Michel Salim @michel_slm@social.privacytools.io

As if we needed another reason to use ad-blockers....

Can ads on a page read my password? - Information Security Stack Exchange

https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/214784/can-ads-on-a-page-read-my-password

In our ninth year of charitable donations, we've chosen the theme of privacy advocacy for 2019. Thanks to you, our continued growth has enabled us to increase our donations to $600,000. https://spreadprivacy.com/2019-duckduckgo-privacy-donations/

Why millions of #books entered #publicdomain?

One secret of the publishing industry is that most US books published before 1964 never extended their copyright, meaning they’re in the public domain today.

The NYPL converted the Internet Archive's digital copies of the 'Catalog of Copyright Entries' registration and copyright information into an XML format. Now we know that around 80% of all the books published from 1923 to 1964 are in the public domain.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kz4e3e/millions-of-books-are-secretly-in-the-public-domain-you-can-download-them-free

Given the failure of hashtags and the search feature, #ActivityPub needs the concept of topic-specific groups that are rooted into a "user" on an instance.

Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US

"The balloons are carrying hi-tech radars designed to simultaneously track many individual vehicles day or night, through any kind of weather. The tests, which have not previously been reported, received an FCC license to operate from mid-July until September, following similar flights licensed last year."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/02/pentagon-balloons-surveillance-midwest

Conversations.im has just registered with Russian Roscomnadzor which means it has now obligation to provide user details FSB https://roskomsvoboda.org/48119/ https://reestr.rublacklist.net/distributor/109589 #xmpp #privacy #security #russia

Google has been temporarily forced to stop listening in on its users across Europe after leaked data sparked privacy concerns

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/cktk93/google_has_been_temporarily_forced_to_stop/

https://www.businessinsider.com/google-stops-audio-reviews-europe-privacy-concerns-2019-8?r=US&IR=T

"Google reveals fistful of flaws in Apple's iMessage app"

it's cheeky.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49165946

I too have wondered why unsubscribing from a marketing email list could take days to process, and now that I know, I wish I could have the wonder back.

hoot: https://twitter.com/Joe8Bit/status/1156312965265707013

@Joe8Bit: I saw a tweet asking why sometimes when you unsubscribe from an email list it says it can ‘take a few days’. Buckle up, as I have a RIDICULOUS story about this happening in The Enterprise<img>...

@Joe8Bit: There’s a bank. Let’s assume you’ve heard of them, in fact if you’re in the UK there’s a 10 in 1 chance they’re YOUR bank. I was an overpayed ‘consultant’ at this bank.

@Joe8Bit: This bank sends marketing emails. There’s a little ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of the mail. People often click it.

@Joe8Bit: When they do it calls an antique web service that runs ‘somewhere’ at the bank. Honestly, it took me 3 weeks to find out where.

@Joe8Bit: This web service sends an email to an internal email address every time it’s clicked. This happens 100s of times a day.

@Joe8Bit: This email was originally sent to an individual. They left the bank five years before.

@Joe8Bit: This mail address is now forwarded to an email group. They couldn’t change the address as it’s hard coded and they don’t have the code that was used to compile this Java 6 service.

@Joe8Bit: This email group is monitored by two people in the banks offshore centre in Hyderabad. They worked super hard and always SMASHED their job; but holy crap it was soul crushing.

@Joe8Bit: When I spoke to them via VC they had the Enterprise 1000 Yard Stare. They’ve banged their head against this thing for YEARS and it’s NEVER changed.

@Joe8Bit: When they get a mail, they need to run a SQL query to see if that mail address is associated with a customer (which results in one process) or if it’s not (which results in a separate process)

@Joe8Bit: If they’re a customer, they execute another SQL query that updates a customer record in a type of ETL staging area. Every one of these changes is reviewed (at 4pm UK time) by a team in an office in Scotland. If they approve it, it gets executed 24 hours LATER at 4pm

@Joe8Bit: If this person is NOT a customer, they add it to an excel and email it (just before they go home) to a marketing team in Swindon.

@Joe8Bit: The marketing team use tea leaves and chicken bones to decide if this person is a ‘high vale prospect’ (their ‘SLA’ is ‘within 48 hours’). If they AREN’T they add the address to another excel and email the original team in India. They use their ‘process’ to execute a SQL query

@Joe8Bit: If they ARE a ‘high value prospect’ the marketing team MANUALLY sends an email asking if they REALLY REALLY want to unsubscribe? It looks like an automated email, but it ain’t.

@Joe8Bit: If they answer yes (they had to literally reply ‘YES’) then the team in Swindon send a THIRD excel back to India and the ceremonial SQL queries are run.

@Joe8Bit: IIRC this took FOUR BUSINESS DAYS on average. On average ~700 people unsubscribed a day and ~70% of those were deemed ‘high value prospects’.

@Joe8Bit: There’s another story about how the two people from India joined our engineering team and became the Product Owners for the thing that replaced it <img>

@Joe8Bit: They were also two of the nicest, most caring, hardest working people I've ever had the opportunity to work with. They were the reason why this awful corporate clusterfuck of a process worked so 'smoothly' for all those years.

@Joe8Bit: If those things didn't make an ideal, A+ candidate to own the replacement system I don't know what did.

@Joe8Bit: They eventually moved to the UK, and one of them is now in charge of a team of 40+ people!

@Joe8Bit: Why had they been ignored and overlooked for so long, and why every bit of their work needed to be 'checked' by a team in the UK… you'll need to fill in the gaps on that one-oh wait no, it was prejudice against offshore workers and a light sparkling of racism! <img>

@Joe8Bit: My consigliere have informed me I should take advantage of this sudden attention to mention @permutive is hiring! We’re like, cool to work for and stuff <img>

What can we learn from Palantir’s secret user manual for police users of its big data software? - https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2019/07/what-can-we-learn-from-palantirs-secret-user-manual-for-police-users-of-its-big-data-software/ #surveillance is easy - too easy #privacy

I find this napkin from my flight so alarming that I saved it to put on my wall as a reminder of the value of copywriters.

Tech Support: A Limerick

You have a few problems computing,
And call them for help troubleshooting.
"I'm sorry" they say,
As you start to pray,
"But have you attempted rebooting?"

#techsupport

Someone from Cisco went on stage to propose weakening TLS 1.3 for "network-based security solutions" (enterprise spyware).

There was a long line at the mic of people pushing back on it... I almost felt bad for the poor speaker 🙂

https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-camwinget-tls-use-cases-05

"the explosive growth of #realtime #FacialRecognition tech—and the current fascination of UK police with it—means that it’s already a scandal and could soon become a crisis…The government, however, seems to not realise or concede that there is a problem”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/28/why-we-should-be-scared-by-intrusive-menace-of-facial-recognition

Firefox Preview is my primary Android browser for ~2 weeks; never realized how often I use view-source. In case I am not alone: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/3972

“911, this service sponsored by Ring, what’s your emergency?”

“I think someone broke into my house!”

“Are you a Ring customer?”

“No!?”

“I’m sorry, our priority response is reserved for Ring customers.”

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mb88za/amazon-requires-police-to-shill-surveillance-cameras-in-secret-agreement