Neal Stephenson Explains His Vision of the Digital Afterlife - PCMag.com
https://www.pcmag.com/news/368417/neal-stephenson-explains-his-vision-of-the-digital-afterlife
Neal Stephenson’s new book, Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, is out June 4, and we spoke to him about this sprawling sci-fi epic, the digital afterlife, and why social media is a doomsday machine.
Can “Indie” Social Media Save Us? - The New Yorker
Google stored some passwords in plain text for fourteen years - The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/21/18634842/google-passwords-plain-text-g-suite-fourteen-years
Only affects some G Suite customers
it can’t find any evidence that anybody’s password was improperly accessed. It’s resetting any passwords that might be affected
Finland is winning the war on fake news. What it’s learned may be crucial to Western democracy
Driverless electric truck starts deliveries on Swedish public road - Reuters
The T-Pod is level 4 autonomous […], and uses a Nvidia Drive platform to process visual data in real time. An operator, sitting miles away, can supervise and control up to 10 vehicles at once.
Google Gmail tracks purchase history — how to delete it
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/17/google-gmail-tracks-purchase-history-how-to-delete-it.html
Google saves years of information on purchases you’ve made, even outside Google, and pulls this information from Gmail.
WhatsApp exploit let attackers install government-grade spyware on phones - TechCrunch
The spyware in question that was detected as having been installed was Israel-based NSO Group’s Pegasus
WhatsApp voice calls used to inject Israeli spyware on phones - Financial Times
https://www.ft.com/content/4da1117e-756c-11e9-be7d-6d846537acab
attackers were able to install surveillance software on to both iPhones and Android phones by ringing up targets using the app’s phone call function.
Software update crashes police ankle monitors in the Netherlands - ZDNet
https://www.zdnet.com/article/software-update-crashes-police-ankle-monitors-in-the-netherlands/
the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security had to step in and preemptively arrest and jail some of its most high-risk suspects.
Flaws in a popular GPS tracker leak real-time locations and can remotely activate its microphone - TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/10/gps-trackers-flaw/
This device is marketed at keeping the most vulnerable safe and yet anybody can locate and listen into thousands of people’s lives without their knowledge
Millions of people uploaded photos to the Ever app. Then the company used them to develop facial recognition tools.
used to train the company’s facial recognition system, and that Ever then offers to sell that technology to private companies, law enforcement and the military.
Samsung spilled SmartThings app source code and secret keys - TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/08/samsung-source-code-leak/
A development lab used by Samsung engineers was leaking highly sensitive source code, credentials and secret keys for several internal projects — including its SmartThings platform
Unpacking Google’s Apparent Turnaround on Privacy — Pixel Envy
https://pxlnv.com/linklog/google-privacy-turnaround/
Google’s argument is that they’re able to protect you from other companies’ privacy-rejecting technologies, but you can and should give them more of your private data.
Alexa has been eavesdropping on you this whole time
I listened to four years of my Alexa archive and found thousands of fragments of my life […] There were even sensitive conversations that somehow triggered Alexa’s “wake word” to start recording
China: How Mass Surveillance Works in Xinjiang - Human Rights Watch
https://www.hrw.org/video-photos/interactive/2019/05/02/china-how-mass-surveillance-works-xinjiang
Reverse Engineering’ Police App Reveals Profiling and Monitoring Strategies
Kommune-Norge lekker informasjon om dine mest personlige nettbesøk – NRKBeta
https://nrkbeta.no/2019/05/02/disse-knappene-kan-avslore-om-du-soker-psykisk-helsehjelp/
At du besøker disse informasjonssidene deler Kristiansand kommune med det amerikanske IT-selskapet Oracle, noe de ikke opplyser om på sine personvernsider.
Docker Hub hack exposed data of 190,000 users - ZDNet
https://www.zdnet.com/article/docker-hub-hack-exposed-data-of-190000-users/
Docker Hub usernames, hashed passwords, GitHub and Bitbucket access tokens exposed in the hack.
Google adds option to auto-delete search and location history data - ZDNet
https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-adds-option-to-auto-delete-location-history-data/
the company has been sued in the US, and is also facing GDPR investigations in seven EU countries for using deceptive UI controls that hide the fact the company is sometimes collecting location data.