and cares about advancing digital rights in the United States. Scope: You will be supporting the closed
CR's Digital Fellows deliver lightning talks on consumer tech harms Earlier this month we hosted an event to showcase the innovative work of our Digital Lab Fellows who have received generous support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Craig Newmark Philanthropies over the past 10 months. The Fellows presented updates on their projects that aim to help uncover and
Hi, I’m Julien Gamba, a PhD student at the IMDEA Networks Institute in Madrid (Spain). I am officially kicking off my project as a Digital Lab Fellow, working on making sense of the Android supply chain. The Android Open Source Project (AOSP) was first released by Google in 2008, and has since become the most used operating system with more
In August, 2020, Consumer Reports (CR) investigated fee transparency with food delivery apps. We inspected four of the most widely used online food delivery companies - DoorDash, Grubhub, Postmates, and UberEats. Our research focused on seven cities : Chicago, Jersey City, Los Angeles, New York City, Portland, Seattle, and Washington DC. All of these cities attempted to protect consumers by
Today, we’re sharing our findings from a comparative privacy evaluation of seven mental health apps. You can read the full report here. Why did we focus on the privacy practices of mental health apps? These apps are a growing industry and the impacts of COVID-19 have negatively affected many people’s mental health — creating barriers for access to help cope with mental
