Yesterday I commented that no matter how stellar someone’s past performance it wasn’t a guarantee of future performance.

There are very few guarantees in life, but I do know of one thing you can count on.

And that is that the bosses of big tech lie.

They do it with flair, sincerity, a straight face and in writing.

Their devices listen to and share your words with outsiders — outside the company and the country.

Although no immediate action was taken against Apple or Amazon— which both have been found to also listen in on their users — the commissioner’s report “invited” the companies “swiftly review” their policies and procedures.

Apple says, “all reviewers are under the obligation to adhere to Apple’s strict confidentiality requirements,” but we all know that people blab.

The Terms of Service (TOS) go beyond straight lies by being opaque and obfuscated. Their rules and meaning are a constantly moving target that even the NYT can’t figure out

The Times reported 46 of the accounts to Instagram, the site responded within 24 hours that none violated its rules, without explaining why.

The accounts were scams using scraped images of innocent US military personnel to get money from innocent US citizens.

While fraud has proliferated on Facebook for years, those running the military romance scams are taking on not only one of the world’s most influential companies, but also the most powerful military — and succeeding.

Apparently fraud doesn’t violate the TOS.

But why should it, since violence, hate speech and bullying don’t.

It’s not as if your data is unidentifiable (there’s no such thing as “anonymized data”).

And “we care about your privacy” is the biggest lie of all.

Image credit: Mike Mozart

As promised yesterday, I’m updating the “don’t trust them, they lie” list (in mostly alphabetical order) with new links to the nefarious doings of your favorite “can’t live without ‘em” companies.

First up: Amazon. Anyone who has bought from Amazon is aware of how it uses your buying data to suggest additional purchases, as do all ecommerce sites. And there have been multiple stories about Alexa listening and responding even when it’s supposedly not on. But did you know that those supposedly anonymous recordings are discussed for amusement in Amazon employee chatrooms?

On a far more serious note, Ring, the video doorbell company Amazon acquired, is teaming up with police departments to offer free or discounted smart doorbells. And although it supposedly goes against Ring’s own policy, some of those PDs are adding to the terms of service the right to look at the saved video footage sans subpoena.

Sadly, Apple is on the nefarious list, in spite of it’s famous “What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone” philosophy. But, as with other companies, the facts are more complicated — the thieves are in the apps.

More tomorrow.

Image credit: MySign AG

Tech firms know a lot about you…

but that’s nothing compared to data brokers, who collect from everywhere and sell to anyone.

Bezos may be a genius and Amazon may be beloved by it’s customers, but for years it has been reviled for it’s (mis)treatment of fulfillment center (AKA, warehouse) workers.

The newest weapon in it’s fight to correct the facts is a Twitter campaign.

“FC ambassadors are employees who have experience working in our fulfillment centers… The most important thing is that they’ve been here long enough to honestly share the facts based on personal experience.”

The effort was first outed by Flamboyant Shoes Guy, who also said in a comment,

What amazes me is that a entire board of people on 7 or 8-figure salaries had several meetings regarding this, discussed it thoroughly and then concluded that there was no way anyone could possibly notice.

But if you think warehouse conditions are bad now, when the economy is hot and bodies in short supply, just wait until it turns, as it will. (What goes up always comes down. It’s the nature of the beast.)

Be it Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, etc., you need to remember that companies, just like people, aren’t all good or all bad.

It’s just that their bad has a much larger effect.

Image credit: Twitter

I’ve been ranting for years about the negative effects of social media and how it lends itself to insecurity, FOMA, jealously, etc., how it enables trolls, kills empathy and, worse, its unmitigated, conscious focus on addicting its users in exactly the same way heroin addicts.

Of course, I’m not the only one; psychiatrists and psychologists, educators, parents, and a host of pundits have weighed in.

Everyone knows that actions speak louder than words, so it is telling that the biggest names in tech kept tech away from their kids and far away from the schools they attend.

This in spite of giving millions in cash and product to enable schools to embrace tech.

Since it’s proven that screens kill empathy, not to mention engagement, their actions will give their own kids a major advantage in adulthood, since empathy and critical thinking will be at a premium.

If the hypocrisy doesn’t encourage you to seriously limit screen time, no matter the howls of outrage, perhaps the new voices condemning the addiction and warning of the dangers will carry far more weight.

Why?

Because they are the people who helped create the problems, starting with Tristan Harris, a former in-house ethicist at Google.

“The largest supercomputers in the world are inside of two companies — Google and Facebook — and where are we pointing them?” Mr. Harris said. “We’re pointing them at people’s brains, at children.”

The new Center for Humane Technology includes an unprecedented alliance of former employees of some of today’s biggest tech companies. Apart from Mr. Harris, the center includes Sandy Parakilas, a former Facebook operations manager; Lynn Fox, a former Apple and Google communications executive; Dave Morin, a former Facebook executive; Justin Rosenstein, who created Facebook’s Like button and is a co-founder of Asana; Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook; and Renée DiResta, a technologist who studies bots, and Chamath Palihapitiya, a venture capitalist who was an early employee at Facebook, said in November that the social network was “ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.”

Read the article and then decide whose side you are on — the hypocrites or the social angels.

Image credit: NotionsCapital.com

Edward Snowden’s revelations made people hyper-conscious of government snooping, while the proliferation of mobile and connected devices has made snooping easier, not to mention very profitable.

And profit is what’s behind the rise of global cyber-arms dealers that sell human suffering and death as surely as their real-world counterparts sell weapons.

Last summer, Bill Marczak stumbled across a program that could spy on your iPhone’s contact list and messages—and even record your calls. Illuminating shadowy firms that sell spyware to corrupt governments across the globe, Marczak’s story reveals the new arena of cyber-warfare.

Marczak’s stumble revealed three zero-day exploits (“Zero days” refers to the amount of time—i.e., none—a target has to fix an entirely new kind of hack before damage can be done.).

It’s called a jailbreak and the ability to do it remotely is every hacker’s dream.

… the ability to hack remotely into the digital brains of the world’s most popular hardware—the desktops, laptops, tablets, and especially the mobile phones made by Apple. And not just break into Apple devices but actually take control of them. It was a hacker’s dream: the ability to monitor a user’s communications in real time and also to turn on his microphone and record his conversations.

In a superhuman effort, Apple patched all three exploits in just 10 days.

It’s an uplifting story, but the fact is Apple and other computer-makers are fighting a losing battle. As long as there are hackers, they will continue to find ways to hack any device that interfaces with them. These dangers were highlighted this fall when a New England company found itself the target of a mass denial-of-service attack from millions of non-computer “zombie devices” connected to the Internet—most notably baby monitors.

“What these cyber-arms dealers have done is democratize digital surveillance,” says the A.C.L.U.’s Chris Soghoian. “The surveillance tools once only used by big governments are now available to anyone with a couple hundred grand to spend.” In fact, they may be coming to your iPhone sometime soon.

Hat tip to KG for sharing the Vanity Fair article about Marczak.

Flickr image credit: Pimkie

Goggle may be phishing paradise…

A security researcher found a problem in Google’s own login page that could allow a hacker to easily steal people’s passwords — and the company apparently isn’t too worried about fixing it.

Whereas Apple fixed an iOS security flaw in hours

Security firm Lookout announced on Thursday that it discovered a major security flaw that exploits iOS and can give a third party complete control over your iPhone.

But 86% of users haven’t applied the patch.

If you are one of them fix it at Settings > General > Software Update.

I do brand outreach for my long-term associate NTR Lab, which includes working with Yana (always a pleasure) on its blog. Today’s post originally appeared there on January 28.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and investor Bill Gurley, among many others, believe that 2016 is the year that many unicorns will morph into unicorpses as valuations tumble amidst tightening money.

So does that make 2016 a bad year to start your company? No, in fact, just the opposite.

According to Jason Calacanis, angel investor and founder of Inside.com “Great companies are like great captains; they make take advantage of smooth sailing times like now, but are not afraid of rough seas that eventually show up.”

Jeff Grabow, EY Americas venture capital leader says, “If you talk to venture capitalists, they’ll all tell you the best time to start a company is in a downturn.”

And Mike Abbott, general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, made a great point when he said, “We’ll stop seeing particular folks starting a company for the sake of starting a company, because they see it as this romantic endeavor.”

But it was CB Insights CEO Anand Sanwal who said it best, “While it’s ‘fun’ in a schadenfreud’y way to claim some absurd number of unicorns will falter in 2016, it misses out on the fact that 2016’s climate may force many of these unicorns to become RABBITs.”

Rabbit? Who wants to be a rabbit? You should. Being a rabbit is much like Andrew Wilkinson’s horse that we mentioned last week.

Image credit CB Insights via Business Insider

 The biggest difference going forward means that your valuation will be based on real revenue as opposed to funding rounds — more like Apple / less like Uber.

You’ll learn to do more with less and will stretch not only your dollars, but also your pennies. And your team will learn along with you.

For those of you who haven’t experienced a tighter economy or worked through a real downturn the actual experience can be off-putting, if not downright frightening.

Click for a cornucopia of ideas and resources to do more with less.

Image credit CB Insights via Business Insider

Some bad actions seem to have a much longer tail than others and are more personal.

The length of the tail also seems related to how much the breach affects “people like me.”

The proof of this is happening right now and playing out in social media. It started with the addition of a Wikipedia board member.

Nearly 200 Wikipedia editors have taken the unprecedented step of calling for a member of the Wikimedia Foundation board of directors to be tossed out. (…)  “In the best interests of the Wikimedia Foundation, Arnnon Geshuri must be removed from his appointment as a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation Board.”

Geshuri played a central role in the “no poach” scandal (where a number of top companies, like Apple and Google, agreed not to recruit from each other) that has had lasting effects on countless careers.

Although I’ve said many times that past performance does not predict the future and I firmly believe in second chances there are caveats.

One is that the the person agrees it was wrong, takes responsibility for their share of the action and accepts some kind of punishment — whether a monetary fine, jail time or just a public statement.

When it’s an ethical lapse, as in this case, I consider if the person should have known better — which Geshuri should have.

However, this wasn’t just an ethical lapse; both the scheme and his actions were illegal.

And there is no question that as a high ranking HR professional he did know it was both illegal and unethical and was in an excellent position to assess the long-term damage it would do.

Geshuri was actively involved along with facilitating others.

Therefore, I tend to agree with the editors that he doesn’t belong in an organization that runs of pure trust.

But I am just as sure he still has a great career path in most of corporate America, where they would understand (and in some cases even condone) what he did, as well as in politics, where both the criminal and civil breaches would just be business as usual.

Image credit: Myleen Hollero / Wikimedia Foundation

Have you ever thought about a very basic difference between Apple and Google and Facebook?

All are highly profitable.

All have a laser focus on their customers.

But only Apple honors its customers privacy.

Apple CEO Tim Cook sat down with NPR to talk about privacy, and described it as a “fundamental human right.” The comments come after Apple updated its website to make its stance on privacy clearer, something Cook describes as “a values point” not “a commercial interest.”

Whereas Larry Page’s recent comments when asked about the new name Alphabet indicate a totally different mindset.

The point, according to Larry Page, the Google co-founder who will be Alphabet’s chief executive, is for the separate parts to be independent and develop their own brands. That would never happen with all of them under the Google banner, given that many associate the name solely with a consumer search product. Many of the companies operating under the Alphabet umbrella, artificial intelligence and robotics, for instance, may never be consumer-oriented.

Mr. Page, in a blog post announcing the move, took the opportunity to note some wordplay in the name. “We also like that it means alpha‑bet (Alpha is investment return above benchmark),” he wrote, “which we strive for!”

At least Google finally dropped the words Don’t be Evil from its values, which is good, because it abandoned the attitude in the name of profit long ago.

The article claims that the difference can be explained by the fact that Apple sells things, while Google and Facebook depend on ads, but Amazon (which is not mentioned) generates its revenues selling stuff and still tracks (stalks) its visitors.

Flickr image credit: Chris Scott