Privacy & New Media

Ars Technica

PETER BRIGHT
1/24/2018, 11:41 AM

Following the publication last year of the data collected by Windows 10’s built-in telemetry and diagnostic tracking, Microsoft today announced that the next major Windows 10 update, due around March or April, will support a new app, the Windows Diagnostic Data Viewer, that will allow Windows users to browse and inspect the data that the system has collected.

Windows 10 has two settings for its data collection, “basic” and “full.” The documentation last year described all the data collected in the “basic” setting but only gave a broad outline of the kinds of things that the “full” setting collected. The new app will show users precisely what the full setting entails and a comparison with what would be sent with the basic setting.

The utility of the app will tend to vary depending on what data is being inspected. The presentation is low-level (Microsoft’s screenshots show JSON structured data using various magic numbers—numeric values that encode information but without any key to explain what information each number encodes), so straightforward reading and interpretation will remain limited.

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NYT

NICHOLAS CONFESSORE, GABRIEL J.X. DANCE, RICHARD HARRIS and MARK HANSEN
JAN. 27, 2018

THE REAL JESSICA RYCHLY is a Minnesota teenager with a broad smile and wavy hair. She likes reading and the rapper Post Malone. When she goes on Facebook or Twitter, she sometimes muses about being bored or trades jokes with friends. Occasionally, like many teenagers, she posts a duck-face selfie.

But on Twitter, there is a version of Jessica that none of her friends or family would recognize. While the two Jessicas share a name, photograph and whimsical bio — “I have issues” — the other Jessica promoted accounts hawking Canadian real estate investments, cryptocurrency and a radio station in Ghana. The fake Jessica followed or retweeted accounts using Arabic and Indonesian, languages the real Jessica does not speak. While she was a 17-year-old high school senior, her fake counterpart frequently promoted graphic pornography, retweeting accounts called Squirtamania and Porno Dan.

All these accounts belong to customers of an obscure American company named Devumi that has collected millions of dollars in a shadowy global marketplace for social media fraud.

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Washington Post

Hamza Shaban and Brian Fung
June 27, 2017

Google just got hit with a record $2.7 billion fine in Europe

The European Union’s head of antitrust enforcement announced a record $2.7 billion fine against Google on Tuesday, accusing the search engine for illegally favoring its own comparison shopping service as customers used Google to search for products online. That’s the biggest fine Europe has imposed on any company ever.

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NYT

SHEERA FRENKEL
JAN. 28, 2018

Over the past two months, Google has started letting people around the world choose what data they want to share with its various products, including Gmail and Google Docs.

Amazon recently began improving the data encryption on its cloud storage service and simplified an agreement with customers over how it processes their information.

And on Sunday, Facebook rolled out a new global data privacy center — a single page that allows users to organize who sees their posts and what types of ads they are served.

While these changes are rippling out worldwide, a major reason for these shifts comes from Europe: The tech giants are preparing for a stringent new set of data privacy rules in the region, called the General Data Protection Regulation.

Set to take effect on May 25, the regulations restrict what types of personal data the tech companies can collect, store and use across the 28-member European Union.

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MATT O’BRIEN and BARBARA ORTUTAY, AP Technology Writers
Posted Jan 30, 2018

Child development experts and advocates are urging Facebook to pull the plug on its new messaging app aimed at kids.

A group letter sent Tuesday to CEO Mark Zuckerberg argues that younger children — the app is intended for those under 13 — aren’t ready to have social media accounts, navigate the complexities of online relationships or protect their own privacy.

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NYT

NYT

JAMES A. MILLWARD
FEB. 3, 2018

Imagine that this is your daily life: While on your way to work or on an errand, every 100 meters you pass a police blockhouse. Video cameras on street corners and lamp posts recognize your face and track your movements. At multiple checkpoints, police officers scan your ID card, your irises and the contents of your phone. At the supermarket or the bank, you are scanned again, your bags are X-rayed and an officer runs a wand over your body — at least if you are from the wrong ethnic group. Members of the main group are usually waved through.

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Tim Berners-Lee thinks you should fight for your online privacy, not resort to workarounds.

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A recent Reuters survey found that a majority of Americans are not willing to give up their privacy even to help the government fight terrorism. About 3 in 4 participants in the online survey answered that they would not give up the privacy of their e-mail, text messages, or phone records to help the US fight foreign or domestic terrorism plots or counter hacking of US networks by foreign powers. The poll of 3,307 people showed strong support for privacy among both Democrats and Republicans. EPIC has advocated for strong encryption since its founding and published the first comprehensive survey of encryption use around the world. EPIC also maintains a page on Privacy and Public Opinion.

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In a resolution passed today, the European Parliament expressed alarm over the rollback of U.S. privacy safeguards necessary for Privacy Shield, a framework permitting the flow of European consumers’ personal data to the United States. The Parliament cited several recent developments including procedures that allow the NSA to disseminate raw data across the US government, vacancies at the Federal Trade Commission and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the repeal of an FCC privacy rule, and the absence of effective redress for violations of Privacy Shield. The resolution of Parliament called on the European Commission to rigorously analyze these matters and to “take all necessary measures” to ensure the agreement respects EU privacy rights. In 2015, EPIC a coalition of privacy organizations had urged the US and the EU to strengthen privacy protections, following a landmark decision that found insufficient legal protections for the transfer of consumer data to the US.

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