Tag Archives: Privacy

A Test for the Iron Law

Posted on 2020-01-30 by jcs

If you’ve been around Irreal for a while, you know about the Iron Law of Data Collection. Briefly, the law says that anytime data is collected No matter the rationale and promises about the data collection and the purposes to … Continue reading →

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Surprise! Online Advertisers Are Breaking The Law

Posted on 2020-01-25 by jcs

According to a report by Forbrukerradet—which I think is the Norwegian Consumer Council—online advertisers are ignoring the GDPR and continuing to track consumers and build profiles of them. The report, linked above, and the technical addendum are both quite long … Continue reading →

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Quitting Google: A Story

Posted on 2020-01-17 by jcs

Regular readers know that I regularly reproach those who depend on Google apps. It’s not that I insist that everybody use open source exclusively—I don’t—but I find it excruciating to read about people committing the only copy their valuable data … Continue reading →

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Getting Tough on the Corporate Snoopers

Posted on 2019-10-22 by jcs

It almost certainly won’t be enacted in its current form but US Senator Ron Wyden has introduced a privacy bill with some real teeth. Among other things it calls for significant jail time for CEOs and other executives who lie … Continue reading →

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The New Luddites Take Off the Mask

Posted on 2019-09-20 by jcs

The other day I thanked the New York Times for proving my point. Now it’s The Guardian’s turn, albeit for a different point. I’m sure that by now many of you roll your eyes and think, Reagan like, “there he … Continue reading →

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The Google Nest Hub Max

Posted on 2019-09-16 by jcs

I don’t know about you but I couldn’t help thinking of telescreens from Nineteen Eighty-four when I read this article about Google’s always on Nest Hub Max. The similarities are striking. The camera is always watching so that it can … Continue reading →

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Mozilla Talks About Its Plans for DoH

Posted on 2019-09-12 by jcs

You may recall that back in July I wrote about Google’s and Mozilla’s plans for DNS over HTTPS (DoH) and the furor it caused among the nannies in the UK who resented having their ability to spy on their users … Continue reading →

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The Google GDPR Workaround

Posted on 2019-09-05 by jcs

A little over a week ago in my post on Google Tracking, I remarked that nothing short of strictly enforced GDPR-syle legislation would get Google and the other adtech miscreants to behave. I ended on the cynical note that maybe … Continue reading →

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Google on Tracking

Posted on 2019-08-25 by jcs

If you’re like me, you’re apt to suspect that anything Google has to say about adtech and tracking is likely to be self-serving nonsense but when they make the claim that blocking cookies is bad for privacy you’d be excused … Continue reading →

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Apple Gets Serious About Web Tracking

Posted on 2019-08-21 by jcs

In some very welcome news, Apple has announced that it will be implementing and enforcing a new anti-tracking policy in Safari. The new WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy lays out what types of tracking they will attempt to prevent and states … Continue reading →

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