Archive for the ‘Global Domination’ Category
How to Stop Windows 10 From Collecting Activity Data on You – after disabling activity tracking option
Another day, another tech company being disingenuous about its privacy practices. This time it’s Microsoft, after it was discovered that Windows 10 continues to track users’ activity even after they’ve disabled the activity-tracking option in their Windows 10 settings. You can try it yourself. Pull up Windows 10’s Settings, go to the Privacy section, and […]
Taylor Swift Show Used to Stalk Visitors with Hidden Face Recognition in Kiosk Displays
At a Taylor Swift concert earlier this year, fans were reportedly treated to something they might not expect: a kiosk displaying clips of the pop star that served as a covert surveillance system. It’s a tale of creeping 21st-century surveillance as unnerving as it is predictable. But the whole ordeal has left us wondering what […]
It’s Time to Check Which Apps Are Tracking Your Location
Guess what? A bunch of apps like knowing where you are, so that their developers can then take that data, package it up for various advertising companies, and make a quick buck off of your precise whereabouts—including where you go and how long you spend there. Source: It’s Time to Check Which Apps Are Tracking […]
Your Apps Know Where You Were Last Night, and They’re Not Keeping It Secret
The millions of dots on the map trace highways, side streets and bike trails — each one following the path of an anonymous cellphone user. One path tracks someone from a home outside Newark to a nearby Planned Parenthood, remaining there for more than an hour. Another represents a person who travels with the mayor […]
US Border Agents Keep Personal Data of 29000 Travelers on USBs, fail to delete them.
Last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) searched through the electronic devices of more than 29,000 travelers coming into the country. CBP officers sometimes upload personal data from those devices to Homeland Security servers by first transferring that data onto USB drives—drives that are supposed to be deleted after every use. But a new […]
UK Intelligence Agencies Are Planning a Major Increase in ‘Large-Scale Data Hacking’
Intelligence agencies in the UK are preparing to “significantly increase their use of large-scale data hacking,” the Guardian reported on Saturday, in a move that is already alarming privacy advocates. According to the Guardian, UK intelligence officials plan to increase their use of the “bulk equipment interference (EI) regime”—the process by which the Government Communications […]
Australia now has encryption-busting laws as Labor capitulates
Labor has backed down completely on its opposition to the Assistance and Access Bill, and in the process has been totally outfoxed by a government that can barely control the floor of Parliament. After proposing a number of amendments to the Bill, which Labor party members widely called out as inappropriate in the House of […]
Reddit, YouTube, Others Push Against EU Copyright Directive – even the big guys think this is a bad idea. Hint: aside from it being copyright, it’s a REALLY bad idea
With Tumblr’s decision this week to ban porn on its platform, everyone’s getting a firsthand look at how bad automated content filters are at the moment. Lawmakers in the European Union want a similar system to filter copyrighted works and, despite expert consensus that this will just fuck up the internet, the legislation moves forward. […]
Facebook Well Aware That Tracking Contacts Is Creepy: Emails
Back in 2015, Facebook had a pickle of a problem. It was time to update the Android version of the Facebook app, and two different groups within Facebook were at odds over what the data grab should be. The business team wanted to get Bluetooth permissions so it could push ads to people’s phones when […]
Your phone indeed has ears that you may not know about – the companies that listen to noise in the background while apps that contain their software are open
: No, your phone is not “listening” to you in the strictest sense of the word. But, yes, all your likes, dislikes and preferences are clearly being heard by apps in your phone which you oh-so-easily clicked “agree” to the terms of which while installing. How so? If you are in India, the answer to […]
Creepy Chinese AI shames CEO for jaywalking on public displays throughout city – but detected the CEO on an ad on a bus
Dong Mingzhu, chairwoman of China’s biggest maker of air conditioners Gree Electric Appliances, who found her face splashed on a huge screen erected along a street in the port city of Ningbo that displays images of people caught jaywalking by surveillance cameras. That artificial intelligence-backed surveillance system, however, erred in capturing Dong’s image on Wednesday […]
Be Warned: Customer Service Agents Can See What You’re Typing in Real Time on their website forms
Next time you’re chatting with a customer service agent online, be warned that the person on the other side of your conversation might see what you’re typing in real time. A reader sent us the following transcript from a conversation he had with a mattress company after the agent responded to a message he hadn’t […]
US told to quit sharing data with human rights-violating surveillance regime. Which one, you ask? That’d be the UK
UK authorities should not be granted access to data held by American companies because British laws don’t meet human rights obligations, nine nonprofits have said. In a letter to the US Department of Justice, organisations including Human Rights Watch and the Electronic Frontier Foundation set out their concerns about the UK’s surveillance and data retention […]
When the Internet Archive Forgets
When the Internet Archive Forgets On the internet, there are certain institutions we have come to rely on daily to keep truth from becoming nebulous or elastic. Not necessarily in the way that something stupid like Verrit aspired to, but at least in confirming that you aren’t losing your mind, that an old post or […]
In China, your car could be talking to the government
When Shan Junhua bought his white Tesla Model X, he knew it was a fast, beautiful car. What he didn’t know is that Tesla constantly sends information about the precise location of his car to the Chinese government. Tesla is not alone. China has called upon all electric vehicle manufacturers in China to make the […]
Companies ‘can sack workers for refusing to use fingerprint scanners’ in Australia
Businesses using fingerprint scanners to monitor their workforce can legally sack employees who refuse to hand over biometric information on privacy grounds, the Fair Work Commission has ruled. The ruling, which will be appealed, was made in the case of Jeremy Lee, a Queensland sawmill worker who refused to comply with a new fingerprint scanning […]
Google wants to spy on you and then report on you
suggesting, automatically implementing, or both suggesting and automatically implementing, one or more household policies to be implemented within a household environment. The household policies include one or more input criteria that is derivable from at least one smart device within the household environment, the one or more input criteria relating to a characteristic of the […]
Google patents a way for your smart devices to spy on you, serve you ads, even if your privacy settings says no
In some embodiments, the private network may include at least one first device that captures information about its surrounding environment, such as data about the people and/or objects in the environment. The first device may receive a set of potential content sent from a server external to the private network. The first device may select […]
Dutch Gov sees Office 365 spying on you, sending your texts to US servers without recourse or knowledge
Uit het rapport van de Nederlandse overheid blijkt dat de telemetrie-functie van alle Office 365 en Office ProPlus-applicaties onder andere e-mail-onderwerpen en woorden/zinnen die met behulp van de spellingschecker of vertaalfunctie zijn geschreven worden doorgestuurd naar systemen in de Verenigde Staten. Dit gaat zelfs zo ver dat, als een gebruiker meerdere keren achter elkaar op […]
Facebook files patent to find out more about you by looking at the background items in your pictures and pictures you are tagged in
An online system predicts household features of a user, e.g., household size and demographic composition, based on image data of the user, e.g., profile photos, photos posted by the user and photos posted by other users socially connected with the user, and textual data in the user’s profile that suggests relationships among individuals shown in […]
Microsoft slips ads into Windows 10 Mail client – then U-turns so hard, it warps fabric of reality – Windows is an OS, not a service!
Microsoft was, and maybe still is, considering injecting targeted adverts into the Windows 10 Mail app. The ads would appear at the top of inboxes of folks using the client without a paid-for Office 365 subscription, and the advertising would be tailored to their interests. Revenues from the banners were hoped to help keep Microsoft […]
Couple Who Ran retro ROM Site (with games you can’t buy any more) to Pay Nintendo $12 Million
Nintendo has won a lawsuit seeking to take two large retro-game ROM sites offline, on charges of copyright infringement. The judgement, made public today, ruled in Nintendo’s favour and states that the owners of the sites LoveROMS.com and LoveRETRO.co, will have to pay a total settlement of $12 million to Nintendo. The complaint was originally […]
How to Quit Google Completely
Despite all the convenience and quality of Google’s sprawling ecosystem, some users are fed up with the fishy privacy policies the company has recently implemented in Gmail, Chrome, and other services. To its credit, Google has made good changes in response to user feedback, but that doesn’t diminish the company’s looming shadow over the internet […]
Chinese ‘gait recognition’ tech IDs people by how they walk
Chinese authorities have begun deploying a new surveillance tool: “gait recognition” software that uses people’s body shapes and how they walk to identify them, even when their faces are hidden from cameras. Already used by police on the streets of Beijing and Shanghai, “gait recognition” is part of a push across China to develop artificial-intelligence […]
U.S. Indicts Chinese Hacker-Spies in Conspiracy to Steal Aerospace Secrets
The U.S. Justice Department has charged two Chinese intelligence officers, six hackers, and two aerospace company insiders in a sweeping conspiracy to steal confidential aerospace technology from U.S. and French companies. For more than five years, two Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) spies are said to have run a team of hackers focusing on […]
