“Depending on how much you shop, watch and read with Amazon, the e-commerce behemoth may know more about you than any other company on earth, Axios chief tech correspondent Ina Fried reports. [Note – this is an extensive report – I have included just a portion] Naturally, Amazon knows what you’ve browsed or bought on… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: E-Commerce
41% of voice assistant users have concerns about trust and privacy
TechCrunch: “Forty-one percent of voice assistant users are concerned about trust, privacy and passive listening, according to a new report from Microsoft focused on consumer adoption of voice and digital assistants. And perhaps people should be concerned — all the major voice assistants, including those from Google, Amazon, Apple and Samsung, as well as Microsoft,… Continue Reading
How Recommendation Algorithms Run the World
Wired – “…What should you watch? What should you read? What’s news? What’s trending? Wherever you go online, companies have come up with very particular, imperfect ways of answering these questions. Everywhere you look, recommendation engines offer striking examples of how values and judgments become embedded in algorithms and how algorithms can be gamed by… Continue Reading
The Antitrust Case Against Facebook
Srinivasan, Dina, The Antitrust Case Against Facebook (September 10, 2018). Berkeley Business Law Journal Vol. 16, Issue 1, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3247362 “The Facebook, Inc. (“Facebook”) social network, this era’s new communications service, plays an important role in the lives of 2+ billion people across the world. Though the market was highly competitive in… Continue Reading
Most hacked passwords revealed in UK cyber survey
The National Cyber Security Centre’s first ‘UK cyber survey’ published alongside global password risk list NCSC’s first ‘UK Cyber Survey’ shows 42% of Brits expect to lose money to online fraud Breach analysis finds 23.2 million victim accounts worldwide used 123456 as password Global password risk list published to disclose passwords already known to hackers… Continue Reading
How Grifters Gamed Amazon to Sell the ‘Mueller Report’ Already
The Daily Beast: “Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s long-awaited report on the Trump campaign will be released Thursday, the Justice Department announced Monday. Like all public reports, the document will be free to read. That hasn’t stopped people from trying to sell Mueller report books on Amazon for months. Amazon’s book listings are an SEO cesspool… Continue Reading
Hacker has dumped nearly 1B user records over past two months
ZDNet: “A hacker who spoke with ZDNet in February about wanting to put up for sale the data of over one billion users is getting dangerously close to his goal after releasing another 65.5 million records last week and reaching a grand total of 932 million records overall. The hacker’s name is Gnosticplayers, and he’s… Continue Reading
The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News
The New Yorker – The current system for delivering news online is broken. Readers and journalists will need to work together to find a new one. “Media outlets have been reduced to fighting over a shrinking share of our attention online; as Facebook, Google, and other tech platforms have come to monopolize our digital lives,… Continue Reading
Transparency tool on FB inadvertently provides window into confusing maze of companies who have your data
BuzzFeedNews – “On Facebook under Settings, there’s a page in the Ads section where you can view your Ad Preferences. Most of this is fairly straightforward — choices about how you’ll allow ads and how advertisers target you based on things like what pages you’ve liked. But there’s one section there that will probably surprise… Continue Reading
In a world of Google and Amazon libraries rethink their role
cent.com: More information is available online than ever. Libraries are stepping in to make sure everyone can access it. “…NYPL has rolled out a host of services aimed at closing the digital divide, which is exactly what it sounds like: the gap between those who can easily get online and those who can’t. The famous… Continue Reading
Consumers largely unaware of fake reviews problem on Amazon
Search Engine Land: “Multiple sources have concluded Amazon has a growing fake-reviews problem. Yet the majority of consumers appear to be unaware of it, according to new consumer survey data from CPC Strategy (part of Elite SEM)…Fake reviews problem not subsiding. Multiple third party analyses (Washington Post, ReviewMeta, Fakespot) have concluded that some product categories on Amazon are… Continue Reading
Microsoft stops selling ebooks and will refund customers for previous purchases
The Verge – Ebooks will no longer be accessible as of July 2019: “Starting today, Microsoft is ending all ebook sales in its Microsoft Store for Windows PCs. Previously purchased ebooks will be removed from users’ libraries in early July. Even free ones will be deleted. The company will offer full refunds to users for… Continue Reading
