NBCNews – “BookTok has sent old books back to the top of bestseller lists and helped launch the careers of new authors. Videos with the BookTok hashtag have been viewed a collective 12.6 billion times… BookTok’s impact on the book industry has been notable, helping new authors launch their careers and propelling books like Silvera’s… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: E-Commerce
Gmail trick that everyone should be using for third party communications
BGR – “When compared to other email providers, Google’s Gmail does an incredible job of figuring out which emails are worthy of your attention and which ones are spam. That notwithstanding, it’s still easy to get bogged down with an overflowing inbox thanks to a seemingly endless stream of promotional emails that, while not technically… Continue Reading
Facebook can track you across the web. Here’s how to stop it
CNET: “No, the Off-Facebook Activity tracking rumor is not a hoax. Here’s how to keep the social media platform from tracking your web browsing. If you haven’t been using the privacy feature Facebook introduced last year, now’s the time to start. It’s called Off-Facebook Activity and it lets you see and control data that apps and… Continue Reading
Google’s No-Click Searches—Good Or Evil?
Forbes: “…Google is an early case study in my book Friction, where I show how they focused on minimizing user effort. Their home page was essentially white space with a search box in the middle—no confusion or distraction. This focus on the user’s intent stood in stark contrast to their competition. The big difference, though,… Continue Reading
Google gets a new rival as Brave Search opens to the public
CNET: “About 32 million people now use Brave’s ad-blocking browser each month. Brave, the maker of a popular ad blocking browser, opened on Tuesday a public beta of its privacy-focused search engine, a first step in creating a product that could compete with market titan Google. Brave Search will become the default search engine in… Continue Reading
Alexa’s recording you. What’s she doing with it?
YouTube: “Read Sara’s article about the privacy settings on your smart speaker…In fact, over one-third of U.S. adults has a smart speaker. In 2014, Amazon debuted a simple but industry-changing product: the smart speaker. Technically the Amazon Echo was just a microphone attached to the internet that you installed in your home. But it let… Continue Reading
The Amazon That Customers Don’t See
The New York Times: Each year, hundreds of thousands of workers churn through a vast mechanism that hires and monitors, disciplines and fires. Amid the pandemic, the already strained system lurched. “What happened inside shows how Jeff Bezos created the workplace of the future and pulled off the impossible during the pandemic — but also… Continue Reading
We know what you did during lockdown
An FT Film written by James Graham: “We gave up our privacy to fight Covid-19, can we get it back? An FT film starring Lydia West and Arthur Darvill in collaboration with Sonia Friedman Productions and supported by Luminate. An interrogation scene explores how Covid-19 has exposed the tension between the need for data to… Continue Reading
Dark Patterns Tip Line
Dark Patterns Tip Line: “Dark patterns are common in websites and apps we use everyday, but they’re sometimes hard to spot because they’re designed to deceive us. Through secretly obtaining personal information and making us do things we don’t want to do, dark patterns can create inconveniences or even serious harms. Every day, we’re exploited… Continue Reading
Alexa, what other devices are listening to me?
CNN Business: “More and more, the devices in your home are listening to you, your friends and family. It sounds Orwellian. It’s billed as convenient. As the Internet of Things proliferates, it creates a world in which everyday devices are interconnected via a web of sensors, apps, software and Wi-Fi. That means you can lower… Continue Reading
Ads Are Impersonating Government Websites in Google Results, Despite Ban
The Markup: “…Last year, the Federal Trade Commission sued On Point Global, a company that allegedly advertised websites via Google search where you could renew your driver’s license, buy a fishing license, or determine if you were eligible for public benefits like Section 8 housing. But in fact, when people signed up for any of… Continue Reading
PrivacyBot
Berkeley MIMS Final Project 2021 – “PrivacyBot is a free and open-source way to delete your data from an exhaustive list of data brokers and people search sites. The largest statewide privacy law change in a generation, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) went into effect in January 2020. However, exercising these privacy rights is a tricky business… Continue Reading
