Forwarded from BlackBox (Security) Archiv
Google's short-lived data-advantage
There's a lot of ways to think about the movement to tame Big Tech, but one of the more useful divisions to explore is the "Night of the Comet" people versus the "Don't Believe the Criti-Hype" people.
This is a division over the value of the data that Google, Facebook and other large tech firms have amassed over the years – data on their users, sure, but also data on the advertisers and publishers they serve with their ad-tech platforms.
Big Tech companies and their investors are really bullish on the value of this commercial data-advantage: they say that spying on us – the users – lets them manipulate our opinions and activities so that we buy or believe the things their advertisers pay them to push.
More quietly, their investors believe that the data-advantage extends to publishers and advertisers, a deep storehouse of data that makes it effectively impossible for anyone else to do the precision targeted that Big Tech manages, which is why they have such fat margins.
https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/11/halflife/#minatory-legend
#google #DeleteGoogle #facebook #DeleteFacebook #BigData #BigTech #AdTech #thinkabout #comment
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv
There's a lot of ways to think about the movement to tame Big Tech, but one of the more useful divisions to explore is the "Night of the Comet" people versus the "Don't Believe the Criti-Hype" people.
This is a division over the value of the data that Google, Facebook and other large tech firms have amassed over the years – data on their users, sure, but also data on the advertisers and publishers they serve with their ad-tech platforms.
Big Tech companies and their investors are really bullish on the value of this commercial data-advantage: they say that spying on us – the users – lets them manipulate our opinions and activities so that we buy or believe the things their advertisers pay them to push.
More quietly, their investors believe that the data-advantage extends to publishers and advertisers, a deep storehouse of data that makes it effectively impossible for anyone else to do the precision targeted that Big Tech manages, which is why they have such fat margins.
https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/11/halflife/#minatory-legend
#google #DeleteGoogle #facebook #DeleteFacebook #BigData #BigTech #AdTech #thinkabout #comment
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv
Forwarded from BlackBox (Security) Archiv
Revealed: the Facebook loophole that lets world leaders deceive and harass their citizens
Facebook has repeatedly allowed world leaders and politicians to use its platform to deceive the public or harass opponents despite being alerted to evidence of the wrongdoing.
The Guardian has seen extensive internal documentation showing how Facebook handled more than 30 cases across 25 countries of politically manipulative behavior that was proactively detected by company staff.
The investigation shows how Facebook has allowed major abuses of its platform in poor, small and non-western countries in order to prioritize addressing abuses that attract media attention or affect the US and other wealthy countries. The company acted quickly to address political manipulation affecting countries such as the US, Taiwan, South Korea and Poland, while moving slowly or not at all on cases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Mongolia, Mexico, and much of Latin America.
“There is a lot of harm being done on Facebook that is not being responded to because it is not considered enough of a PR risk to Facebook,” said Sophie Zhang, a former data scientist at Facebook who worked within the company’s “integrity” organization to combat inauthentic behavior. “The cost isn’t borne by Facebook. It’s borne by the broader world as a whole.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/12/facebook-loophole-state-backed-manipulation
#facebook #DeleteFacebook #loophole #manipulation #investigation #thinkabout
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv
Facebook has repeatedly allowed world leaders and politicians to use its platform to deceive the public or harass opponents despite being alerted to evidence of the wrongdoing.
The Guardian has seen extensive internal documentation showing how Facebook handled more than 30 cases across 25 countries of politically manipulative behavior that was proactively detected by company staff.
The investigation shows how Facebook has allowed major abuses of its platform in poor, small and non-western countries in order to prioritize addressing abuses that attract media attention or affect the US and other wealthy countries. The company acted quickly to address political manipulation affecting countries such as the US, Taiwan, South Korea and Poland, while moving slowly or not at all on cases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Mongolia, Mexico, and much of Latin America.
“There is a lot of harm being done on Facebook that is not being responded to because it is not considered enough of a PR risk to Facebook,” said Sophie Zhang, a former data scientist at Facebook who worked within the company’s “integrity” organization to combat inauthentic behavior. “The cost isn’t borne by Facebook. It’s borne by the broader world as a whole.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/12/facebook-loophole-state-backed-manipulation
#facebook #DeleteFacebook #loophole #manipulation #investigation #thinkabout
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv
the Guardian
Revealed: the Facebook loophole that lets world leaders deceive and harass their citizens
A Guardian investigation exposes the breadth of state-backed manipulation of the platform
Forwarded from BlackBox (Security) Archiv
Another huge data breach, another stony silence from Facebook
The social media giant is still a law unto itself. Can anybody hold it to account?
Half a billion Facebook users’ accounts stolen. Personal information compromised. Telephone numbers and birth dates drifting across the internet being used for God knows what. And for four days, from Facebook’s corporate headquarters, nothing but silence.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. This week saw reports of a massive new Facebook breach and everything about it, from Facebook’s denials of the words “data” and “breach” to its repeated refusal to answer journalists’ questions, has been uncannily reminiscent of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Three years on, “Cambridge Analytica” is a byword for mass-data abuse, Facebook has been fined billions of dollars for failing to protect users’ data and... not a thing has changed. If ever there were a moment to understand how profoundly all systems of accountability have failed, and continued to fail, it is this.
Last week Nick Clegg, vice president of global affairs at Facebook, admitted on The Verge website that the Cambridge Analytica scandal had “rocked Facebook right down to its foundations”. And yet it has learned nothing. It has paid no real price (the record $5 billion fine it paid to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is literally no price at all to Facebook), suffered no real consequences, and failed to answer any questions over the involvement of its executives.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/11/another-huge-data-breach-another-stony-silence-from-facebook
#facebook #DeleteFacebook #data #breach #comment #thinkabout
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv
The social media giant is still a law unto itself. Can anybody hold it to account?
Half a billion Facebook users’ accounts stolen. Personal information compromised. Telephone numbers and birth dates drifting across the internet being used for God knows what. And for four days, from Facebook’s corporate headquarters, nothing but silence.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. This week saw reports of a massive new Facebook breach and everything about it, from Facebook’s denials of the words “data” and “breach” to its repeated refusal to answer journalists’ questions, has been uncannily reminiscent of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Three years on, “Cambridge Analytica” is a byword for mass-data abuse, Facebook has been fined billions of dollars for failing to protect users’ data and... not a thing has changed. If ever there were a moment to understand how profoundly all systems of accountability have failed, and continued to fail, it is this.
Last week Nick Clegg, vice president of global affairs at Facebook, admitted on The Verge website that the Cambridge Analytica scandal had “rocked Facebook right down to its foundations”. And yet it has learned nothing. It has paid no real price (the record $5 billion fine it paid to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is literally no price at all to Facebook), suffered no real consequences, and failed to answer any questions over the involvement of its executives.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/11/another-huge-data-breach-another-stony-silence-from-facebook
#facebook #DeleteFacebook #data #breach #comment #thinkabout
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv
the Guardian
Another huge data breach, another stony silence from Facebook | Carole Cadwalladr
The social media giant is still a law unto itself. Can anybody hold it to account?
Forwarded from BlackBox (Security) Archiv
Gmail 'safer than parliament's email system' says Tory MP
Google's email service - Gmail - is “more secure” than parliament's email system, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee has claimed.
Tom Tugendhat told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he has repeatedly been the focus of cyber attacks over the past three years.
Hackers have tried to access his account and sent emails impersonating him, he told the BBC.
The Tory MP believes China and Iran were behind some of these attempts.
“I was told by friends at GCHQ that I was better off sticking to Gmail, rather than using the parliamentary system, because it was more secure,” said Mr Tugendhat.
“Frankly, that tells you the level of security and the priority we're giving to democracy in the United Kingdom.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56733667
#google #gmail #uk #china #iran #cyberattack #tory #thinkabout
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv
Google's email service - Gmail - is “more secure” than parliament's email system, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee has claimed.
Tom Tugendhat told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he has repeatedly been the focus of cyber attacks over the past three years.
Hackers have tried to access his account and sent emails impersonating him, he told the BBC.
The Tory MP believes China and Iran were behind some of these attempts.
“I was told by friends at GCHQ that I was better off sticking to Gmail, rather than using the parliamentary system, because it was more secure,” said Mr Tugendhat.
“Frankly, that tells you the level of security and the priority we're giving to democracy in the United Kingdom.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56733667
#google #gmail #uk #china #iran #cyberattack #tory #thinkabout
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv
BBC News
Gmail 'safer than parliament's email system' says Tory MP
Tom Tugendhat, Foreign Affairs Select Committee chair, says he was advised Gmail was 'more secure'.
Forwarded from BlackBox (Security) Archiv
Update on beta testing payments in Signal
As the world stands today, the future of transaction privacy does not look great. The existing landscape is dominated by traditional credit companies, who over the past decade have been steadily pushing their networks for increased access to user data. They (and their data customers) are on a track to getting SKU level data of every purchase everyone makes everywhere. There are other contenders, such as regional online payments networks (like Venmo in the US), but the data story there is similar.
This is not a future we are particularly excited about. At Signal, we want to help build a different kind of tech – where software is built for you rather than for your data – so these are trends that we watch warily.
https://signal.org/blog/update-on-beta-testing-payments/
#signal #privacy #messaging #cryptocurrency #payment #thinkabout
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv
As the world stands today, the future of transaction privacy does not look great. The existing landscape is dominated by traditional credit companies, who over the past decade have been steadily pushing their networks for increased access to user data. They (and their data customers) are on a track to getting SKU level data of every purchase everyone makes everywhere. There are other contenders, such as regional online payments networks (like Venmo in the US), but the data story there is similar.
This is not a future we are particularly excited about. At Signal, we want to help build a different kind of tech – where software is built for you rather than for your data – so these are trends that we watch warily.
https://signal.org/blog/update-on-beta-testing-payments/
#signal #privacy #messaging #cryptocurrency #payment #thinkabout
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv
Signal
Update on beta testing payments in Signal
As the world stands today, the future of transaction privacy does not look great. The existing landscape is dominated by traditional credit companies, who over the past decade have been steadily pushing their networks for increased access to user data. They…
So I decided to download my Facebook data after learning I was a part of the 533m breach.
Clicked on a folder called “your_off_facebook_activity” and was unsurprised to learn that Facebook is following me all over the internet.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1381337384927830021.html
https://twitter.com/zamaan_qureshi/status/1381337384927830021
#fb #Facebook #why #stalker #spyware #thinkabout
Clicked on a folder called “your_off_facebook_activity” and was unsurprised to learn that Facebook is following me all over the internet.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1381337384927830021.html
https://twitter.com/zamaan_qureshi/status/1381337384927830021
#fb #Facebook #why #stalker #spyware #thinkabout
Threadreaderapp
Thread by @zamaan_qureshi on Thread Reader App
Thread by @zamaan_qureshi: So I decided to download my Facebook data after learning I was a part of the 533m breach. Clicked on a folder called “your_off_facebook_activity” and was unsurprised to learn that Faceboo...…
Forwarded from BlackBox (Security) Archiv
Google to Start Censoring Telegram
Fake news or justifiable warning? You be the judge.
I saw a message today stating the “Google Play Store is now censoring certain pages on Telegram if you downloaded the app through them.” The message suggested a simple workaround to download the app directly from telegram.org/android.
👉🏼 Here’s the message in its entirety:
"Google Play Store is now censoring certain pages on Telegram if you downloaded the app through them.
To get around this simply download the Android app directly from Telegram themselves. Less censorship and more updates.
Before you delete the Google play store Telegram app, install the new one directly from Telegram which will send you a security code to your Telegram messages. Once you have the code from the old app and you enter it into the new one, you can then delete the Google play store version."
Having seen videos I consider important disappearing from YouTube recently I wouldn’t put it past Google to dupe the chattle into downloading a doctored version of Telegram in order to protect people stamp out free speech in order to suppress the fast-rising global freedom movement organizing on Telegram.
Whether or not the message I shared above was true or false is less important to me than maintaining free speech. And so I’d like to share a few resources I’ve learned about from being on Telegram which can help you do just that:
https://habd.as/post/google-start-censor-telegram/
#BigTech #censorship #dystopia #freedom #google #DeleteGoogle #youtube #telegram #thinkabout
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv
Fake news or justifiable warning? You be the judge.
I saw a message today stating the “Google Play Store is now censoring certain pages on Telegram if you downloaded the app through them.” The message suggested a simple workaround to download the app directly from telegram.org/android.
👉🏼 Here’s the message in its entirety:
"Google Play Store is now censoring certain pages on Telegram if you downloaded the app through them.
To get around this simply download the Android app directly from Telegram themselves. Less censorship and more updates.
Before you delete the Google play store Telegram app, install the new one directly from Telegram which will send you a security code to your Telegram messages. Once you have the code from the old app and you enter it into the new one, you can then delete the Google play store version."
Having seen videos I consider important disappearing from YouTube recently I wouldn’t put it past Google to dupe the chattle into downloading a doctored version of Telegram in order to protect people stamp out free speech in order to suppress the fast-rising global freedom movement organizing on Telegram.
Whether or not the message I shared above was true or false is less important to me than maintaining free speech. And so I’d like to share a few resources I’ve learned about from being on Telegram which can help you do just that:
https://habd.as/post/google-start-censor-telegram/
#BigTech #censorship #dystopia #freedom #google #DeleteGoogle #youtube #telegram #thinkabout
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv
Forwarded from BlackBox (Security) Archiv
How a WhatsApp status loophole is aiding cyberstalkers
Cyberstalkers typically like to collect as much information about their target as possible. They want to know where they are at any given moment; who they’re meeting; who they’re talking to; what their texts say; who they’re emailing; what they’re browsing for online. Knowledge is power, and having this level of power over someone is intoxicating, dangerous and profoundly unethical.
To combat the rise in cyberstalking behaviours, and to keep people safe, software developers are increasingly held to account for higher levels of privacy in their platforms and products. But the world of cyberstalking is a very grey one.
What one person regards as stalking, another may see as protecting a loved one. To this point, while Google has banned advertising for stalkerware on its app store, Google Play, countless tracking and monitoring apps get around this ban by claiming to help parents track and monitor their childrens’ online activity, location, messages and more.
https://traced.app/2021/04/13/whatsapp-status-loophole-is-aiding-cyberstalkers/
#whatsapp #DeleteWhatsapp #cyberstalkers #onlinestatus #tracker #thinkabout
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv
Cyberstalkers typically like to collect as much information about their target as possible. They want to know where they are at any given moment; who they’re meeting; who they’re talking to; what their texts say; who they’re emailing; what they’re browsing for online. Knowledge is power, and having this level of power over someone is intoxicating, dangerous and profoundly unethical.
To combat the rise in cyberstalking behaviours, and to keep people safe, software developers are increasingly held to account for higher levels of privacy in their platforms and products. But the world of cyberstalking is a very grey one.
What one person regards as stalking, another may see as protecting a loved one. To this point, while Google has banned advertising for stalkerware on its app store, Google Play, countless tracking and monitoring apps get around this ban by claiming to help parents track and monitor their childrens’ online activity, location, messages and more.
https://traced.app/2021/04/13/whatsapp-status-loophole-is-aiding-cyberstalkers/
#whatsapp #DeleteWhatsapp #cyberstalkers #onlinestatus #tracker #thinkabout
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv
Traced
How a WhatsApp status loophole is aiding cyberstalkers
These WhatsApp status trackers are a new variety of surveillance software, but can be just as invasive and harmful as stalkerware.
Forwarded from BlackBox (Security) Archiv
Strategic autonomy in danger: European Tech companies warn of lowering data protection levels in the EU.
The EU is highly respected internationally for its data protection laws such as the GDPR. Now an EC initiative could be a threat to Europe's strategic autonomy.
Today we are sending an open letter to the European Commission together with #Boxcryptor, #Cryptomator, mail.de, #Mailfence, #Praxonomy, and #Tresorit to draw attention to the dangers of undermining encryption and people's privacy. Mass surveillance will not stop terrorism or child sexual abuse.
Joint open letter for right to privacy
In the course of the initiative "Fighting child sexual abuse: detection, removal, and reporting of illegal content", the European Union plans to abolish the digital privacy of correspondence. In order to automatically detect illegal content, all private chat messages are to be screened in the future. This should also apply to content that has so far been protected with strong end-to-end encryption. If this initiative is implemented according to the current plan it would enormously damage our European ideals and the indisputable foundations of our democracy, namely freedom of expression and the protection of privacy (see EDRi letter). The initiative would also severely harm Europe’s strategic autonomy and thus EU-based companies.
Europe as a global technology leader is respected internationally for its high level of data protection, notably due to the exemplary effect of the GDPR. In an internationally very competitive market, European companies are in first position when it comes to data protection. The EU initiative could now endanger this unique selling point of European IT companies.
https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/european-autonomy-in-danger/
#tutanota #surveillance #gdpr #eu #encryption #privacy #thinkabout
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv
The EU is highly respected internationally for its data protection laws such as the GDPR. Now an EC initiative could be a threat to Europe's strategic autonomy.
Today we are sending an open letter to the European Commission together with #Boxcryptor, #Cryptomator, mail.de, #Mailfence, #Praxonomy, and #Tresorit to draw attention to the dangers of undermining encryption and people's privacy. Mass surveillance will not stop terrorism or child sexual abuse.
Joint open letter for right to privacy
In the course of the initiative "Fighting child sexual abuse: detection, removal, and reporting of illegal content", the European Union plans to abolish the digital privacy of correspondence. In order to automatically detect illegal content, all private chat messages are to be screened in the future. This should also apply to content that has so far been protected with strong end-to-end encryption. If this initiative is implemented according to the current plan it would enormously damage our European ideals and the indisputable foundations of our democracy, namely freedom of expression and the protection of privacy (see EDRi letter). The initiative would also severely harm Europe’s strategic autonomy and thus EU-based companies.
Europe as a global technology leader is respected internationally for its high level of data protection, notably due to the exemplary effect of the GDPR. In an internationally very competitive market, European companies are in first position when it comes to data protection. The EU initiative could now endanger this unique selling point of European IT companies.
https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/european-autonomy-in-danger/
#tutanota #surveillance #gdpr #eu #encryption #privacy #thinkabout
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv
Tutanota
Strategic autonomy in danger: European Tech companies warn of lowering data protection levels in the EU.
The EU is highly respected internationally for its data protection laws such as the GDPR. Now an EC initiative could be a threat to Europe's strategic autonomy.
Forwarded from BlackBox (Security) Archiv
Brave Browser - Spyware Level: High
Brave Browser is a Chromium fork with many interesting features not found elsewhere, such as built-in Adblock and other extensions, fingerprinting protection, a cleaner Preferences menu compared to other Chrome forks, and the (opt-in) ability to automatically support (pay) the websites you visit. The developers describe it as "A browser with your interests at heart."[1] with the built-in privacy protections.
‼️ Spyware Level: High
Brave is self updating software, uses Google as the default search engine, has built-in telemetry, and even has an opt-out rss-like news feed similar to Firefox Pocket. These shouldn't be the things that come to mind if someone were to imagine a privacy oriented browser.
‼️ Whitelisting spyware from Facebook and Twitter
On its website, Brave claims that "Brave fights malware and prevents tracking, keeping your information safe and secure. It’s our top priority."[6]. Yet despite this claim, Brave actually disables its tracking protections for Facebook and Twitter's scripts that allow them to track people across the web.[5] Brave has been actively downplaying the role that JavaScript plays when tracking someone.
"Loading a script from an edge-cache does not track a user without third-party cookies or equivalent browser-local storage, which Brave always blocks and always will block. In other words, sending requests and receiving responses without cookies or other means of identifying users does not necessarily create a tracking threat."[7]
This couldn't be more far from the truth. Just because a website isn't able to store cookies, doesn't mean it can't uniquely identify you. Using JavaScript from Facebook and Twitter would be more than enough to track you and blocking cookies alone isn't going to stop that. Just as a quick point of reference to what information JavaScript can scrape, you might want to visit this website.
They later on added an option to the extension to disable all of the JavaScript, but this new feature seems to be nothing more than the JavaScript switch found in vanilla Chromium. They recently added an option here to block some of the scripts from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn after receiving pushback as a result of the controversy.
A quick note on the whitelisting trackers: This specific point on whitelisting trackers isn't making the case of Brave being spyware as much as it's making the case of Brave's privacy features being snake oil.
💡 https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/brave.html
#brave #browser #spyware #thinkabout #snakeoil
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv
Brave Browser is a Chromium fork with many interesting features not found elsewhere, such as built-in Adblock and other extensions, fingerprinting protection, a cleaner Preferences menu compared to other Chrome forks, and the (opt-in) ability to automatically support (pay) the websites you visit. The developers describe it as "A browser with your interests at heart."[1] with the built-in privacy protections.
‼️ Spyware Level: High
Brave is self updating software, uses Google as the default search engine, has built-in telemetry, and even has an opt-out rss-like news feed similar to Firefox Pocket. These shouldn't be the things that come to mind if someone were to imagine a privacy oriented browser.
‼️ Whitelisting spyware from Facebook and Twitter
On its website, Brave claims that "Brave fights malware and prevents tracking, keeping your information safe and secure. It’s our top priority."[6]. Yet despite this claim, Brave actually disables its tracking protections for Facebook and Twitter's scripts that allow them to track people across the web.[5] Brave has been actively downplaying the role that JavaScript plays when tracking someone.
"Loading a script from an edge-cache does not track a user without third-party cookies or equivalent browser-local storage, which Brave always blocks and always will block. In other words, sending requests and receiving responses without cookies or other means of identifying users does not necessarily create a tracking threat."[7]
This couldn't be more far from the truth. Just because a website isn't able to store cookies, doesn't mean it can't uniquely identify you. Using JavaScript from Facebook and Twitter would be more than enough to track you and blocking cookies alone isn't going to stop that. Just as a quick point of reference to what information JavaScript can scrape, you might want to visit this website.
They later on added an option to the extension to disable all of the JavaScript, but this new feature seems to be nothing more than the JavaScript switch found in vanilla Chromium. They recently added an option here to block some of the scripts from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn after receiving pushback as a result of the controversy.
A quick note on the whitelisting trackers: This specific point on whitelisting trackers isn't making the case of Brave being spyware as much as it's making the case of Brave's privacy features being snake oil.
💡 https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/brave.html
#brave #browser #spyware #thinkabout #snakeoil
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv