Every day when I look through the headlines there’s always another story about Facebook, Google, or another tech company abusing their users and offering the same old platitudes about how important user privacy is to them or being investigated/fined by the Feds, European Union and some other country.
Ho-hum, business as usual.
There is still a certain amount of choice about using Facebook, Google-Android, various apps, and smart products, such as Samsung’s smart TV, all of which can be hacked. And while it takes effort, to some extent you can protect yourself and your privacy.
But even Facebook and Google’s efforts to dominate pale in comparison, as do the dreams of power of every despot, politico, religious zealot, or military organization, to the future Amazon sees for itself.
Amazon’s incredible, sophisticated systems are no longer being used just to serve up good deals, fast delivery times, or cheap web storage. Its big data capabilities are now the tool of police forces, and maybe soon the military. In the corporate world, Amazon is positioning itself to be the “brains” behind just about everything.
Add to that Amazon’s belief that they have no responsibility in how their tech is used.
Rekognition, Amazon’s facial recognition software is a good example.
Civil rights groups have called it “perhaps the most dangerous surveillance technology ever developed”, and called for Amazon to stop selling it to government agencies, particularly police forces. City supervisors in San Francisco banned its use, saying the software is not only intrusive, but biased – it’s better at recognising white people than black and Asian people. (…) Werner Vogels, Amazon’s CTO, doesn’t feel it’s Amazon’s responsibility to make sure Rekognition is used accurately or ethically.
Writing in the New York Times last month, Google CEO Sundar Pichai argued that it is “vital for companies to give people clear, individual choices around how their data is used.” Like all Times opinion pieces, his editorial included multiple Google tracking scripts served without the reader’s knowledge or consent. Had he wanted to, Mr. Pichai could have learned down to the second when a particular reader had read his assurance that Google “stayed focused on the products and features that make privacy a reality.”
Writing in a similar vein in the Washington Post this March, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called for Congress to pass privacy laws modeled on the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). That editorial was served to readers with a similar bouquet of non-consensual tracking scripts that violated both the letter and spirit of the law Mr. Zuckerberg wants Congress to enact.
An Ovia spokeswoman said the company does not sell aggregate data for advertising purposes. But women who use Ovia must consent to its 6,000-word “terms of use,” which grant the company a “royalty-free, perpetual, and irrevocable license, throughout the universe” to “utilize and exploit” their de-identified personal information for scientific research and “external and internal marketing purposes.” Ovia may also “sell, lease or lend aggregated Personal Information to third parties,” the document adds.
Good grief. As any search will tell you “de-identified” is a joke, since it’s no big deal to put a name to so-called anonymous data.
By now you should know that tech talks privacy, but walks data collection.
That means it’s up to you to do what you can, starting with always adjusting all default privacy settings.
Poking through 13+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
This post and the quote from the FTC dates back to 2015. Nothing on the government side has changed; the Feds are still investigating and Congress is still talking. And as we saw in last weeks posts the company executives are more arrogant and their actions are much worse. One can only hope that the US government will follow in the footsteps of European countries and rein them in.
Entrepreneurs are notorious for ignoring security — black hat hackers are a myth — until something bad happens, which, sooner or later, always does.
They go their merry way, tying all manner of things to the internet, even contraceptives and cars, and inventing search engines like Shodan to find them, with nary a thought or worry about hacking.
Concerns are pooh-poohed by the digerati and those voicing them are considered Luddites, anti-progress or worse.
“Any device that is connected to the Internet is at risk of being hijacked,” said Ms. Ramirez, who added that the large number of Internet-connected devices would “increase the number of access points” for hackers.
Interesting when you think about the millions of baby monitors, fitness trackers, glucose monitors, thermostats and dozens of other common items available and the hundreds being dreamed up daily by both startups and enterprise.
She also confronted tech’s (led by Google and Facebook) self-serving attitude towards collecting and keeping huge amounts of personal data that was (supposedly) the basis of future innovation.
“I question the notion that we must put sensitive consumer data at risk on the off chance a company might someday discover a valuable use for the information.”
At least someone in a responsible position has finally voiced these concerns — but whether or not she can do anything against tech’s growing political clout/money/lobbying power remains to be seen.
Offered to select Facebook partners, the data includes not just technical information about Facebook members’ devices and use of Wi-Fi and cellular networks, but also their past locations, interests, and even their social groups. This data is sourced not just from the company’s main iOS and Android apps, but from Instagram and Messenger as well. The data has been used by Facebook partners to assess their standing against competitors, including customers lost to and won from them, but also for more controversial uses like racially targeted ads.
Facebook owns Instagram, so it should come as no surprise that the private phone numbers and email addresses of millions of celebrities and influencers were scraped by a partner company.
Then there is Google, which dumps location data from millions of devices, not just Android, into a database called Sensorvault and makes it available for search to law enforcement, among others. On May 7 Google claimed it had found privacy religion, but on CNBC reported that Gmail tracks and saves every digital receipt, not just things, but services and, of course Amazon. Enterprise G Suite customers don’t fare much better. Their user passwords were kept un-encrypted on an internal server for years. Not hacked, but still…
The European Union is far ahead of the US in terms of privacy, anticompetitive actions, etc., but US consumers are finally waking up. So-called Big Tech is no longer popular politically and the Justice Department is opening an antitrust investigation of Google (Europe already fined it nearly 3 billion in 2017 for anticompetitive actions).
Poking through 13+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
For years I’ve written about the lie/cheat/steal attitude of social media sites, such as Facebook, Google, Amazon, the list goes on and on. This post is only a year old, but I thought it could use some updating. What I can tell you today is that nothing has improved, in fact it has gotten much worse — as you’ll see over the next two days.
you ever been to a post-holiday potluck? As the name implies, it’s held within two days of any holiday that involves food, with a capital F, such as Thanksgiving, Christmas and, of course, Easter. Our group has only three rules, the food must be leftovers, conversation must be interesting and phones must be turned off. They are always great parties, with amazing food, and Monday’s was no exception.
The unexpected happened when a few of them came down on me for a recent post terming Mark Zukerberg a hypocrite. They said that it wasn’t Facebook’s or Google’s fault a few bad actors were abusing the sites and causing problems. They went on to say that the companies were doing their best and that I should cut them some slack.
Rather than arguing my personal opinions I said I would provide some third party info that I couldn’t quote off the top of my head and then whoever was interested could get together and argue the subject over a bottle or two of wine.
I did ask them to think about one item that stuck in my mind.
How quickly would they provide the location and routine of their kids to the world at large and the perverts who inhabit it? That’s exactly what GPS-tagged photos do.
I thought the info would be of interest to other readers, so I’m sharing it here.
The Berlin conference was hosted by an online forum called Stack That Money, but a newcomer could be forgiven for wondering if it was somehow sponsored by Facebook Inc. Saleswomen from the company held court onstage, introducing speakers and moderating panel discussions. After the show, Facebook representatives flew to Ibiza on a plane rented by Stack That Money to party with some of the top affiliates.
Granted anonymity, affiliates were happy to detail their tricks. They told me that Facebook had revolutionized scamming. The company built tools with its trove of user data (…) Affiliates hijacked them. Facebook’s targeting algorithm is so powerful, they said, they don’t need to identify suckers themselves—Facebook does it automatically. And they boasted that Russia’s dezinformatsiya agents were using tactics their community had pioneered.
Android owners were displeased to discover that Facebook had been scraping their text-message and phone-call metadata, in some cases for years, an operation hidden in the fine print of a user agreement clause until Ars Technica reported. Facebook was quick to defend the practice as entirely aboveboard—small comfort to those who are beginning to realize that, because Facebook is a free service, they and their data are by necessity the products.
I’m not just picking on Facebook, Amazon and Google are right there with it.
Amazon and Google, the leading sellers of such devices, say the assistants record and process audio only after users trigger them by pushing a button or uttering a phrase like “Hey, Alexa” or “O.K., Google.” But each company has filed patent applications, many of them still under consideration, that outline an array of possibilities for how devices like these could monitor more of what users say and do. That information could then be used to identify a person’s desires or interests, which could be mined for ads and product recommendations. (…) Facebook, in fact, had planned to unveil its new internet-connected home products at a developer conference in May, according to Bloomberg News, which reported that the company had scuttled that idea partly in response to the recent fallout.
Zuckerberg, positioning himself as the benevolent ruler of a state-like entity, counters that everything is going to be fine—because ultimately he controls Facebook.
There are dozens more, but you can use search as well as I.
“Change is the only constant” is an oft-quoted idea first uttered around 500 BC by Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher (those Greeks really knew what they were talking about).
The only difference between then and now is that change happens a whole lot faster.
In these days of fast change I try to keep two rules firmly in my conscious mind.
The first is something I heard many years ago, although don’t remember where.
The only thing free is the cheese in the mouse trap.
For whatever reason it really sank in and proved to be protection, preventing me from falling for the lure of free as social media, Google and other services rose to overwhelming prominence.
Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
Last week we looked at millennial burnout and it reminded me of a post I did a couple of years ago on how it’s often driven by Silicon Valley pundits who preach the need for relentless hustle, which, to put it politely, is a crock.
This is a short post, because it contains links to the two biggest Silicon Valley lies.
I realize that lies aren’t nearly the big deal they used to be, but when the source of those lies is the MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) prevalent in a critical piece of US infrastructure the lies take on a life of their own.
They carry so much credibility that their insidious spread is guaranteed.
The first lie is that success requires constant hustle. Whether starting a company or working in an existing one, hustle means giving up everything else — family, friends, recreation, relaxation, whatever, no exceptions — and work 24/7/365 (more if you can figure out how).
But for some, “hustle” is just a euphemism for extreme workaholism. Gary Vaynerchuk, a.k.a. Gary Vee, an entrepreneur and angel investor who has 1.5 million Twitter followers and a string of best-selling books with titles like “Crush It!,” tells his acolytes they should be working 18 hours a day. Every day. No vacations, no going on dates, no watching TV. “If you want bling bling, if you want to buy the jets?” he asks in one of his motivational speeches. “Work. That’s how you get it.”
Which, as anyone familiar with productivity research knows, is a pile of poop.
The truth is that much of the extra effort these entrepreneurs and their employees are putting in is pointless anyway. Working beyond 56 hours in a week adds little productivity, according to a 2014 report by the Stanford economist John Pencavel. But the point may be less about productivity than about demonstrating commitment and team spirit.
Silicon Valley has a lot of self-interested reasons for preferring to maintain a facade that its culture is special, and that its industry is more innovative, virtuous and productive than every other industry. It serves as a great recruiting tool as the region competes for talent with other industries and areas. It allows insiders to maintain outsize control of their companies. And it is a way to prevent regulators from coming in and regulating Silicon Valley to the extent that it might otherwise seek to do.
Stop drinking the Valley kool-aid. Facebook doesn’t love you, it loves your identifiable personal data, which is slices, dices and sells to all comers.
Google jettisoned its “don’t be evil” motto when it got in the way of revenue generation.
Read the articles.
Share them, tweet them and stop ruining your own life by believing them.
What we’ve discovered is that technology might be great at delivering what we want in the moment, but it’s less great at giving us what we need over the long term.
The biggest step forward in the world of technology in 2018 was the realisation that we have to set boundaries in our relationship with technology to protect our humanity. (…) It was the year we realised that the consequences of allowing technology into every aspect of our lives aren’t all positive.
If, after all Zuckerberg’s lies and shenanigans you actually decide to delete Facebook from your life, you need to remember that it owns Instagram and WhatsApp, so they would need to go, too. If that works for you, here are two explanations of what to do. The first explains how to delete all three, the second focuses on Facebook.
You can take a less drastic approach than full deletion, yet give yourself far more control, by leaving the apps on your laptop, but deleting them from your phone (except for some Samsung models). They’ll still be there, but you’ll need to make a conscious choice to check them instead of responding like Pavlov’s dog to the notifications.
If even that is too much, start by turning off notifications.
You will be surprised at the difference it makes.
Don’t ignore the fact that tech is addictive and can take over your life in the same way as alcohol or drugs. And just like alcohol and drugs there are support groups and rehab centers for tech addiction. Even if you don’t believe you are actually addicted, check it out; it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
If instead you just want to take much more control, here are some links that can help you make conscious choices.
One humongous thing you can do to shrink your online footprint is to switch from Google to Startpage.com. The lack of ads makes a huge difference in the quality of your browsing.
Invest in a VPN; I have Avast’s, since I also use their virus software and consider the small annual charge to be one of the best investments I’ve made.
You don’t have to do it all at once, but you do need to think through tech’s effects on your life and your relationships and then go from there.
PS This just in. Amazon’s Ring, along with dozens of other IoT devices are famous for their laz security.
Beginning in 2016, according to one source, Ring provided its Ukraine-based research and development team virtually unfettered access to a folder on Amazon’s S3 cloud storage service that contained every video created by every Ring camera around the world. (…) The Information, which has aggressively covered Ring’s security lapses, reported on these practices last month.
So before you buy one stop and think, “would I want whatever this device learns about me and my family shared across the strangers and media?” If the answer is “no” then you should probably skip it.
And while Facebook is clearly the poster child for data misuse, Google, Amazon and Microsoft aren’t exactly on the side of the angels.
Politicians on both sides are weighing in, but, considering the money involved in US-approved corruption, AKA, lobbying, that effort is unlikely to move forward anytime soon.
“Increasingly — and especially given the political environment — a key part of this consideration for workers has become the moral and ethical implications of the choices made by their employers, ranging from the treatment of employees or customers to the ethical implications of the projects on which they work. This is especially true given the central role of ‘big tech’ in new fears about information, rights, and privacy and the growing feeling that a lack of oversight in this sector has been harmful.” –Prasanna Tambe, Wharton professor of operations, information and decisions
“Before it was this glorious, magical thing to work there,” said Jazz Singh, 18, also studying computer science. (…) As Facebook has been rocked by scandal after scandal, some young engineers are souring on the company.
“Employees are wising up to the fact that you can have a mission statement on your website, but when you’re looking at how the company creates new products or makes decisions, the correlation between the two is not so tightly aligned,” said David Chie, the head of Palo Alto Staffing, a tech job placement service in Silicon Valley. “Everyone’s having this conversation.”
“They do a lot more due diligence,” said Heather Johnston, Bay Area district president for the tech job staffing agency Robert Half. “Before, candidates were like: ‘Oh, I don’t want to do team interviews. I want a one-and-done.’” Now, she added, job candidates “want to meet the team.”
“They’re not just going to blindly take a company because of the name anymore.”
More than 20,000 employees and contractors walked out of Google’s offices around the world Thursday, Nov. 1, organizers said. The group is protesting sexual harassment, misconduct, lack of transparency, and a non-inclusive workplace culture.
So.
Perhaps “we, the people” will have more force in the corporate world than it does elsewhere.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
