Johana Bhuiyan, the Guardian: The tech advocacy group Accountable Tech conducted an experiment in August and October to test Google’s pledge. Using a brand new Android device, researchers with the group analyzed their Google activity timeline, where the company shows what information is logged about an account holder’s actions. This activity helps make Google’s services […]
Ina Fried, Axios: While TikTok had no official presence at the Code Conference, the Chinese-owned firm was the talk of the annual gathering of tech world notables this week — serving as the foil of choice for a parade of tech executives, pundits and even some government officials. […] [Scott] Galloway, who took every chance […]
Bennett Cyphers, Electronic Frontier Foundation: The company, Fog Data Science, has claimed in marketing materials that it has “billions” of data points about “over 250 million” devices and that its data can be used to learn about where its subjects work, live, and associate. Fog sells access to this data via a web application, called […]
Andrew Paul, Popular Science: Hosted by comedian Wanda Sykes, the show originates from MGM Studios (itself a subsidiary of Amazon), and promises “friends and family a fun new way to enjoy time with one another” via doorbell cams, although the ensuing online reaction has been less than promising. Despite the rising popularity of smart home […]
From the FTC’s press release: In a complaint filed against Kochava, the FTC alleges that the company’s customized data feeds allow purchasers to identify and track specific mobile device users. For example, the location of a mobile device at night is likely the user’s home address and could be combined with property records to uncover […]
Alfred Ng, Politico: Congress has never been closer to passing a federal data privacy law — and the brokers that profit from information on billions of people are spending big to nudge the legislation in their favor. […] The brokers, including U.K.-based data giant RELX and credit reporting agency TransUnion, want changes to the bill […]
A unique consequence of writing about the biggest computer companies, which are all based in the United States, from most any other country is a lurking sense of invasion. I do not mean this in an anti-American sense; it is perhaps inherent to any large organization emanating from the world’s most powerful economy. But there […]
Salvador Rodriguez, Wall Street Journal: In the years before the change, Apple suggested a series of possible arrangements that would earn the iPhone maker a slice of Facebook’s revenue, according to people who either participated in the meetings or were briefed about them. As one person recalled: Apple officials said they wanted to “build businesses […]
App Tracking Transparency (hereafter, “ATT”) is in the news again because many advertising-supported companies have reported a particularly bad earnings quarter attributable, many of them have said, to several factors, perhaps best summarized by Mobile Dev Memo’s Eric Seufert: It’s impractical, if not impossible, to try to tease out the individual burden of any of […]
While we are on the subject of data marketplaces, here is Joseph Cox, of Vice: Placer.ai, a location data firm that Motherboard previously revealed was providing heatmaps of approximately where abortion clinic visitors live, has admitted that people have obtained data related to these visits in the past. A different location data company, INRIX, offers […]
Kristin Cohen, of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission: The conversation about technology tends to focus on benefits. But there is a behind-the-scenes irony that needs to be examined in the open: the extent to which highly personal information that people choose not to disclose even to family, friends, or colleagues is actually shared with complete […]
Since the parallel rise over the past couple years of TikTok and concerns about the service’s connections to China — or, more specifically, its intelligence and military arms — I have been mulling over this piece. I have dropped bits and pieces, but I feel like now is a good time to bring all those […]
Jia Tolentino, the New Yorker: If you become pregnant, your phone generally knows before many of your friends do. The entire Internet economy is built on meticulous user tracking — of purchases, search terms — and, as laws modelled on Texas’s S.B. 8 proliferate, encouraging private citizens to file lawsuits against anyone who facilitates an […]
Muyi Xiao, Paul Mozur, Isabelle Qian, and Alexander Cardia of the New York Times put together a haunting short documentary about the state of surveillance in China. It shows a complete loss of privacy, and any attempt to maintain one’s sense of self is regarded as suspicious. From my limited perspective, I cannot imagine making […]
Nicole Nguyen and Cordilia James, Wall Street Journal: Different types of data, including information that can be subpoenaed from period trackers, can create an extremely detailed profile of you when combined. Prof. Fowler says she thinks it is likely that user data will have greater importance if more places criminalize abortion. While period trackers collect and store […]
Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica: A bill introduced by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) would prohibit data brokers from selling Americans’ location and health data, Warren’s office said Wednesday. “Largely unregulated by federal law, data brokers gather intensely personal data such as location data from seemingly innocuous sources including weather apps and prayer apps—oftentimes without the consumer’s […]
Dimitrios Katsifis, writing in the Platform Law Blog, published by a British–Belgian law firm: On 10 June 2022, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published its Final Report on its year-long market study into mobile ecosystems — namely mobile operating systems, app stores, and web browsers. The CMA found that Apple and Google have […]
Issie Lapowsky, Protocol: Every single pig in the D.C. metro area took flight Friday when three key bipartisan lawmakers unveiled a draft of their actual, real-life, long-promised, but rarely materializing comprehensive privacy bill. The draft of the American Data Privacy and Protection Act represents a crucial compromise between Reps. Frank Pallone Jr., Cathy McMorris Rodgers […]
Leaky Forms is a new study by Asuman Senol, Gunes Acar, Mathias Humbert, and Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius (emphasis theirs): Email addresses — or identifiers derived from them — are known to be used by data brokers and advertisers for cross-site, cross-platform, and persistent identification of potentially unsuspecting individuals. In order to find out whether access […]
Joseph Cox, Vice: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) bought access to location data harvested from tens of millions of phones in the United States to perform analysis of compliance with curfews, track patterns of people visiting K-12 schools, and specifically monitor the effectiveness of policy in the Navajo Nation, according to CDC […]