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FBI PSA. Gamers. “You took your time.”

The FBI has just releases a new public service campaign in New York. It’s hit the press pretty well, but gamers are wondering why it took so long. Tonia Hastings (not her real name) has been harassed for years by creeps on the internet while plugged in to her favourite MMORPG platform. “I always choose a male avatar and fake profile photo when I play for real.” Tonia deals with unwanted advances and rude comments if she chooses to appear ‘female’ on these platforms. “It’s a great thing, they’re launching this campaign, but weren’t they aware of this problem 10 years ago?” It’s time to inform the parents. You’ve probably seen the press, but here’s a good youtube video for more information.

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Digital Guinea Pigs

Every generation benefits from the advances and suffers from the mistakes made by its predecessors. Many of the problems we face today were created decades, if not centuries, ago. Climate change, social disparity, racism—messes we didn’t make but messes we live with and try to clean up nonetheless.

Our generation is no different, though the mess we’re leaving for our kids is entirely without precedent. The Digital Age, which dawned with the Internet and blossomed with the advent of the smart phone in 2010, is the biggest, riskiest social experiment in since humans figured out how to light a fire. And we—and our children—are the digital guinea pigs. This experiment is in its early stages, but results are already coming in. They’re not good.

In just two decades, we’ve shattered centuries-old understandings of privacy, shared information we hardly knew about ourselves with millions of strangers, and super-charged government surveillance. We made this mess and we have to start cleaning it up now.

It’s tempting to point to social media as the culprit. The influence Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the others have had on the human psyche has been profound, but it’s hardly the only problem created by our deepening reliance on digital devices. It may not even be the most worrisome.

Big tech companies are in a feverish battle to collect as much information on individuals—you, your kids—as possible. There are so many companies harvesting personal data that it makes the legislative attempts to control them, like the European Union’s “right to be forgotten” law, immediately obsolete.

The Digital Age has turned data into a commodity, bought and sold like soy beans and used in as many ways. Clothing manufacturers buy personal data to better understand trends and design shirts their customers are more likely to want. On the other end of the spectrum, governments use personal data to control their citizenry. In China, digital information is collected to create rating that determines a person’s allegiance to the Communist Party. It’s called the Sesame Score. The higher an individual’s score, the more likely he or she will get coveted government jobs, secure airplane tickets, or ride the train. China has become infamous for the Sesame Score, but other governments are making use of vast data hauls, too. In London, for example, there are nearly 700,000 closed-circuit surveillance cameras—one for every 13 people. It is all but impossible move through London without being watched, without your movements being recorded.

Social media—the platforms through which we share, share, and share some more—are as effective as they are because of the mountains of data Google, Amazon and other Big Tech companies gather about us. Facebook knows what you buy on Amazon and which hotels you search for on Google. They use that information to fine-tune their algorithms and tailor the ads you see on your feed. All that information about you gives them—Big Tech—power. Lots of it. And the more information an entity has, the more power it has. This goes for government, companies, and people.

At this point, you might ask, “So what? I’ve got nothing to hide.” Good! That’s true for most people. But it’s also not the point. The issue is what happens to the information we reveal about ourselves, how it’s fed into advanced algorithms, predictive analytics, and artificial intelligence. How the companies and governments developing those technologies can use them—and the data fueling them—to manipulate people. We saw it happen in the 2016 election; no doubt it will happen in ways we haven’t begun to imagine. Think about the old Bugs Bunny cartoon in which Bugs’s nightmares grow into an actual monster—that could be the mess we’re leaving for the next generation.

This is the great experiment of the Digital Age: Gather vast amounts of personal data—every time you click, open an app, download a song, buy a book, check the box scores, watch a movie, share a meme, place a phone call, you generate data that companies compile—and see what we can do with it. What’s going to happen? How are the digital guinea pigs going to fare?

If we don’t start facing the risks of this experiment going wrong and start to remedy the problem now, we’re going to leave the next generations a society entirely without privacy. It will be a world in which server farms know what you will want to buy long before you do—and then tell you to buy it. Healthcare providers and insurers will know exactly what you’ve been eating and adjust your policy accordingly. Governments will track your whereabouts.

The Digital Age is an era like no other. Everything about it is new. An experiment. We can get it right—by valuing privacy and regulating Big Tech—or we can do nothing and get it horribly, irrevocably wrong. And that’s not fair to the generations to come. It’s not OK for us to deny them their privacy. Digital guinea pigs deserve better.

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The Google Cloud Platform Subprocessors list. Wow! Just, wow!

If you’re a Google Cloud customer, like we are, you’ve received updated information on the Google Subprocessors list… So what might that be? And what might a Google Subprocessor do? Well, according to Google, third-party subprocessors:

perform limited activities in connection with the Google Cloud Platform Services. The table shows what activity each entity performs and indicates if an entity is only relevant to a specific Service or Region. More information about each activity is provided directly below. This explains the limited processing of Customer Data the entity is authorized to perform.

We should be giving them credit for this disclosure, but the size of the list gave me pause. We would have liked to copy them here for your reading pleasure, but the list is simply too long. You should go to this link, it’ll give you a small idea of who and where the organisations that handle your Google data reside.

That’s only the start… Then there’s Google Group Subprocessors, and of course the Subprocessors for Cloud Identity Services.

Happy Reading.

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Under Scrutiny, Big Tech Bruised – Hardly

Bipartisan rancour. It’s almost pleasant to watch. Whether it’s a Democrat complaining about mis-information or a Republican throwing hypocritical barbs about censorship, Washington is the circus to see. Big Tech has been dancing and the politicians have been playing ring master. My favourite bits though, are inside the tent of mirrors.

Epic’s battle, Spotify suing in Europe, and Match’s $500 Million per year pay to play Apple tax, Tile getting boxed out while a new AirTag was released just this week. (Economist’s are going to write books about Apple’s controlled ecosystem, hopefully as a warning.) Each dancing pony is better than the last! And the ringmaster’s are smiling while nodding their heads. One of these days this App Store madness is going to come crashing down.

Is there any technical reason you can’t sell apps on a platform other than Apple’s? Of course not…

No later than this morning, we had an app rejected because a link on our app, which opens a browser to our site, displays a Windows and Android download link. Seriously? No! They call it “meta data” and this “meta data” was against their store policy. A link to our web site… Dance pony, dance!

For the App Store uninitiated it’s hard to fathom just how much control Apple has over our products, how much revenue they generate from our hard work, and how their platform can determine the success or failure of ‘our’ products.

If you like a good circus and want to, just for a second, eliminate that sick feeling that comes when you have no other option, keep an eye on this spectacle.

Here’s another place to start.

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Big Tech: Your Kids’ Big Brother

Here’s a hard truth for parents: Big Tech knows more about your kids than you do. 

Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter and so many more are vacuuming up countless bits of digital information about users. The details, when aggregated, paint a portrait of each person online that ordinary humans are unable to put together themselves.

These organizations may not know more about your kids’ personality than you do. But if  your children are online, the people behind the websites they visit know an astonishing amount about their interests, taste, relationships and the things they desire and want to buy.

That’s true if your children have their own smartphone, tablet or laptop computer, but it even applies to information about your kids that you put online yourself. Across platforms and with no regard to the age of the users, Big Tech is tracking you.

What Big Tech Knows and How

As the Associated Press put it, “The companies gather vast data on what users read and like and leverage it to help advertisers target their messages to the individuals they want to reach.” For context, Facebook earned 99% of its money from ads in the previous year and Google’s corporate parent Alphabet saw 85% of revenue from ads, per the AP. 

Meanwhile, Amazon records the details of not only each product you purchase, but also about what items you browsed for and compared before making a decision. If your kids are shopping online, Amazon has all that information about them, too. Though you and your family bear the cost, it’s a windfall for Amazon. AP noted that Amazon uses the user data it collects to boost the value of its ads. Ad sales revenue surpassed $10 billion in 2018 representing more than twice the earnings from the previous year (the latest statistics available). There is a huge financial incentive for Big Tech to know more about your kids than you.

In addition to boosting advertising and marketing for goods and services, the information collected by Big Tech about you and your family can include a whole range of other sensitive details. Think political affiliation, sexual preference and detailed geographical updates about where you live, work and vacation.

No Age Restrictions on Tracking

Big Tech companies track your whereabouts based on details from your smartphone as you are out and about. They know how old you are and where you spend time (shopping malls, churches, bars, and so on) to learn about demographics in your area and to target you even more precisely. If your kids have smartphones, Big Tech is tracking them in the same way. There are no age restrictions when it comes to tracking.

The information is used to predict as well as influence what you might be most interested in buying or which candidate you seem to favor for elected office. All the while, you’re presented with advertisements and “news” is fed to you in a curated, tailor-made experience.

Remember that it’s not just kids’ own online activity that Big Tech is tracking. These companies are also gathering information about the products that parents just like you are buying for their kids. They record what programs parents enroll their children in, what movies they watch and the photos that parents post online. All of this data is valuable to advertisers, which is why they take such pains to collect it on a massive scale.

What You Can Do

What are concerned parents to do under these circumstances? Part of your New Year’s resolutions could be to sit down and have a family discussion about the negative consequences that come from revealing so much information about ourselves.

The goal should be to emphasize security online and to protect your privacy from those who have no business snooping around your personal information. 

Take steps to limit companies tracking  you. Delete cookies when closing a web browser. Restricting how many personal details are posted online. Ask yourself if it’s really worth it to reveal your information to a new company by signing in using your Facebook credentials.

Maybe you’ll be less inclined to give up information to Big Brother when you consider just how much technology companies stand to benefit while you have so much to lose.

Reprinted with permission from Privacy Parent.

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Waking up slowly, surfing privately

If the New York Times starts to get it, so do a lot of other people. This article is one of the best explanations of why you need a private browser, and why you need to stop drinking the Chrome, Safari, Edge Kool aid. If You Care About Privacy, It’s Time to Try a New Web Browser. Our only criticism would be that they’ve left out the best private browser on the market, Datacappy. But according to Brian X. Chen, we’ve reached an inflection point in digital privacy. Let’s hope he’s right!

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Know the Sesame Score

If you’re reading this from anywhere but China, you probably don’t have a Sesame Score. But if you care at all about internet privacy and security, you should know what it is.

The Chinese government has created a social credit monitoring system to look over every member of its population. It’s called Zhima Credit and is popularly known as Sesame Credit or China’s Sesame Score. It was developed by Ant Financial, which is owned by Alibaba, the major online marketplace of China that competes with sites like eBay and Amazon.

Like a Loyalty Card

As the Washington Post put it, China’s Sesame Score operates like a loyalty card scheme that monitors and measures how trustworthy a person is, based on their credit history and online activities. It’s tracking to see if you are a good citizen or more of a trouble maker.

If you exhibit positive traits—always paying bills on time—while refraining from “untrustworthy” or even illegal actions, your score will be higher. If you spread lies on social media, try to avoid paying taxes or commit traffic violations, your score goes down.

Everyone gets an individualized score. People who have high scores are eligible for loans at more favorable rates than those with lower Sesame Scores. They also enjoy better access to car-sharing systems and are eligible for free healthcare checkups. Sound great. But there are downsides, too. The Washington Post cites reports of people with low credit scores being blacklisted and suddenly unable to purchase plane tickets.

Pros and Cons

Proponents of this system say it discourages bad citizenship and rewards good behavior. In China, 80 percent of citizens approve of the Sesame Score and other social credit efforts, according to the Post. Furthermore, 76% of Chinese people responding to a poll generally distrust Chinese society. They view a social credit system as useful for combating social ills ranging from con artists to polluters.

But from an outsider’s perspective, the Big Brother comparisons are obvious and the risks of abuse and repression glaring. China’s electronic surveillance directly affects tourists and foreigners who do business in the country. Forbes reports that “new cybersecurity laws give the Chinese government access to files, contracts, copyrights, business strategies and phone records with no permission asked” of foreign companies. China now requires businesses to gather and provide their internal information to a database to determine the “moral codes” of corporations that can lead in turn to punishment or reward.

Is this a harbinger of things to come in the United States? Powerful, largely anonymous corporations have already compiled profiles on internet users here. Those profiles can determine which ads you see and how long you wait on hold when calling customer service. Big Tech has been tracking all of us for years. In some ways, the Sesame Score isn’t all that foreign.

Reprinted with permission from privacyparent.com

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Incognito, uh huh

All the press and the REpress about this $5Billion lawsuit against Google makes me realise how far Google has gone down the rabbit hole. Google’s legal team are juggling a few of these Billion dollar suits. Around the world. A normal days work… Guess where your advertising dollars are going.

What makes me really curious though is, who chose the name? Seriously. That guy/girl/other hit a home run. If you call your product incognito, does it mean you’re private? The judges are asking the same question but sit safely on the side of, ‘you didn’t clearly disclose…’. And why would they? And Google of course says, ‘yes, we did, look!’

Besides the hefty number being bantered around, the only real interest in this little spat, is that maybe now, a few more users will become aware that ‘incognito’, is not really what they think it is.

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Too Much Power in the Hands of Too Few

In the effort to protect our online transactions, have we ceded too much power to too few? Is Sift, whose algorithms protect corporate behemoths from McDonald’s to Twitter, merely a free-market version of China’s intrusive Sesame Score? What is the cost of safety?

Online shopping may be pervasive, but it isn’t without risks. Credit card fraud, for example, is on the rise each year, eclipsing $30 billion annually, with the majority of the fraud impacting United States consumers. The COVID pandemic has only made things worse: April 2020 saw attempted fraudulent transactions increase by 35 percent.

One company is positioning itself as the answer: Sift, a technology security company founded in 2011. Sift’s stated goal is to eliminate fraud on the Internet by utilizing machine learning to combat illegal and suspicious activity. Sift claims that the average business partner sees an approximate 50 percent reduction in payment fraud.

One of Sift’s most prominent assertions is that good users shouldn’t have to be penalized for the work of criminals. In other words, everyday users shouldn’t be forced to authenticate themselves to an extreme degree. Sift claims it’s able to separate the good users from the bad users in virtually every circumstance due to their website activity. On paper, it’s a great thing, and indeed, it may help to keep the Internet a safer place.

However, there are some significant privacy concerns at play. If Sift is able to interpret user activity to determine if someone is a regular user or a hacker, how much data is Sift really tracking about Internet users? Where is that data being stored? What happens if that data gets released?

The questions don’t end there. Because Sift is so pervasive and works with so many large retailers, it’s privy to a lot of information. Sift’s machine learning makes ample use of this data, constantly creating and evolving user profiles on the back end. It’s not dissimilar to China’s Sesame Score, which is essentially an all-encompassing rating that combines credit scores with social factors. That rating can then be used to exclude individuals from certain parts of society. Sift’s intentions don’t seem nefarious. But who’s to say Sift can’t decide one day to deem certain user types as fraudulent and ban them from making online transactions? Is that too much power for one company?

So far, Sift’s work has helped businesses to save billions. But the potential for a data organization like Sift to amass too much power is real. A catastrophic data breach or a malfunction of Sift’s machine learning to go haywire would lead to chaos in the world of online transactions.

Reprinted with permission from: PrivacyParent.com

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Silver Sparrow Singing for Apple M1 Chips

There has been a lot of concern about an odd virus infecting Apple’s newest M1 devices. Under normal conditions viruses infect Apple products less than Windows. Red Canary who discovered Silver Sparrow, (why would you name a virus after a close relative of your company?) is still trying to understand it’s purpose. After having infected 30,000 plus M1 chips, what it does is still a mystery. This article from the BBC suggests Silver Sparrow might just be a proof of concept in order to show that it’s not really that difficult to move dangerous code onto a Mac. That seems reasonable…