Tag Archives: Privacy

Firefox’s Plans for Fighting Tracking

Posted on 2018-09-08 by jcs

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

Posted on 2018-08-02 by jcs

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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We Have Always Been at War with Spam

Posted on 2018-06-15 by jcs

Via Wilfed Hughes we have: 1864: The first record of electronic spam involved a telegram sent by a dentist in London. One of the recipients was so infuriated by this poppycock that he composed a letter to the editor of … Continue reading →

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The Irreal Privacy Policy

Posted on 2018-05-26 by jcs

As far as I can tell, the GDPR does not apply to Irreal. Nevertheless, Irreal is trivially in compliance because we don’t collect or store any information about our readers. Even if we did collect such information, we would never … Continue reading →

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Going Dark: How Many Locked Phones Are There?

Posted on 2018-05-24 by jcs

In news that will surprise exactly no Irreal readers, the Washington Post and Techdirt are reporting that the FBI has been lying about the “going dark” problem. One of their favorite refrains is that terrorists, pedophiles, drug dealers, and whatever … Continue reading →

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California Stores the DNA of All Babies Born in the State

Posted on 2018-05-16 by jcs

What could go wrong? The iron law of data collection, that’s what. It’s been a while since I’ve written about the iron law, so here’s a quick recap: The iron law states: Whenever the government (or anyone else for that … Continue reading →

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RMS on Data Collection

Posted on 2018-04-19 by jcs

RMS has an article in the Guardian that discusses the safety of your on-line data. With the recent exposure of Facebook surveillance practices and their consequences, reporters have been asking him if he thinks it could be a turning point … Continue reading →

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Facebook and Products

Posted on 2018-04-10 by jcs

If you’re still on Facebook, this is for you.

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Open Source Tools

Posted on 2018-04-06 by jcs

I prefer open source software but I’m not an absolutist. I no longer have much interest in patching my OS, for example, so I feel comfortable using macOS because the eco-system—or walled garden, if you prefer—allows me to integrate my … Continue reading →

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Enough Is Enough

Posted on 2018-03-31 by jcs

I’m not on Facebook. I’ve never been on Facebook. At first it was simply a matter of not being a 14 year old junior high schooler. Later, even adults started hanging out there but I still thought it was silly … Continue reading →

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