Archive for the ‘Global Domination’ Category
EU breaks internet, starts wholesale censorship for rich man copyright holders
The problems are huge, not least because the EU will implement an automated content filter, which means that memes will die, but also, if you have the money to spam the system with requests, you can basically kill any content you want with the actual content holder only having a marginal chance of navigating EU […]
Red Shell packaged games (Civ VI, Total War, ESO, KSP and more) contain a spyware which tracks your Internet activity outside of the game
Red shell is a Spyware that tracks data of your PC and shares it with 3rd parties. On their website they formulate it all in very harmless language, but the fact is that this is software from someone i don’t trust and whom i never invited, which is looking at my data and running on […]
Customer Rewards get a lot weirder if you think of them as seperate transactions
Source: xkcd: Customer Rewards
EU Copyright law could put end to net memes
Memes, remixes and other user-generated content could disappear online if the EU’s proposed rules on copyright become law, warn experts. Digital rights groups are campaigning against the Copyright Directive, which the European Parliament will vote on later this month. The legislation aims to protect rights-holders in the internet age. But critics say it misunderstands the […]
Facebook gave some companies special access to data on users’ friends
Facebook granted a select group of companies special access to its users’ records even after the point in 2015 that the company has claimed it stopped sharing such data with app developers. According to the Wall Street Journal, which cited court documents, unnamed Facebook officials and other unnamed sources, Facebook made special agreements with certain companies called “whitelists,” […]
The hits keep coming for Facebook: Web giant made 14m people’s private posts public
about 14 million people were affected by a bug that, for a nine-day span between May 18 and 27, caused profile posts to be set as public by default, allowing any Tom, Dick or Harriet to view the material. “We recently found a bug that automatically suggested posting publicly when some people were creating their […]
How programmers addict you to social media, games and your mobile phone
If you look at the current climate, the largest companies are the ones that hook you into their channel, whether it is a game, a website, shopping or social media. Quite a lot of research has been done in to how much time we spend watching TV and looking at our mobiles, showing differing numbers, […]
You know that silly fear about Alexa recording everything and leaking it online? It just happened
It’s time to break out your “Alexa, I Told You So” banners – because a Portland, Oregon, couple received a phone call from one of the husband’s employees earlier this month, telling them she had just received a recording of them talking privately in their home. “Unplug your Alexa devices right now,” the staffer told […]
Google sued for ‘clandestine tracking’ of 4.4m UK iPhone users’ browsing data
Google is being sued in the high court for as much as £3.2bn for the alleged “clandestine tracking and collation” of personal information from 4.4 million iPhone users in the UK. The collective action is being led by former Which? director Richard Lloyd over claims Google bypassed the privacy settings of Apple’s Safari browser on […]
Teensafe spying app leaked thousands of user passwords
At least one server used by an app for parents to monitor their teenagers’ phone activity has leaked tens of thousands of accounts of both parents and children. The mobile app, TeenSafe, bills itself as a “secure” monitoring app for iOS and Android, which lets parents view their child’s text messages and location, monitor who […]
Google Removes ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Clause From Its Code of Conduct
Google’s unofficial motto has long been the simple phrase “don’t be evil.” But that’s over, according to the code of conduct that Google distributes to its employees. The phrase was removed sometime in late April or early May, archives hosted by the Wayback Machine show. “Don’t be evil” has been part of the company’s corporate […]
Tracking Firm LocationSmart Leaked Location Data for Customers of All Major U.S. Mobile Carriers Without Consent in Real Time Via Its Web Site
LocationSmart, a U.S. based company that acts as an aggregator of real-time data about the precise location of mobile phone devices, has been leaking this information to anyone via a buggy component of its Web site — without the need for any password or other form of authentication or authorization — KrebsOnSecurity has learned. The […]
UK Watchdog Calls for Face Recognition Ban Over 90 Percent False-Positive Rate
As face recognition in public places becomes more commonplace, Big Brother Watch is especially concerned with false identification. In May, South Wales Police revealed that its face-recognition software had erroneously flagged thousands of attendees of a soccer game as a match for criminals; 92 percent of the matches were wrong. In a statement to the […]
Facebook admits it does track non-users, for their own good
Facebook’s apology-and-explanation machine grinds on, with The Social Network™ posting detail on one of its most controversial activities – how it tracks people who don’t use Facebook. The company explained that the post is a partial response to questions CEO Mark Zuckerberg was unable to answer during his senate and Congressional hearings. It’s no real […]
The Golden State Killer Suspect’s DNA Was in a Publicly Available Database, and Yours Might Be Too
Plenty of people have voluntarily uploaded their DNA to GEDmatch and other databases, often with real names and contact information. It’s what you do if you’re an adopted kid looking for a long-lost parent, or a genealogy buff curious about whether you have any cousins still living in the old country. GEDmatch requires that you […]
‘Forget the Facebook leak’: China is mining data directly from workers’ brains on an industrial scale
the workers wear caps to monitor their brainwaves, data that management then uses to adjust the pace of production and redesign workflows, according to the company. The company said it could increase the overall efficiency of the workers by manipulating the frequency and length of break times to reduce mental stress. Hangzhou Zhongheng Electric is […]
Chinese government admits collection of deleted WeChat messages
Chinese authorities revealed over the weekend that they have the capability of retrieving deleted messages from the almost universally used WeChat app. The admission doesn’t come as a surprise to many, but it’s rare for this type of questionable data collection tactic to be acknowledged publicly.As noted by the South China Morning Post, an anti-corruption […]
Revealed: how bookies use AI to keep gamblers hooked | Technology | The Guardian
The gambling industry is increasingly using artificial intelligence to predict consumer habits and personalise promotions to keep gamblers hooked, industry insiders have revealed.Current and former gambling industry employees have described how people’s betting habits are scrutinised and modelled to manipulate their future behaviour.“The industry is using AI to profile customers and predict their behaviour in […]
Whois is dead as Europe hands DNS overlord ICANN its arse :(
The Whois public database of domain name registration details is dead. In a letter [PDF] sent this week to DNS overseer ICANN, Europe’s data protection authorities have effectively killed off the current service, noting that it breaks the law and so will be illegal come 25 May, when GDPR comes into force. The letter also […]
Orkut Hello: The Man Behind Orkut Says His ‘Hello’ Platform Doesn’t Sell User Data
In 2004, one of the world’s most popular social networks, Orkut, was founded by a former Google employee named Orkut Büyükkökten. Later that year, a Harvard University student named Mark Zuckerberg launched ‘the Facebook’, which over the course of a year became ubiquitous in Ivy League universities and was eventually called Facebook.com. Orkut was shut […]
Facebook admits: Apps were given users’ permission to go into their inboxes
Facebook has admitted that some apps had access to users’ private messages, thanks to a policy that allowed devs to request mailbox permissions. The revelation came as current Facebook users found out whether they or their friends had used the “This Is Your Digital Life” app that allowed academic Aleksandr Kogan to collect data on […]
How to Check if Cambridge Analytica Had Your Facebook Data
Facebook launched a tool yesterday that you can use to find out whether you or your friends shared information with Cambridge Analytica, the Trump-affiliated company that harvested data from a Facebook app to support the then-candidate’s efforts in the 2016 presidential election. If you were affected directly—and you have plenty of company, if so—you should […]
CubeYou: Cambridge-like app collected data on millions from Facebook
Facebook is suspending a data analytics firm called CubeYou from the platform after CNBC notified the company that CubeYou was collecting information about users through quizzes. CubeYou misleadingly labeled its quizzes “for non-profit academic research,” then shared user information with marketers. The scenario is eerily similar to how Cambridge Analytica received unauthorized access to data […]
$0.75 – about how much Cambridge Analytica paid per voter in bid to micro-target their minds, internal docs reveal
Cambridge Analytica bought psychological profiles on individual US voters, costing roughly 75 cents to $5 apiece, each crafted using personal information plundered from millions of Facebook accounts, according to revealed internal documents. Over the course of the past two weeks, whistleblower Chris Wylie has made a series of claims against his former employer, Cambridge Analytica, […]
Cambridge Analytica’s daddy biz SCL had ‘routine access’ to UK secrets
Cambridge Analytica’s parent biz had “routine access to UK secret information” as part of training it offered to the UK’s psyops group, according to documents released today. A letter, published as part of a cache handed over to MPs by whisteblower Chris Wylie, details work that Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL) carried out for the 15 […]
