Category: dsdefender

Chromium is everywhere. Microsoft Edge is using it, Chrome is using it. That’s a huge percentage of the browser market. In 2019 the Manifest V3 ball started rolling, quickly. This update proposed by Google to make extensions ‘safer’. Yeah that’s a problem, and why not take a problem and make it profitable? So delicately as Google is they proposed an updated Manifest solution for Chromium. Microsoft could support this proposal or not. And now they’ve decided to support it. Why, is a mystery.

There’s a good article here:

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With iOS 14 you get these orange and green dots. Why? It’s pretty simple actually: if there’s an app using your microphone or your camera, these dots will appear on the top of your screen. You’ll now be able to see if an app you’re using is also spying on your camera or microphone… Of course for apps like Zoom and FaceTime that’s exactly what you want.

If you’re curious, there’s a decent article on Forbes, here:

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Credited with capturing Bin Laden, predictive policing, and experts in collecting and mining data, Palantir has unorthodox corporate governance assuring the founders’ control until well, forever.

And apart from the corporate control issues, this loss making ($580 million) company is knee deep in your data. Should we be concerned?

For a good summary the original article is here.

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Amnesty has published an article on a mass surveillance policing experiment in the Netherlands – The Sensing Project. Location and video data in and around a town named Roermond is used to calculate a ‘risk score’. The purpose is to test an algorithm which can effectively predict the likelihood one of ‘us’ will commit property crime.

Amnesty International is calling for a mandatory human rights impact assessment before the use of predictive policing technologies. To date, none of the systems in use by Dutch police have been subjected to a comprehensive human rights evaluation.

The original article at amnesty.org is here

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The jist of this is: start by looking at whether a VPN service is headquartered outside of the US and the reach of its intelligence-sharing partner countries, like those comprising the Five, Nine or 14 Eyes compacts.

I always get the impression these articles are co-opted. About half way through you get the standard, “oh I like these two based on my work here at cnet”. It’s impossible to know, but they point out two options based in the BVI’s.

We also agree with this: We’ll never win the war for anonymity on the internet, but every battle for privacy is one worth fighting if it makes mass surveillance even just a little bit harder to accomplish.

You can find the original here:

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This is getting scarier each day!

Companies like NumberEight, or competitors Sentiance and Neura, use sensor data to categorize users. Instead of building a profile to target, say, women over 35, a service could target ads to “early risers” (as indicated by sensors noting when the phone is picked up after hours of rest) or adapt its user interface for after-work commuters (as indicated when sensors note riding a train after 5 pm). The feedback from the sensors provides “context” on the user’s physical behavior.

In an effort to create user profiles and combat the proliferation of ad blockers, startups and data miners are going to surprising lengths.

Companies looking for new ways to categorize users and tailor content are turning to a new tool: physical signals from the phone itself.

“We see Apple’s announcements, consumers getting more conscious of privacy, and the death of the cookie,” says Abhishek Sen, cofounder of NumberEight, a “contextual intelligence” startup in the UK that infers user behavior from sensors in their smartphone.

Sen describes NumberEight’s chief product as “context prediction software.” The tool helps apps infer user activity based on data from a smartphone’s sensors: whether they’re running or seated, near a park or museum, driving or riding a train.

The original article is here.

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Marcus Carter, University of Sydney and Ben Egliston, Queensland University of Technology Have written a good article on Facebook’s data grab republished, here. The original was published on The Conversation.

Facebook has announced the latest version of its successful standalone virtual reality (VR) headset, the Oculus Quest 2. The new device packs more computing power and a sharper screen than its predecessor, and is also $100 cheaper.

This might be obvious, but there are a few good references in the article. For example,

The way you move your body can be used to identify you, like a fingerprint, so everything you do in VR could be traced back to your individual identity.

Check it out.

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This is another good article from Medium and David Koff. He’s not using the right VPN, but that’s for another time!

He walks you through a few key points:

1. Download and use always, a VPN
2. Use a safe browser
3. To Tor or not to Tor – With a VPN?
4. Safe Search Engines

The original article is here and worth a read.

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A decent article explaining browser fingerprinting. The original is here.

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