PC Mag – “I set out to cancel all the catalogs and marketing mail that I got over the course of about six weeks. Here’s what happened, including the method that worked best.” Continue Reading
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Category Archives: E-Commerce
Data Brokers and the Sale of Americans’ Mental Health Data
Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, Data Brokers and the Sale of Americans’ Mental Health Data The Exchange of Our Most Sensitive Data and What It Means for Personal Privacy, February 13, 2022, by Joanne Kim. “This report includes findings from a two-month-long study of data brokers and data on U.S. individuals’ mental health… Continue Reading
The Death of the Smart Shopper
The Atlantic: “Internet retail was supposed to supercharge the informed consumer. What happened? Amazon is getting worse, but you probably already knew that, because you probably shop at Amazon. The online retail behemoth’s search results are full of ads and sponsored results that can push actually relevant, well-reviewed options far down the page. The proportion… Continue Reading
First FTC Health Breach Notification Rule case addresses GoodRx’s not-so-good privacy practices
FTC: “The company name may be GoodRx, but it’s unlikely that “good” is the adjective consumers would use to describe the way the company violated its privacy promises by disclosing their personal health information to companies like Facebook and Google without authorization. How did GoodRx accomplish that? By using automatic “plug and play” tracking pixels… Continue Reading
Meta Was Scraping Sites for Years While Fighting the Practice
Yahoo Finance: “Meta is suing a company for collecting information from its platforms – Facebook and Instagram. It turns out that the social media company had earlier partnered with the same firm — Bright Data — to gather data from other websites. This came to light during the ongoing case filed on January 6 in… Continue Reading
Are You Overpaying for an Online Service? Here’s How to Find Out
PCMag: “Not everyone pays the same price for the same service online. Find out if you’re being charged too much and then rectify it. I’ve spent more than a decade reviewing and writing about all kinds of software and online tools, and it really gets my goat that companies continue to charge some people more… Continue Reading
Could ChatGPT do my job?
MIT Technology Review – Could ChatGPT do my job?…So far, newsrooms have pursued two very different approaches to integrating the buzziest new AI tool, ChatGPT, into their work. Tech news site CNET secretly started using ChatGPT to write entire articles, only for the experiment to go up in flames. It ultimately had to issue corrections… Continue Reading
Get your email privacy in order with these free must-use tools
PC World: “In the grand scheme of potential privacy concerns, email privacy is perhaps the most personal. Getting unwanted messages in your inbox can feel like a major breach of trust, and knowing senders can see a record of everything you’ve opened and clicked can feel downright creepy. That’s why it’s worth getting familiar with… Continue Reading
How to Automatically Delete Cookies in Chrome, Firefox, and Edge
Make Use Of: “Cookies are browsing data sent by websites for your browser to store. Such data is kept for saving site browsing preferences, login details, and ad-targeting purposes. Tracking cookies are the ones for which the EU has established cookie-permission website legislation. However, tracking cookies remain less regulated in the USA. Some users prefer… Continue Reading
Everyone Wants Your Email Address. Think Twice Before Sharing It.
The New York Times: “Your email address has become a digital bread crumb for companies to link your activity across sites. Here’s how you can limit this. When you browse the web, an increasing number of sites and apps are asking for a piece of basic information that you probably hand over without hesitation: your… Continue Reading
Justice Department Sues Google for Monopolizing Digital Advertising Technologies
“Today, the Justice Department, along with the Attorneys General of California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Virginia, filed a civil antitrust suit against Google for monopolizing multiple digital advertising technology products in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act. Filed in the U.S. District Court for the… Continue Reading
Amazon launches RxPass
TechCrunch: “Amazon launches RxPass, a $5/month Prime add-on for all-you-need generic drugs covering 80 conditions…Prime users in the U.S. can pay a monthly flat fee of $5 to get as many generic versions of medications as they need. Amazon said that initially the service will cover generic drugs for 80 common ailments — they include,… Continue Reading
