On January 20, 2026, Prof. Melanie Volkamer will speak at the symposium "Update für Personalrätinnen und Personalräte" (Update for Staff Council Members), organized by the Bavarian Academy for Administrative Management, about security requirements for digital tools for Internet elections and voting. This topic is particularly relevant for staff representatives, who need to have an informed opinion on the subject of Internet elections and voting and to better understand which issues should be clarified with manufacturers of Internet voting systems before they are used.

The paper “The whos, whats, and whys of issues related to personal data and data protection in open-source projects on GitHub” by Anne Hennig, Lukas Schulte, Steffen Herbold, Oksana Kulyk, and Peter Mayer has been accepted for publication in the journal Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE). The paper examines how discussions on the topic of personal data and data protection are conducted on GitHub. A total of 652 issues from open source GitHub projects were analyzed. Most notably the authors observed a significant increase in reporting when GDPR came into effect, which indicates that data protection regulations effectively start discussions about privacy within the software development community.

The SECUSO research group is participating in the Trialogue on the topic “Between data protection and data rush. Why does our society need cybersecurity?” with the citizens' panel “Wir forschen digital.” “Wir forschen digital” offers citizens the opportunity to participate in studies on digital technologies. At the Trialogue on November 6, starting at 5:30 p.m. at the Triangel, anyone interested can learn more in conversation and participate in a mini-experiment on the topic of phishing. Markus Beckedahl – founder of netzpolitik.org and co-founder of re:publica – will open the evening with a keynote speech. This will be followed by a discussion with other experts, during which questions from the audience will also be addressed. 

We have released a new version of the Privacy Friendly ToDo list app! The update includes minor improvements to the widget, bug fixes, and additional translations. The PFA Notes app is one of the Privacy Friendly Apps for Android developed by the SECUSO research group. As part of the PFA supporter program, the ToDo List app is currently being maintained and further developed by external developers. Since June 2025, the Privacy Friendly Apps are only been available in the FDroid Store.