Vox: “…While it’s creepy to think of your email reading habits being tracked, that’s not the only reason why you should consider taking a few extra steps to protect your email. Your email address has become one of your best and most persistent identifiers, and data brokers and marketers will match what you do with… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: E-Commerce
Anyone can sign up for DuckDuckGo’s privacy-protecting email address
The Verge: “After rolling out its Email Protection service in private beta last year, DuckDuckGo has announced that it’s finally available to all users. Email Protection is a forwarding service that assigns you a free “@duck.com” email address and intercepts email trackers before they hit your personal inbox. If you need a refresher on exactly… Continue Reading
Why you (probably) won’t finish reading this story
Vox: “We live in a distracted world, almost certainly the most distracted world in human history. And if you’re part of this circus, you’re drowning in options and gadgets and screens and you’re being pulled in a million directions seemingly all at once. If you spend any time online, you already know this. You’re constantly… Continue Reading
Google Can & Does Drop URLs From Its Index Over Time
Search Engine Roundtable via Twitter: “Most SEOs that have been doing the search engine optimization thing for any amount of time know that Google can and likely will drop out URLs from the Google index. John Mueller from Google confirmed that this happens with Google Search on Twitter the other day. John wrote “It doesn’t… Continue Reading
How to buy books on Kindle
ZDNet / Maria Diaz: “…A Kindle e-reader ended up being life-changing for me. Books are already portable, but ebooks are next-level portable: All your books are handy in one single, compact device. But how do you get the most out of your Kindle? Let’s start with how you can buy books on the device…” Continue Reading
Meta injecting code into websites to track its users, research says
UK Guardian – “Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has been rewriting websites its users visit, letting the company follow them across the web after they click links in its apps, according to new research from an ex-Google engineer. The two apps have been taking advantage of the fact that users who click on… Continue Reading
2 quick ways to spot dubious Amazon reviews
Fast Company – “While there are several ways to outwit unscrupulous sellers–searching product reviews outside of Amazon, looking into seller history, reading every word of every review from newest to oldest with a magnifying glass–it gets terribly tedious. In that spirit, here are two simple checks I leverage whenever I’m buying something on Amazon. Neither… Continue Reading
FTC Investigation Into Amazon Prime Dark Patterns Intensifies
“The Federal Trade Commission has reportedly deepened its investigation into Amazon’s employment of dark patterns in the Amazon Prime subscription cancellation process. As EPIC explained in a complaint to the D.C. Attorney General last year, Amazon employs dark patterns to deter customers from canceling their Prime subscriptions, enabling Amazon to continue collecting, retaining, and using misdirected subscribers’ personal… Continue Reading
What We Gain from a Good Bookstore
The New Yorker – It’s a place whose real boundaries and character are much more than its physical dimensions. “…You may have heard that we’re experiencing a renaissance of the independent bookstore, but the situation is far from rosy. In 1994, when Deutsch started his career as a bookseller (and Amazon was founded), the U.S.… Continue Reading
The Founder of GeoCities on What Killed the ‘Old Internet’
Gizmodo: “David Bohnett on what sets the social web apart, how GeoCities handled hate speech, and the profound need to log off more often. In the early aughts, my wheezing dialup connection often operated as if it were perpetually out of breath. Thus, unlike my childhood friends, it was near to impossible for me to… Continue Reading
Educational publisher Pearson will sell textbooks as non-fungible tokens (NFTs)
UK Guardian: “Textbook publisher Pearson plans to profit from secondhand sales by turning its titles into non-fungible tokens (NFTs), its chief executive has said. Educational books are often sold more than once, since students sell study resources they no longer require. Publishers have not previously been able to make any money from secondhand sales, but… Continue Reading
The Default Tech Settings You Should Turn Off Right Away
The New York Times – “These controls, which are buried inside products from Apple, Google, Meta and others, make us share more data than we need to…Apple, Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft generally want us to leave some default settings on, purportedly to train their algorithms and catch bugs, which then make their products easier… Continue Reading
