Clearview’s facial recognition AI is not only used by law enforcement; there is a large number of private companies that have Clearview accounts, like Kohl’s and Walmart and banks like Wells Fargo and Bank of America. While most of these companies have no formal contracts with Clearview and appear to have used Clearview’s software on […]
Category Archives: Privacy
The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It – The New York Times
How do you feel about the end of privacy on public places? In public transport? When you can identfy every stranger that passes by? When every stranger can indentify you without your knowledge? While this might be still a bit away, the NY Times reports that a start-up called Clearview AI is using a massive […]
Personal Data Is Valuable. Give Pricing Power to the People | WIRED
Wired article by Olaf Groth, Tobias Straube and Dan Zehr discussing a market that establishes a price for privacy-assured data and returns a fair share of that value to the people: Today, people fuel the digital economy with vast streams of data but have virtually no power to demand fair compensation for it. The companies […]
Opinion | How to Track President Trump – The New York Times
Shocking article how easy it is to track anybody, including Donald Trump. A dataset with more than 50 billion location pings from the phones of more than 12 million Americans was used by NY Times. It contained the traces of a Secret Service agent that accompanied Donald Trump. The agent’s home was also clearly identifiable […]
The Fantasy of Opting Out | The MIT Press Reader
In a world where the cost of opting out is getting constantly higher, the pressure of not to opt out is mounting. Almost every platform tells users that by opting out from cookies, link and click tracking, personal information, etc. they won’t be able to fully benefit from the platform (services). Some platforms even go […]
Credit card privacy matters: Apple Card vs. Chase Amazon Prime Rewards Visa – The Washington Post
It started with a banana. Chilling article on how your personal data is collected, cross-referenced and used for all kind of purposes. However, recent data scandals were eye-opening to a broader public and people are starting to take notice how privacy affects our daily lives in often unforeseen ways. Therefore businesses should pay close attention, […]
No, FaceApp Isn’t Sending All Your Photos to Russia, But It Shows Why Tech Companies Have a Very Real Trust Problem
A now deleted tweet by a developer triggered a number of blog posts and articles claiming that Russians were involved (FaceApp’s developers are based in Russia), and that the app was uploading your photos to servers in countries that you’d rather not like to see your data stored. This is a reminder how trust is […]
How Digital Advertising Markets Really Work
How valuable is data for advertising? From the article: If a company that sells online ads can know what their readers are reading on other sites, then they can target the users based on that information when the user returns to their own site. For example, say Michael visits CNBC’s website in the mornings and […]
Apple contractors ‘regularly hear confidential details’ on Siri recordings | The Guardian
Apple has positioned itself as company that respects the privacy of their users. However, as The Guardian reports, Apple’s contractors have access to a certain percentage of all Siri-recordings. They regularly listen to confidential conversations of users, like drug deals, discussions about medical details and to even people having sex. Source: Apple contractors ‘regularly hear […]
Should you use WhatsApp in an Organisation?
The answer is: No. And here’s why WhatsApp should not be used in an organisation. WhatsApp belongs to Facebook and is certified under the US-EU Privacy Shield. This makes it legally possible to transfer data to the US government, even if your are not a US citizen. WhatsApp asks for permission to upload all contact […]