Tag Archives: Privacy

Microsoft Data Collection

I don’t get it. I. Just. Don’t. Get. It. A recent study commissioned by the Dutch Government found that Microsoft was collecting individual user data from the enterprise version of Office 365 including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook without any … Continue reading

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Nothing To Hide

One of the tiresome and annoying things that the uninformed say about privacy issues is, “I have nothing to hide.” The idea, of course, is that, “I’m not a criminal or a terrorist so (1) no one will bother surveilling … Continue reading

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More Trouble for Adtech

If you’re like me and really, really hate Adtech and those who push it, I have some good news. After the GDPR went into effect, advertisers had to have your explicit, informed, and affirmative consent to collect personal information about … Continue reading

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Adtech Prepares for a Big Hit

A series of complaints targeting user information gatherers, data brokers, and third party users of that information could portend a tsunami bearing down on the adtech industry. In what could be the first test of whether GDPR enforcement is going … Continue reading

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De-Googlifying Your Life

I came across a post from Kev Quirk on why he was ditching his Android phone. He’s trading it in for an iPhone SE. The TL;DR is that Quirk tired of having Google pry into his life and record everything … Continue reading

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Matt Green Gives Up Chrome

Matt Green, whom Irreal has mentioned many times (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10), is a cryptographer at Johns Hopkins with an interest in user privacy. He’s also a long-time Google Chrome user. But now Green … Continue reading

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Mike Elgan on Google

I’ve been reading Mike Elgan since his article on the New Bedouins in 2007. He still writes about technology but is increasingly focusing on traveling to exotic places and sampling their food and wine. One of his latest posts on … Continue reading

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Things I Don’t Miss

I just upgraded to Safari 12.0. I’ve been looking forward to it because Apple has greatly expanded the anti-tracking measures in the new Safari. Apparently the extension framework has changed because one of my extensions was deleted and the other … Continue reading

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Firefox’s Plans for Fighting Tracking

The Firefox developers at Mozilla are no longer going to tolerate the miscreants in the Adtech business. On their blog, they lay out their plans for dealing with tracking. Among other things, they will be stripping cookies from tracking sites … Continue reading

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When Advertising Is Not Advertising

Nicholas Rempel has an excellent rant on what passes for advertising these days with the post What We Have Now Is Not Advertising. His thesis is that while things like billboards, TV ads, and magazine ads are advertising, much of … Continue reading

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