See tagged statuses in the local Rambling Readers community
Make sure to update your PayPal settings before these new changes come into effect. (Seems to only affect accounts in the US.)
"We are updating our Privacy Statement to explain how, starting early Summer 2025, we will share [personal information with merchants, including] products, preferences, sizes, and styles we think you’ll like."
Settings ➜ Data & Privacy ➜ Personalized Shopping
https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/paypal/archive-policies-full
(edit at the bottom: Maybe I misunderstand) #mozilla. First they buy a web advertising company. Then, within months of closing that purchase, they remove the DNT header. Look: it’s true that most sites ignore it. Its practical impact is basically nil. But it has a moral purpose.
Every website writes terms in tiny print that says “by coming to this web site, even once, you agree to the following 9 pages of legal terms”
I like having the same fine print in every web request I make. “In case you were wondering, no I don’t consent to tracking.” Make it clear that they are tracking without my consent. If they were at all interested in my consent they have an affirmative indicator that doesn’t need interpreting. They can’t plead ignorance and they can’t say that the only way I can indicate consent is through some silly web form …
(edit at the bottom: Maybe I misunderstand) #mozilla. First they buy a web advertising company. Then, within months of closing that purchase, they remove the DNT header. Look: it’s true that most sites ignore it. Its practical impact is basically nil. But it has a moral purpose.
Every website writes terms in tiny print that says “by coming to this web site, even once, you agree to the following 9 pages of legal terms”
I like having the same fine print in every web request I make. “In case you were wondering, no I don’t consent to tracking.” Make it clear that they are tracking without my consent. If they were at all interested in my consent they have an affirmative indicator that doesn’t need interpreting. They can’t plead ignorance and they can’t say that the only way I can indicate consent is through some silly web form that they devise.
I previously wrote:
> I can’t imagine any POSITIVE benefit that would make the work of removing this feature jump to the top of any priority list. I can imagine a long list of possible negative reasons. Ways in which this feature runs counter to their new goals as an org.
Several people have pointed out that DNT helps trackers fingerprint your browser more accurately, but doesn't result in any greater privacy. The W3C specification for GPC says that it might reduce privacy and make information available for fingerprinting. It provides no rationale to say how GPC preserves privacy differently from DNT. So I'm not seeing the explanation around "DNT let's you get fingerprinted but GPC doesn't." What am I missing?
W3C Spec: https://w3c.github.io/gpc/#privacy
Advice for those seeking information on abortion, but concerned about their privacy. h/t to @evacide for the link
https://digitaldefensefund.org/ddf-guides/abortion-privacy
#WomensRights #WomensBodiesBelongToWomen #AbortionIsAHumanRight #abortion #women #privacy
Remember Friends:
You cannot both have secure end-to-end encryption to protect your communication AND also have a backdoor/key/access only for "the good guys."
This is not possible.
Do not believe anyone telling you otherwise.
End-to-end encryption protects us all,
we must fight to keep it ✊🔒
#BlackMastodon #BlackTwitter #Signal #privacy
So proud of my family. After two years of badgering them about privacy, this weekend the entire 10 member family group text chat moved to Signal. Even my 73 year old sister, who thinks she is the matriarch of the family and still can't do a Zoom call, said just tell me how to do it and less than 2 hours later she was on. ❤️ OK...I'll work on the Amazon problem next.
So a crazy thing happened. In a crime thriller film called Les chambres rouges (Red Rooms, 2023) there is a scene where the hacker protagonist is attempting to purchase a snuff film in online auction. The auction happens via IRC or IRC-like chatting environment and to my surprise there's actually me @rolle and my wife @mustikkasoppa who are one of the bidders.
1) The nickname of my wife is mistakenly written as "mustikasoppa" (with one k) but if I recall correctly she has used a mistakenly written nickname in the past
2) We are both operators and on the same IRC channel as we've been for the past 17 years
This is not a coincidence. One nickname can be made up by accident but not two with these features and definitely not in a French movie. My wife's nick "mustikkasoppa" is Finnish and means "blueberry soup".
Our IRC …
So a crazy thing happened. In a crime thriller film called Les chambres rouges (Red Rooms, 2023) there is a scene where the hacker protagonist is attempting to purchase a snuff film in online auction. The auction happens via IRC or IRC-like chatting environment and to my surprise there's actually me @rolle and my wife @mustikkasoppa who are one of the bidders.
1) The nickname of my wife is mistakenly written as "mustikasoppa" (with one k) but if I recall correctly she has used a mistakenly written nickname in the past
2) We are both operators and on the same IRC channel as we've been for the past 17 years
This is not a coincidence. One nickname can be made up by accident but not two with these features and definitely not in a French movie. My wife's nick "mustikkasoppa" is Finnish and means "blueberry soup".
Our IRC logs are more or less public because of open source and statistics so I presume the scene has been made with chatgpt which has scraped our nicks from the Internet so that they ended up in the movie. We still chat via IRC every day together.
The era of AI... Do your background check, folks. I'm glad this wasn't a dramatized documentary film but a complete fiction. However my wife and I are real. Mixed feelings.
Police unlawfully storing images of innocent people for #facialrecognition - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/dec/08/police-unlawfully-storing-images-of-innocent-people-for-facial-recognition "#Privacy fears raised as report warns photographs of arrested people who are then released are being retained" we did warn about this slippery slope
Prevent (UK) referral figures for 2023/24 are out... once again, the pretence of safeguarding masks an ugly reality.
Thousands of children have been dragged into a counter-terrorism programme without committing any crime, including 100s of under 10s.
Read our response ⬇️
This handy list will tell you whether your Masto instance has blocked Threads, aka is stopping the terrifying creep that is Mark Zuckyboy from getting his dystopian tenterhooks into your content and data. My instance doesn't block Threads, and I'm likely going to migrate to a new one as a result.
https://fedipact.veganism.social/
#Mastodon #Threads #Fediverse #Privacy #Data #InfoSec #Federation #SocialMedia
“if we give our data to companies, the wealthy will rule.
If we give our data to governments, we will end up with some form of authoritarianism.
Only if the people keep their data will society be free.
#Privacy matters because it gives power to the people.”
— Carissa Véliz, “Privacy is Power”
Someone told me yesterday of a minutes app for meetings they'd found. Knowing how these apps work, I checked the security policy. I got my fears confirmed. It collects data and share it with 8 third parties, including use for ads & analysis.
I showed her this, and said she should probably get consent from others when using the app. Today she told me she'd uninstalled it and thanked me for the warning!
We can't expect people to figure this out. We need better regulation.
To everyone when they see horrible privacy news about Microsoft replying with:
"I don't care, I use Linux"
Sure, you do. But does your medical clinic do? Does your therapist do? Does your family member typing a personal email to you in Word before sending it do too?
This is a systemic problem.
You cannot protect your own data only by using Linux yourself. You must also demand stronger regulations and enforcement to obligate organizations around to protect your data as well.
"Microsoft Office, like many companies in recent months, has slyly turned on an “opt-out” feature that scrapes your Word and Excel documents to train its internal AI systems. This setting is turned on by default, and you have to manually uncheck a box in order to opt out.
If you are a writer who uses MS Word to write any proprietary content (blog posts, novels, or any work you intend to protect with copyright and/or sell), you’re going to want to turn this feature off immediately.
I won’t beat around the bush. Microsoft Office doesn’t make it easy to opt out of this new AI privacy agreement, as the feature is hidden through a series of popup menus in your settings:
On a Windows computer, follow these steps to turn off “Connected Experiences”: File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Privacy Options > Privacy Settings > …
"Microsoft Office, like many companies in recent months, has slyly turned on an “opt-out” feature that scrapes your Word and Excel documents to train its internal AI systems. This setting is turned on by default, and you have to manually uncheck a box in order to opt out.
If you are a writer who uses MS Word to write any proprietary content (blog posts, novels, or any work you intend to protect with copyright and/or sell), you’re going to want to turn this feature off immediately.
I won’t beat around the bush. Microsoft Office doesn’t make it easy to opt out of this new AI privacy agreement, as the feature is hidden through a series of popup menus in your settings:
On a Windows computer, follow these steps to turn off “Connected Experiences”: File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Privacy Options > Privacy Settings > Optional Connected Experiences > Uncheck box: “Turn on optional connected experiences”"
https://medium.com/illumination/ms-word-is-using-you-to-train-ai-86d6a4d87021
#Microsoft #AI #GenerativeAI #AITraining #MSWord #Privacy #Word
Remember Microsoft's Recall? The first implementation was never released and was met with strong criticism from privacy advocates and the infosec/security community. Guess what? Microsoft has doubled down, and its controversial Recall scraper is finally entering the public preview stage. If you care about privacy, please think twice before using this on your AI-enabled PCs (Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs) https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2024/11/22/previewing-recall-with-click-to-do-on-copilot-pcs-with-windows-insiders-in-the-dev-channel/
