Friday, December 16, 2016
Know which site sold your data [feedly]
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Know which site sold your data
// gHacks Technology News
Whenever you sign up for a service or site on the Internet, there is a chance that your data will be used by the company operating the service, or sold.
Most companies ask permissions before they add you to their newsletter. Some sneaky ones add you without option to remove yourself during signup in hope that you will forget to cancel the subscription afterwards.
It gets worse when your data is sold. Once in the system, it is there for all time and there is a chance that your email account will receive regular spam emails until it is closed.
While you cannot do much about it, you can at least try your best to understand which company or site sold your data in first place.
Option 1: Different email accounts, or aliases
There are two options for this. The first is to use different email accounts for online accounts. Besides using different accounts, you may also make use of aliases instead. Major email providers such as Outlook or Gmail support aliases.
I'm not a huge fan of the alias system that has you add +whatever to your email username. If my email is martin@example.com, I could use aliases like martin+walmart@example.com to identify the site or service that sold my data.
This works only however if the spammers are not processing the email list before sending out spam. It is easy enough to remove any +whatever characters from emails to avoid sending to aliases altogether.
You may also use so called temporary email services, but those only for unimportant accounts.
Option 2: Make use of custom middle names

I read about this method on Reddit the other day and like it a lot (thanks Ilev). Some sites have a middle name field when you sign up. Instead of not filling it out, or filling it out with your real middle name, you could add the sites name, or another unique identifier there.
So, if I sign up for an account on a site, my name would be Martin Sitename Brinkmann. That site, or any other service the data is sold to, would usually use the full name when it addresses you in emails.
Emails would begin with Dear Martin Sitename Brinkmann. Looking at Sitename, you would know immediately where the data originated from.
Caveats: The system has some caveats. First, this may not work for services that require payments or identification. Payments may get rejected if the name does not match, and you may not be able to identify yourself if the name does not match yours.
Second, this won't work if the middle name is not listed as a field during sign up and afterwards, and won't work if the middle name is ignored when emails are sent out.
One workaround for that is to add the middle name to the name field. If you only get first and last name fields, you would add it to the first name field, and if you only get one name field, you would add it there.
There is still a chance that companies will detect this and remove your account. Most won't however as emails are usually processed automatically.
Now Read: How to fight spam, the final guide
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The post Know which site sold your data appeared first on gHacks Technology News.
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Monday, December 12, 2016
Monday, November 21, 2016
Google’s DeepMind AI can lip-read TV shows better than a pro [feedly]
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Google's DeepMind AI can lip-read TV shows better than a pro
// New Scientist - Tech
An artificial intelligence system developed by researchers at DeepMind and the University of Oxford got so good by watching 5000 hours of BBC programmes
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Sunday, November 20, 2016
Monday, October 17, 2016
Tuesday, October 4, 2016
From civil liberties champion to turncoat: Yahoo built specialized software to spy on users for the NSA [feedly]
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From civil liberties champion to turncoat: Yahoo built specialized software to spy on users for the NSA
// Extremetech

A new report claims that Yahoo didn't just cooperate with the NSA -- it built an unprecedented database to scan incoming email for keywords in real time and turns this information over to federal agencies automatically.
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Thursday, September 15, 2016
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Saturday, July 23, 2016
Judge wants Yahoo to reveal how it recovered deleted emails [feedly]
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Judge wants Yahoo to reveal how it recovered deleted emails
// Betanews
Helping out with a drug trafficking case, Yahoo was able to recover emails that had previously been deleted. Now a judge wants to know how this was possible. Yahoo's only policies state that email cannot be recovered once they have been deleted, and defense lawyers for Russell Knaggs -- who planned to move cocaine from South America -- want to know how the company was able to produce deleted email in this case. As explained by Motherboard, Knaggs and his accomplices went to some lengths to try to ensure that their communication could not be intercepted. "As part of the… [Continue Reading]
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Friday, July 1, 2016
9 Examples of How Smartphones Are Eavesdropping on You [feedly]
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9 Examples of How Smartphones Are Eavesdropping on You
// MakeUseOf.com

More and more people are becoming concerned that their smartphone microphones are being used for more than just calls. We recently investigated this phenomenon and discovered that it's possible for apps to use voice data, detected via a device microphone, and display related content on your phone. The problem is, we didn't quite appreciate the extent of it. Comments on our previous article reveal that not only have people noticed this, they're not particularly happy about it either. So, to find out just how big the problem is, we widened the net and checked a few other places where the same...
Read the full article: 9 Examples of How Smartphones Are Eavesdropping on You
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Thursday, June 30, 2016
Google wants to show you all the data it's collected about your online habits - CNET [feedly]
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Google wants to show you all the data it's collected about your online habits - CNET
// CNET News.com
The web giant's new tool lets you review the sites you visit, the searches you make and the videos you watch, among other things.
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Wednesday, June 15, 2016
FBI built a massive facial recognition database without proper oversight [feedly]
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FBI built a massive facial recognition database without proper oversight
// TechCrunch
 The FBI steadily, stealthily compiled a massive facial recognition database without oversight and in disregard of federal law, according to a report released today by the Government Accountability Office. The bombshell report reveals that the FBI dipped into driver's license photo databases from 16 states, as well as passport and visa photo databases from the State Department, feeding… Read More
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Saturday, May 28, 2016
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Sunday, April 24, 2016
Thursday, April 21, 2016
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
Saturday, March 19, 2016
FTC issues warning to apps covertly monitoring TV broadcasts [feedly]
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FTC issues warning to apps covertly monitoring TV broadcasts
// Engadget Mobile
It's like the those skeevy flashlight apps all over again. The Federal Trade Commission has sent out a warning to mobile software developers using the Silverpush framework that their applications could be invading the privacy of unknowing consumers....
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