Category: oliverwjones

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:

Photo by Sebastian Unrau on Unsplash

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.

Photo by Justin Main on Unsplash

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.

Photo by Lux Interaction on Unsplash

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.

Photo by Dmitry Ratushny on Unsplash

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

Photo by Ilona Panych on Unsplash

The popular VPN services promote thousands of locations, is that really important? No…

The reviews you read will say that it improves speed, but that’s mostly false. Try finding a server that’s not full of free users or users abusing bandwidth. The architectures on some of the popular vpn’s are built as cheaply as possible, add a server in Chicago for $5 then add another and another so that, THOSE servers get extra bandwidth. This is a dicey strategy at best and only works for their marketing teams, not their users.

Be cautious of what you see, a million VPN servers doesn’t mean you’ll have a quality service.

When Apple made an appearance at the CES tech conference in Las Vegas in 2019, they also put up a sign. It wasn’t a billboard, as many news outlets claimed, but a 13-story Apple ad plastered onto the side of a hotel. It had one message: “What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone”. To anyone who knows the first thing about what makes smartphones smart, this doesn’t make a lot of sense. In order to browse any website or use most apps, you need to be connected to the internet.

Requests need to leave your phone, travel to a server, and a response needs to return with the information you want. But those requests aren’t always for data the user has requested. In fact, in many cases, those requests aren’t initiated by the user at all.

And so I tried a little experiment: blocked apps from tracking my iPhone for just one week…

Check out the original article on Medium.

Photo by Maxim Ilyahov on Unsplash

Every minute of every day, predictive analytics are changing our lives. Your social media feed is calibrated to present posts that you’re most likely to care about. Online ads appear because an algorithm has decided you’ll want to see them. Every song you listen to informs your streaming service about which song it should choose to play next. It’s efficient and effective. It’s also dangerously manipulative.

Why Predictive Analytics Matter

In many cases, predictive analytics work behind the scenes, providing a service without us even knowing about it. A notice on your iPhone reminds you to set your alarm for work the next day. Your Web browser quickly loads pages because it knows what pages you tend to visit. Google Maps gives you an accurate estimate of how long it takes to get to your destination, taking into account the traffic you’ll likely encounter on the way. So far, so good.

But predictive analytics can go wrong, too. Its use can expose personal secrets. Social media algorithms have been proven to keep people discouraged and sad, in an attempt to keep them scrolling. Facebook’s quest for likes and engagement even played a role in deciding the 2016 US Presidential election (for better or worse, depending on your views). In each case, a business manipulated people for its own gain.

Your Next Move

So, what to do? Beating predictive analytics by opting out of everything online is an option, but it’s unrealistic. Using a VPN can help, in that it limits the amount of information companies can gather about your online choices and patterns. Using an ad-blocker and refusing to accept cookies helps, too, but doing either often limits your online experience. Using your browser’s “incognito” or private mode offers a modicum of protection, but don’t count on it for much.

The important thing, then, is to be aware. Understand that companies over which you have no control are using your personal data to create the Internet with which you interact. The products Amazon suggests you buy, the shows Netflix suggest you watch, result from a deep analysis of your recent clicks. Know that the advertisements you see while scrolling on your phone will be different from the ads your husband sees while scrolling on his and understand why.

Faceless corporations are tracking your moves and they’re using that information to predict where you’ll move next. It’s as spooky as it is true. Until regulations catch up, the best move regarding predictive analytics is to be aware, informed, and cautious.

See the original article at privacyparent.com