Author: Brooke Morvin

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Android Phones from China – A Greater Privacy Risk than TikTok?

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If you’re concerned about national security, there are many scarier things than Chinese weather/spy balloons and TikTok. Maybe the balloon was just a distraction. Maybe the Chinese are concerned that US lawmakers will figure out Tik Tok isn’t the only way they can spy on us.

Think about how much information your phone collects about you every day—apps you use, products you buy, friends you text. Most people allow their phones—and their homes—to listen to and record everything they say. And most people allow their phone to track their location, count their steps, and gather other personal information. But have you ever thought about where this information goes? Who gathers it? What do they use it for?

Most of us have no idea where the websites and apps we use were built or who built them. Websites load cookies onto your browser, allowing you to be tracked across the internet. Apps have the ability to access your camera, microphone, your contacts, and other private information. Are you certain the latest game you downloaded wasn’t produced by developers in Russia, North Korea, or Iran? And then there’s the equipment itself to consider.

Laptops and phones produced by Chinese companies are way more dangerous than Tik Tok and spy balloons. The Trump administration made it illegal to use components from Huawei and ZTE (two powerful Chinese companies) in American cell towers. It was a good first step, but we need to go further. There are several Chinese companies that sell mobile phones and tablets in the US. The most popular is Xiaomi. It uses the MIUI operating system that is based on Android. This operating system has the capacity to collect almost everything done with the device. Opoo is another that uses its own form of Android. Lenovo, maker of widely popular laptops, is a Chinese company, too.

These phones and computers should be banned by the US government as well. They pose a greater risk to US national security than Tik Tok or a surveillance balloon. Until lawmakers understand the real threat posed by digital devices—hardware and software in our homes in and in our pockets, constantly gathering personal information—our national security is at risk.

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Does Surveillance Technology Live in Your Town? Find Out!

Atlas of Surveillance is an Open Source effort designed to inform people of surveillance technology where they live. Do you want to know what types of tracking occurs in your city? This website is a great place to start. Atlas of Surveillance also has a glossary to help you understand common police surveillance terms. Maybe you can join the effort! Make sure you know how and where it’s being used and always use a VPN when out on public Wi-Fi to encrypt your data and mask your location. It’s your privacy and YOU own it.

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What’s Your Name? Data Brokers Are Selling It Right Now.

Go ahead. Search for yourself online. Your address? EASY. Your telephone number? EASY. Your family members? EASY.

Anyone wanting to find out information about you can pay quick $ for a detailed file. Public records are, well, public. Marriage licenses, driver licences, property ownership, voter registation, vehicle registration, you name it. Currently, public records are not protected and data brokers have full access. Your own government and state/local agencies are the ones who sell your information to these data brokers. If you are an activist of any kind and someone wants to harrass you, it’s not hard to find you. Read here about the nuances and difficulty in trying to scrub your personal information from the internet. We have to keep this conversation alive and spread the word. Your privacy is at grave risk.

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Worried About Your Kids and Video Game Addiction?

You Should Be!

Here is a common list of things that are known to be addictive: alcohol, nicotene, painkillers, cocaine, heroin, marijuana, inhalents, sedatives and…video games. The emotional and physical experience of playing a video game is a classic dopamine rush to the brain and the more our kids play, the more they want. Why? Behind the technical creation of every video game is the intentional, behavioral component of addiction masterminded by the game creators. What do you do when you are an individual that helps create this addictive behavior and now have children of your own? Click here to read about one father’s story and the risk he is not willing to take.

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Are YOU the Algorithm?

Every tap on that keyboard, every search or purchase online, every time you say, “Hey Siri…” are all trackable behaviors which create your digital footprint. Take this trackable behavior a few layers deeper and you are unknowingly traveling down the tunnel of algorithms.

An algorithm, in the simplest form, is a command: “If this, then that.” For example, if this birdseed is sprinkled out on the ground, then the birds should come eat it. It’s a predictive model. If the birds do not come, then we try another area where they will come until we have success. Turning this model towards our brains on the internet, algorithms are underlying everything we do. If you spend a little time viewing puppies on Instagram, you will be served up posts and Reels that are suggestions based upon your previous puppy viewing. Instagram tracks your behavior and assumes that if you watched these puppies, then you must like puppies, dog food, dog toys, kids with puppies, puppies pooping and literally anything with puppies in it. The more you watch these suggestions, the more the algorithm fine tunes your online profile…and off you go merrily falling into the trap.

If you want to take this to an even deeper level, LinkedIn ran a series of experiments with their “People You May Know” section. Did you ever wonder how any of that worked and how “magical” it seemed that your friend you had not thought of in 30 years suddenly appeared as a contact? Your behavior while using LinkedIn was tracked for every step you took and algorithms were tested on users. Every bit of your posted information and resume was scrubbed to help build these algorithms. Were you doing the work on this platform or was it working you? Are the suggested jobs truly based upon your organic searches or upon LinkedIn’s algorithmic guesses on where to steer you? The bigger concern is whether you even knew this was happening. Did you give permission for your information to be made into a experiment and used to manipulate results? Take a look here and read more about LinkedIn’s so-called tests on its users.

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Every Move You Make

Did you know your cell phone is giving your location data away? It’s the perfect little tracker sitting right in your pocket sending out location reveals all day long (and all night). Data brokers sell your location data to the highest bidder and you will never know a thing! Location data collection runs much deeper than we think and the FTC is finally cracking down (read about it here) but it’s just a bare minimum start.

Using a VPN is a great start to masking your location details. It’s not a perfect science and ISP providers and streaming companies can still figure out you are using a VPN but they cannot see what you are doing online or your location. For public WiFi and general location privacy protection, a VPN is your best protection. You can also check your Settings on your mobile device to see what apps are turned on to always track your location. You can turn this off or set them to only pull location data when you are actively using the app. Remember, every move you make is likely being tracked whether it’s your phone, GPS in the car, using public WiFi or simply being outside and tracked with commercial surveillance cameras. It’s time to protect your privacy before it’s too late and you can’t get it back.

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Is TikTok Now a Trusted Search Engine?

Dictionaries are obsolete, nobody uses a thesauraus and news outlets are considered too polarized to provide a fair take on anything happening in this world. Even Wikipedia is becoming old (and we all know that fact checking there is slim to nothing). “Believe what you want to believe.” This is how we are training our children to think.

Where are our kids turning to learn things now? Social media. Young users are turning to TikTok or Instagram Reels to learn about anything from how to make applesauce to how to prepare for an interview. What about when your child wants to learn how to cook chicken? What if they watch a TikTok that suggests cooking the chicken using cough medicine? The FDA had to issue a warning here for anyone trying this “recipe”. We had chicken last night for dinner but rest assured, it was not basted in cough medicine. I have a headache from this. Maybe my ibuprofin chip cookies will take care of that.

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Do kindergarteners need to know their heart rate?

Apple wants to slap their watches on your children’s wrists.

Let’s add some more anxiety into our children’s lives.

Every phone call, every Siri command, every tap, every text, everything your child does with this tool will be data-tracked and kept on file with Apple. And after that, every ad your child sees on a device will be catered to your child based upon all the conversations and behavior while using the watch. If this is not enough to creep you out, we don’t know what is. Under the guise of parental control and safety, Apple is cleverly marketing their watch to younger and younger users.

Should a kindergartener obsess over heartrates? Has helicopter parenting soared to new heights? Attention spans at this young age are hard enough to manage and now, teachers will be tasked with corraling device behavior in their classrooms at an even younger age. Imagine a classroom of five-year-olds with texts pinging or buzzing on their tiny wrists. This new generation of learners has already been gobsmacked by Covid’s shrapnel. Adding an Apple Watch is just one more anxiety-provoking leash. Every move they make is being watched by their parents…and tracked by Apple.

Read more here.

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Do You Want Instagram to Remix Your Privacy?

Using Instagram’s Remix feature makes your content fair game for anyone to use. Is that what you want?

If you have a public account on Instagram, any of your posted videos or Reels are considered fair game to be remixed without permission. Important to note: The remix option in Settings is defaulted to ON (shame on you, Instagram!). A lot of people open an account and never think to make it private. Instagram capitolizes on this behavior to saturate IG social media with as much content as possible and to compete with TikTok’s Duet feature.

If you want to double-check your IG account to set it to private, that solves the Remix permissions and automatically removes the remix option. Phew! If you want your account public but do NOT want your video posts to be remixed with other random content and posted who knows where, here is how you turn that off:

1. Go to Settings

2. Tap Privacy

3. Tap Reels and Remix 

4. Under Remix, in Allow Remixing, turn OFF ‘Allow for reels’ and ‘Allow for feed videos’. Note that this new feature is auto-defaulted to ON unless you make this change.

If you want your videos remixed, leave as is but user-beware—they can show up anywhere and be used completely out of context without your permission. Remember, leaving the remix to ON means your videos can be used by anyone, anywhere.

Coming soon to a phone near you: remix for static photos. It’s already here and starting to show up as Instagram does a slow roll-out. Watermark those photos and put a (c) All Photos Copyrighted in your Instagram Bio for a small level of protection but…it’s Meta…watch out. Same settings will apply so check your account to see when you are offered the feature and turn them OFF.

To read more about the remix feature, click here.

To read more about remix on static photo posts, click here.

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How to Block In-App Purchases

Do you know about in-app purchases? If your kids are using a phone or tablet and have access to the apps on it, you definitely should. In-app purchases can escape your notice and cost you real money. The good news is, they’re easy to block.

Some apps, in particular gaming apps, allow users to buy things within the app. No need to log into a separate store—one you’ve vetted, say. The user just hits a button to buy tokens, credits, game pieces, whatever. The thing is, these virtual objects often have real-world costs, costs paid in dollars drawn from whichever account is affiliated with the device. Someone pays for it. More than likely, that’s you.

In-app purchasing happens in four main ways, according to CleverTap. Consumable purchases let you buy currency for use in games and are limited to one device.

Non-consumable purchases are used to activate options, such as to enable more swipes on a dating app. Tapping for an auto-renewing subscription is another method, with examples including streaming video services like Hulu and Netflix that will keep charging your account on a recurring basis.

Finally, there are one-time only subscriptions: You make the purchase from the publisher’s app, but you have to manually review and authorize any renewal requests.

Parents looking to avoid problems with runaway buying should know that they can block purchasing ability on the phones and tablets to which their kids have access.

If you use Android mobile phones, Pocket Lint notes that there isn’t a single option to disable all in-app purchases. Instead, you open the Google Play Store app. Tap the profile picture, then select “Settings,” and then select “Authentication.” At this point, select “Require Authentication for Purchase” with the “all purchases” option checked. Now, a password is required to make any purchases.

On iPhones and iPads, it’s a similar procedure to restrict in-app purchases. You head over to the Settings app and then access the Screen Time screen. Select “Content & Privacy Restrictions” and then tap “iTunes & App Store Purchases.” On this screen, tap “Don’t Allow” at the “In-app Purchases” option.

You can boost security by selecting the option to always require passwords when making new purchases on the purchase screens for the iTunes and App Store.

Going forward, your children will have to obtain your direct authorization if using their phone or your phone and an in-app purchasing recommendation appears. They won’t be able to use your associated bank or credit card for such purchases without supervision anymore.