Tag: privacy
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Big Tech Abuse – Meta & Google
Facebook has been at the forefront of social media user and privacy abuse for years. Being caught out in the Cambridge Analytica scandal was not an isolated event. Newly unsealed court documents from a private antitrust lawsuit detail abuses of trust that are cynical and unethical at the very minimum. The following screenshot of a…
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AI and the truth
We are possibly at one of the greatest inflection points in human history. Strong words, but hear me out … In recent years, it’s become trendy to push one’s own truth in the absence of fact. This trend is known as wokeism, and has been and is being pushed in many social areas such as…
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Google Chrome and privacy – opposing forces?
Audio transcription The Google Chrome browser was first released in Sep 2008 as an alternative to rival browsers, to “address perceived shortcomings in those browsers and to support complex web applications”. Google also wanted a browser that could better integrate with its own web services and technologies. That last statement speaks to the heart of…
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Plex Discover: a lesson in privacy
Audio Transcript It’s a common refrain: my data isn’t important so I don’t need to protect it, I’m unimportant so my information doesn’t matter … There’s recently been some horror stories of overly ‘ambitious’ policing of internet-related activities. Like the father who sent pictures of his son with a developing issue to their doctor for…
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GPC / Global Privacy Control
Do Not Track It’s quite amazing to think that DNT or Do Not Track was first proposed back in 2009 – 13 years ago. This was a first-stab method at the issue of website privacy and the horrendous marketing machine that is the internet. DNT was designed to allow users to opt-out of website tracking,…
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Social Media security
Keeping yourself secure on the internet remains a very important component of our daily lives seeing as internet access is so ingrained in day-to-day activities. Think ride sharing, online banking, retail shopping, email and so on. Social media specifically remains a prime attack vector for malicious activities impacting on many internet users’ security. Yet the…
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Storm in a WhatsApp teacup?
Facebook’s recent update of the Terms of Service for Whatsapp has got a lot of people riled up. And quite rightly so. The core of this issue is not privacy of information as many believe, but rather pure business economics – let’s cover the basics first. There are 2 primary considerations for using cloud services…
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Browser Security
Browser technology and security events always make for interesting reading especially due to the fact that we do the majority of our online work these days through browsers, be it general web surfing, accessing enterprise apps or managing systems and devices. Browser features and security are therefore critical – this shouldn’t even need to be…
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The Apple/Google contact tracing API
Apple and Google (yes generally understood to be “sworn enemies” 😀 ) jointly developed an API to be used by contact tracing apps and released said API late in May 2020. Apple and Google’s API follows a decentralized approach, which means that every operation that might involve privacy is carried out on users’ phones, rather…
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Security – Hell in a handbasket
The last 2 weeks have really been a bad time for security news and one has to hope things will change for the better; if not, the headline says it all! BlueKeep Microsoft released a security patch 2 weeks ago related to Windows Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) which is used to remote access Windows systems.…
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Loki god of …?
In the field of IT Security, one learns very quickly that there’s always another security risk around the corner. An old favourite, the Loki Botnet, is back for another bite of the pie shortly after the fun with WannaCry a week ago. ( Loki a god in Norse mythology, was sometimes good and sometimes bad.…
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Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and your digital data
The recent Facebook/CA fiasco should be known to most people by now but here is a brief rundown in case you’re unaware. Aleksander Kogan, a Russian-American researcher, worked as a lecturer at Cambridge University, which has a Psychometrics Centre. The Centre advises to be able to use data from Facebook (including “likes”) to ascertain people’s personality traits.…
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Your TV is being creepy
Of all the points of electronic insecurity one deals with every day, your TV is probably the last you’d expect. Not so, because Vizio has been caught spying on its customers – through approximately 11 million smart TVs in the US and since 2014. These TVs have automatically tracked consumers’ viewing habits and sent that data…
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Equality and security
Trending on Twitter right now: There are no US ambassadors because Donald Trump just fired them all True or False? I recently wrote a piece on “fake news and false information” in the context of online security. The feedback was interesting because most commenters did not ( immediately ) equate fake news/false information with their own…
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Windows 10 updates and privacy settings
Windows 10 has put a heavy burden on network administrators due to its overhauled update system and numerous privacy settings. The results are a significant increase in network traffic, a slow down in machine operation and information leakage. Here follows a number of suggested settings to help minimise the impact of these changes and safeguard your…
