Examining the Data Practices of Social Media and Video Streaming Services, September 2024. In December 2020, the Federal Trade Commission issued 6(b) Orders to nine of the largest social media and video streaming services—Amazon, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Snap, ByteDance, Discord, Reddit, and WhatsApp (“Companies”). At the time, a bipartisan group of Commissioners issued a joint… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: E-Records
The Right Way to Use GenAI to Draft a Brief
The Right Way to Use GenAI to Draft a Brief, Carolyn Elefant (December 2024) – “It’s been two years since the public release of ChatGPT and lawyers are still using it improperly and facing sanctions, as reported last week in Reuters about an incident in the Eastern District of Texas/ Instead of wringing our hands… Continue Reading
AI, huge hacks leave consumers facing a perfect storm of privacy perils
Washington Post gift article – “Hackers are using artificial intelligence to mine unprecedented troves of personal information dumped online in the past year, along with unregulated commercial databases, to trick American consumers and even sophisticated professionals into giving up control of bank and corporate accounts. Armed with sensitive health information, calling records and hundreds of… Continue Reading
The Great Scrape: The Clash Between Scraping and Privacy
Solove, Daniel J. and Hartzog, Woodrow, The Great Scrape: The Clash Between Scraping and Privacy (July 03, 2024). 113 California Law Review (forthcoming 2025), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4884485 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4884485 Artificial intelligence (AI) systems depend on massive quantities of data, often gathered by “scraping” – the automated extraction of large amounts of data from… Continue Reading
Senators Say TSA’s Facial Recognition Program Is Out of Control
Gizmodo: “A bipartisan group of 12 senators has urged the Transportation Security Administration’s inspector general to investigate the agency’s use of facial recognition, saying it poses a significant threat to privacy and civil liberties. Their letter comes just before one of the busiest travel periods of the year when millions of Americans are expected to… Continue Reading
Surveillance Self-Defense Tips, Tools and How-tos for Safer Online Communications
We’re the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an independent non-profit working to protect online privacy for over thirty years. This is Surveillance Self-Defense: our expert guide to protecting you and your friends from online spying. Surveillance Self-Defense (SSD) is a guide to protecting yourself from electronic surveillance for people all over the world. Some aspects of this… Continue Reading
MS Word is Using You to Train AI
Medium unpaywalled – How to turn off AI-scraping from your Word documents and a 2nd unpaywalled option: “Microsoft Office, like many companies in recent months, has slyly turned on an “opt-out” feature that scrapes your Word and Excel documents to train its internal AI systems. This setting is turned on by default, and you have… Continue Reading
Overlooked Google Docs Feature Makes Organizing Information a Breeze
MakeUseOf: “Google Docs is packed with useful tools, but some of its best features often go unnoticed. One such feature is the Documents Tab, a powerful but overlooked tool that can make organizing and accessing your information much simpler…” Continue Reading
How to Add Extra Security Layers to Your Phone or Tablet
The New York Times [no paywall]: “Losing a smartphone or tablet stuffed with your life’s details can be a nightmare, but your privacy may also be at risk in less obvious situations — like if you leave your unlocked phone unattended or if the children know your tablet’s passcode. While apps for financial or medical… Continue Reading
How Google Spent 15 Years Creating a Culture of Concealment
The New York Times [free article] – “Trying to avoid antitrust suits, Google systematically told employees to destroy messages, avoid certain words and copy the lawyers as often as possible…How Google developed this distrustful culture was pieced together from hundreds of documents and exhibits, as well as witness testimony, in three antitrust trials against the… Continue Reading
What Is Browser Fingerprinting? Here’s Everything You Need to Know
John Mateer – Medium: “You’re browsing the internet without a care in the world — why shouldn’t you? You’re internet savvy, after all. You take your privacy seriously. That’s why you pay $20 a month for a rotating VPN. Surfshark, NordVPN, Google One — ever heard of them? You’re ahead of the game. But you didn’t… Continue Reading
US Patent and Trademark Office Banned Staff From Using Generative AI
Wired – [unpaywalled] “The US Patent and Trademark Office banned the use of generative artificial intelligence for any purpose last year, citing security concerns with the technology as well as the propensity of some tools to exhibit “bias, unpredictability, and malicious behavior,” according to an April 2023 internal guidance memo obtained by WIRED through a… Continue Reading
