A number of popular health-related websites in the UK are reported to be actively sharing sensitive user data with dozens of third parties, including Google and Facebook, but also various adtech firms and data brokers. Read the rest
There have been some tweets going around about a "wearable face projector" being employed at the ongoing protests in Hong Kong.
Wearable face projector#AntiMaskLaw #EmergencyLaw pic.twitter.com/Px3ATu6Lp1
— Happy Day (@HappySharingDay) October 4, 2019
It's essentially the same as the scramble suits from Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly—instead of disguising yourself as someone else, it disguises you as everyone else, projecting a constantly shifting visage that drives the facial recognition AI crazy. It certainly makes sense that someone would try to use something like this in Hong Kong, where the mere act of protecting one's identity in public is now punishable by a USD3,200 fine.
Except… it's not from the Hong Kong protests. It's actually an art project by Jing-Cai Liu, an industrial design student at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. Liu had come up with the concept of a wearable face projector as an undergrad at the University of the Arts in Utrecht. "In the future, the advertisement could call your name when you walk along the streets," she writes on her website:
Read the restMega databanks and high-resolution cameras in the streets stock hundreds of exabytes a year. But who has access to this data? It is possible that it could have commercial use, hence not only retail companies but also the advertisement industry could be very interested in this data in the coming future. They would hope to gain these personal data and information as much as they can.
[…]
The companies would know your personal interests and may set different retail strategies for you.
A man in Germany asked Amazon to send him the audio recordings of his Alexa activities, and Amazon complied with the request, giving him a bonus: a link to 1,700 recordings from a stranger. When he told Amazon about it, Amazon didn't reply, but deleted the files from the link. Too late - the man had already downloaded the audio files. He then shared the files with a German magazine. They listened to the audio recordings of the man and his female companion and were able to figure out who he was and they told him what had happened. After the magazine ran the story, Amazon suddenly became chatty:
“This was an unfortunate case of human error and an isolated incident. We have resolved the issue with the two customers involved and have taken steps to further improve our processes. We were also in touch on a precautionary basis with the relevant regulatory authorities.”
Image: Photocollege using Shutterstock/pianodiaphragm and Cryteria - Own work, CC BY 3.0, Link Read the rest
MEPs in European Parliament want Facebook to submit to a full audit by European Union bodies to determine whether the U.S. based social media company adequately protects users’ personal data. The demand made in the form of an EU resolution adopted Thursday, October 25, 2018, follows the company's recent breach scandal, in which data belonging to 87 million Facebook users around the world were improperly obtained and misused. Read the rest
Executives from Google, Twitter, AT&T, Amazon, Apple, and other big tech companies told a U.S. Senate panel today they support updating federal law to protect data privacy, but they want Congress to block California's tough new privacy rules. Read the rest
