LA Times – “A cluster of new and proposed state and federal laws will soon make it harder for people accused of crimes to defend themselves. All of these laws are well-intended — to protect privacy by shielding sensitive personal information — but they suffer from a fundamental unfairness that needs correction. These laws tilt… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: E-Commerce
Never-Googlers: Web users take the ultimate step to guard their data
Washington Post – As reports surface regarding how the online advertising giant tracks consumers, some try to reclaim their online footsteps. “…Kelly is one of a hearty few who are taking the ultimate step to keep their files and online life safe from prying eyes: turning off Google entirely. That means eschewing some of the… Continue Reading
Barnes & Noble’s fate rests in the hands of a British indie bookstore owner
Quartz: “In 2018, it seemed like the days of the United States’ last major bookstore chain were numbered. A decade of falling sales, brutal layoffs, 150 store closures, six chief executives, and a $1 billion loss on its Nook e-reader had left Barnes & Noble in the throes of an identity crisis. So acute was… Continue Reading
Google Images now lets you swipe up to open a search result
Venture Beat: “The AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) project, which was first announced by Google in 2015, is an open source framework designed to speed up mobile webpages. The company asserts that it cuts load times to under a second by balancing clickthrough probability with device and network constraints, and it claims that AMP is actively used… Continue Reading
Justice Department Reviewing the Practices of Market-Leading Online Platforms
DOJ: Review Focuses on Practices that Create or Maintain Structural Impediments to Greater Competition and User Benefits – The Department of Justice announced today that the Department’s Antitrust Division is reviewing whether and how market-leading online platforms have achieved market power and are engaging in practices that have reduced competition, stifled innovation, or otherwise harmed… Continue Reading
Viral App FaceApp Now Owns Access To More Than 150 Million People’s Faces And Names
Forbes – “And we thought we learned a lesson from Cambridge Analytica. More than 100 million people have downloaded the app from Google Play. And FaceApp is now the top-ranked app on the iOS App Store in 121 countries, according to App Annie. While according to FaceApp’s terms of service people still own their own… Continue Reading
Google Search is being routinely gamed by fake blogs and has been for years
unlike kinds -“Since its earliest days, the core of Google’s search algorithm – and its greatest innovation – has been ranking a page by the amount and quality of the links pointing to it. For almost as long, businesses have fought to climb to the lucrative top positions on search result pages, with some resorting… Continue Reading
DataSpii: The catastrophic data leak via browser extensions
DataSpii: The catastrophic data leak via browser extensions Sam Jadali SecurityWithSam.com – Abstract – “We present DataSpii (pronounced data-spy), the catastrophic data leak that occurs when any one of eight browser extensions collects browsing activity data — including personally identifiable information (PII) and corporate information (CI) — from unwitting Chrome and Firefox users. Our investigation… Continue Reading
A Feisty Google Adversary Tests How Much People Care About Privacy
The New York Times – “Gabriel Weinberg is taking aim at Google from a small building 20 miles west of Philadelphia that looks like a fake castle. An optometrist has an office downstairs. Mr. Weinberg’s company, DuckDuckGo, has become one of the feistiest adversaries of Google. Started over a decade ago, DuckDuckGo offers a privacy-focused… Continue Reading
Daily Infographic
“At Daily Infographic we strive to curate the most interesting infographics on the web. We scour the internet for data visualizations [on more than two dozen topics] with the best content and design to bring easily consumed facts and figures to our users. For seven years Daily Infographic has provided the web with knowledge and… Continue Reading
Google’s 4,000-Word Privacy Policy Is a Secret History of the Internet
The New York Times – “The late 1990s was a simpler time for Google. The nascent company was merely a search engine, and Gmail, Android and YouTube were but glimmers in the startup’s eye. Google’s first privacy policy reflected that simplicity. It was short and earnest, a quaint artifact of a different time in Silicon… Continue Reading
PA Court decision siding with plaintiff injured by dog leash purchased on Amazon
Axios: “A malfunctioning dog leash could end up creating billions of dollars of potential liabilities for online marketplaces, with Amazon front and center. Background: A dog leash sold and shipped by The Furry Gang, one of the millions of small sellers that operate on Amazon’s marketplace, snapped, permanently blinding the buyer in her left eye.… Continue Reading
