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Category: Privacy

The Digital ID Issue No One Is Talking About

The Digital ID Issue No One Is Talking About

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“Dozens of organizations had data stolen in Oracle-linked hacks,” TechCrunch reported. “Google said in a corresponding blog post that the hacking campaign targeting Oracle customers dates back to at least July 10, some three months before the hacks were first detected. Oracle conceded this week that the hackers behind the extortion campaign were still abusing its software to steal personal information about corporate executives and their companies. Days earlier, Oracle’s chief security officer claimed in the same post — since scrubbed — that the extortion campaign was linked to previously identified vulnerabilities that Oracle patched in July, suggesting the hacks were over.”

For the record, this hack “can be exploited over a network without the need for a username and password.”

The Discord Hack Is Every Users Worse Nightmare. “Around 70,000 users’ personal data at risk. Hackers targeted a third-party company…in an effort to extort a ‘ransom,’ Discord said,” noted The Independent.  Both users ID photos and data were stolen. Read More...

The Deep State of Tech

The Deep State of Tech

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Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

Last week was Tech Week in New York and since AI is the fastest growing technology in human history, of course the calendar of events was all AI, all the time. We watched as audiences listened with rapt attention to speakers as they expounded upon the world of difference that various AI technologies and their applications would make to the human condition.

Once again, we will remind you that what man cannot remember he is doomed to repeat. Unfortunately, with AI in the mix, it will be repeated on steroids.

When the Age of Social dawned and Facebook, Google and the likes were establishing their beachheads, we warned back then that these were not mere platforms but rather nation-states with larger populations than any single country on the planet. Or even continent, for that matter. Those platforms are now AI-enabled – more and more so every day – and it seems that there’s no escaping that matrix. Read More...

Will the Real Slim Shady Please Stand Up

Will the Real Slim Shady Please Stand Up

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Thank you, Eminem, and who’d have thought and how could you tell?

The multitude of falsehoods and over-promises of AI aside (Instagram’s AI Chatbots Lie About Being Licensed Therapists), Deep Fakes, that other wonderful outcome that AI hath wrought, is fast becoming a huge problem thanks to the improvements in AI. We’re currently witnessing The Rise of AI-Powered Deepfake Scams and as CNN  reported, “Finance worker pays out $25 million after video call with deepfake ‘chief financial officer.’”

Of course, AI savior, Sam Altman, has a solution: capture the digital identity of, well, every human on the planet.  He first rolled out his orb (nee World Orb) iris scanner in 2023 to create a unique digital identity as proof of being human, which it seems “More than 12 million people have already verified their identity using Orbs, which are available and free to use in more than 20 countries,” said CNN. Not a huge number considering the billions of people on the planet, what to speak of the fact that there are those who are “worried the project could centralize too much power under Altman, who already has an outsized role in what’s expected to be a revolutionary tech transformation.” Read More...

For Tech, the World Is Just Not Enough

For Tech, the World Is Just Not Enough

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There’s no doubt that AI has changed the world, and we’re still basically at the beginning of this cycle in tech. New to the zeitgeist, at least. The idea of human-like thinking machines was first posited at the Dartmouth Conference in 1956. This year, ‘Godfather of AI’ Geoffrey Hinton won a Nobel even though he’s now scared of AI. Is anyone paying attention?

“Hinton shares his Nobel with John J. Hopfield of Princeton University. Hinton’s work built upon Hopfield’s breakthrough work where he created a network system that could save and recreate patterns. Combined, their work led to future breakthroughs in Machine Learning (systems that can learn and improve data without programming) and the concept of artificial neural networks, which is often at the core of modern AI,” said Tech Radar.

Hinton left “Google’s DeepMind where he and his team helped lay the groundwork for today’s chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google Gemini. However, when Hinton left in 2023, he sounded the alarm, worrying that Google was no longer, as he told The New York Times, “a proper steward” for AI.” Read More...

Why Is Tech Becoming So Creepy?

Why Is Tech Becoming So Creepy?

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Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

Seriously and this is what concerns us about GenerativeAIs and AIs in general. What begins as a tool does have a tendency of going down the slippery slope in not too long a time, and you can’t help but wonder why. Why are there no safeguards in place?

This is creepy: “iPhone users baffled by ‘scary’ feature that suggests they check in with ex-lovers and dead relatives,” the Daily Mail reported.  “’Messages introduces Check In, an important feature for when a user wants to notify a family member or friend that they have made it to their destination safely,’ Apple explained.”

All well and good, and exactly why would that matter to a deceased relative? Read More...

Data Collection 2.0 aka Defcon 3

Data Collection 2.0 aka Defcon 3

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 Said the Wall Street Journal, “More companies and government agencies out in the wild want to read our body parts. The Transportation Security Administration, for example, started scanning passengers’ faces instead of checking IDs. These groups say the biometric processes are meant to eliminate friction, save time and reduce lines.”

Why is that always the party line? To make our lives easier? To save us time? Does it? Ask anyone who has been a victim of identity theft, and remember “the huge Facebook data breach, in which upwards of 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries had personal data leaked online, including phone numbers, Facebook IDs, birthdates — you name it,” The Verge reported. Not that Facebook even bothered to tell users.

Yes, your phone has your fingerprint or faceprint. Fine, that’s native to your phone – or so they say. What about once the info is sent to the cloud? Cybersecurity is not top of mind for many tech companies, as we well know by the number of hacks reported and that continue to be reported and FYI, Ransomware Attacks Reach Record Highs: Demands and Payments Continue to Soar – and are we even informed about what data of ours might have been compromised? Read More...

Apple’s New AI: Is Tim Cooked?

Apple’s New AI: Is Tim Cooked?

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Image by Stefan Schweihofer from Pixabay

So, Apple has at long last stepped into the AI game, and appropriately named at least part of their offering Apple Intelligence, a designation that, in our mind, harkens to ‘Army Intelligence,’ ‘Military Intelligence,’ and in Apple’s case, rightly so.

Apple’s AI solution is a partnership with OpenAI, who last week announced the addition of Paul M. Nakasone, a retired US Army general and former head of the National Security Agency (NSA), to its board of directors. FYI, as the National Pulse reported, “Prior to his departure from the NSA, Nakasone authored an op-ed advocating for the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The FISA legislation reauthorized a controversial provision that allows the government to spy on Americans without a warrant as long as they’re communicating with noncitizens in a foreign country.

“Not everyone is thrilled about Nakasone’s new role at the AI firm, which will also see the former general seated at OpenAI’s Safety and Security Committee,” Futurism reported. “The NSA has long been associated with surveillance of US citizens, and AI-embedded technologies are already renewing and escalating existing surveillance concerns. With that in mind, it might be unsurprising that former NSA employee and famed whistleblower Edward Snowden is among the OpenAI appointment’s outspoken detractors. Read More...

Is Software Trying to Take Too Big a Bite Out of the World?

Is Software Trying to Take Too Big a Bite Out of the World?

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Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

Valentine’s Day just passed, and as we know, at least some humans always seem to go looking for love in all the wrong places. Thank heavens for AI hitting the love space, where people finally can meet someone literally tailor-made for them, but you know love: is anything really as it appears?

This just in:  Your AI Girlfriend Is a Data-Harvesting Horror Show “The privacy mess is troubling because the chatbots actively encourage you to share details that are far more personal than the typical app, Gizmodo reported. “According to a new study from Mozilla’s *Privacy Not Included project, AI girlfriends and boyfriends harvest shockingly personal information, and almost all of them sell or share the data they collect.

“To be perfectly blunt, AI girlfriends and boyfriends are not your friends,” said Misha Rykov, a Mozilla Researcher. “Although they are marketed as something that will enhance your mental health and well-being, they specialize in delivering dependency, loneliness, and toxicity, all while prying as much data as possible from you.” Read More...

Time to Stop and Smell the Absurdities

Time to Stop and Smell the Absurdities

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Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

It was something of a travel week for us, and a good time to at long last look at articles in the ‘save for later’ pile, which we did: stopped to smell the absurdities.

Incandescent lightbulbs were outlawed recently in favor of the longer lasting and supposedly more climate friendly LED bulbs, but according to greenmatters, LED Bulbs May Not Be as Great as We Thought — Studies Show Health and Environmental Risks, reporting that “Per a recent study published in the journal Science Advances, researchers from the University of Exeter have noted various health and environmental risks that come with LED lights. According to The Guardian, LED bulbs are becoming increasingly more common, and even though they are more energy efficient, they emit more blue light radiation”…which is harmful to human health and the environment.

What to speak of the fact that they arguably create more of an environmental hazard when it comes to their disposal. Read More...

The Long Tale of the Shortcut

The Long Tale of the Shortcut

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Image by Roland Schwerdhöfer from Pixabay

Bill Gates was a college dropout. Steve Jobs quit after one semester. Mark Zuckerberg didn’t finish, either.  So it was no wonder that, when the tech sector rose to prominence, kids believed that dropping out of college and starting a company was de rigueur for success in life. And to be wealthy and lionized.

The Age of Social loved tech ‘luminaries’ such as Zuck and Jack Dorsey and how convenient that their genius could be amplified on the very platforms they created. Tech founders were the rockstars of the computer age.

We know things move faster in the online world, but how did these guys get so rich and powerful in so short an amount of time? Read More...