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iPhone users don't live in a walled garden, they live in a digital nursing home. They are well taken care of, but Apple controls the property, activities and visitors. Apple plans to search residents regularly for contraband. apple.com/child-safety/

Amazon will pay you $10 to join their palm pilot. You really have to hand it to them...
techcrunch.com/2021/08/02/amaz

"Anonymized" location data, isn't. Catholic priest resigns after legally-obtained Grindr app data from a broker correlated location data with his and relatives' homes, his place of work, and gay bars. arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20

"Tom Burt...revealed that Microsoft is presented with 7-10 secrecy orders per day from federal law enforcement. These comprise a quarter to a third of all legal demands Microsoft receives, he said." theregister.com/2021/07/02/us_

Why is it so hard for people to have ? Because a TV company can make almost as much profit selling customer data as it can selling the TVs. engadget.com/vizio-q1-earnings

This is the key point and the reason FOSS means better : "The joy of open source means that users can, if they wish, verify Audacity's claims for themselves before deciding that the time has come for a fork." theregister.com/2021/05/07/aud

Apparently the future of clothing is "smart fabric": shirts that act like computer displays, microphones stitched into single strands of fabric, clothing full of sensors and semiconductors. All I can think of is how this will be abused. washingtonpost.com/technology/

"Ulysses claims it can currently access more than 15 billion vehicle locations around the world every month, and it estimates that, by 2025, 100 percent of new cars will be connected and transmitting gigabytes of collectible data per hour." arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20

Old and Busted: "If you aren't paying for something, you are the product."

New Hotness: "You are the product."

Check out my post about companies across industries who double dip by collecting and selling data on their paying customers. ⁨

social.librem.one/@purism/1058

Pretty messed up that a mom had to have this conversation w/ their 7-yr-old: "Every time you ride your bike down this block, there are probably 50 cameras that watch you going past. If you make a bad choice, those cameras will catch you." washingtonpost.com/technology/

In particular I appreciated the discussion on the responsibility everyone has not just for their own , but the privacy of everyone else they connect with. When you give up your privacy to an app, you are also selling out your friends, family and colleagues.

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Michigan police solved a murder with recordings of the suspect's voice stored on the victim's truck infotainment system. Michigan police pull data from cars "sometimes two to three times a week." nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/sni

"The device, stationary, with all apps closed, transferred data to Google about 16 times an hour, or about 389 times in 24 hours. Assuming even half of that data is outgoing, Google would receive about 4.4MB per day or 130MB per month..." theregister.com/2020/11/14/goo

This Blacklight tool by The Markup is great. While puri.sm got a clean score, it took us a lot of effort over years to get there. Tracking visitors is the industry default for web tools and I only wish this tool existed years ago. themarkup.org/blacklight/

The issue with these situations is you must rely on your credibility to get the benefit of the doubt. FB's history with similar "bugs" erased that credibility.

Good ad for iOS 14 privacy features though. No wonder FB and adtech apps are worried.
independent.co.uk/life-style/g

Burying the lede: "AT&T engineers are creating 'unified customer identifiers,' [AT&T CEO] Stankey said. Such technology would allow marketers to identify users across multiple devices and serve them relevant advertising." arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20

Due to FB and app developer pressure, Apple changed their mind about mandating apps ask permission before tracking users in iOS 14. That lobbying power should tell you everything you need to know about how much money is made through tracking in iOS apps:

arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/0

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"Google is a popular target for this kind of request because almost everyone uses Google products in one way or another ... Moreover, Google frequently has GPS data that places a user's phone to within a few meters" arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20

It's so interesting that concerns over public health apps mean that you must opt-in to be tracked with built-in coronavirus features, but still must opt-out of all of the even more intrusive tracking that already happens on the phone by default: cnbc.com/2020/09/01/apple-goog

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