IBM at the Consumer Electronic Show
January 6, 2019
Yep, IBM is a consumer product company. I know this because I read “LA Sues Weather Channel App Over Stealthy Data Collection.” Consumer centric outfits like Facebook and Google may operate this way. If IBM is indeed sucking and selling data from is Weather Channel App, it too must be a consumer products’ company.
I noted “Struggling IBM Uses CES to Reinvent Itself.” I assumed that that reinvention was selling data. But, no, once again I was incorrect, a common failing.
I learned from the write up:
At CES, Rometty is expected to emphasize IBM’s (NYSE: IBM) undisputed AI chops along with its aggressive moves into the hybrid cloud market and quantum computing. But the underlying theme will be what the company characterizes as “new data,” and using AI and cloud platforms to “refine” data into something useful.
I thought it was a somewhat squishy marketing opportunity, a way to disappoint stakeholders, and a cloud of fog generated about mainframes actually selling.
No CES for me. My hunch is that those seeking gadgets will have a tough time hauling away Watson on a laptop or a desktop IBM quantum computer.
See, IBM does do consumer products as long as one defines consumer in a somewhat narrow sense.
But that sneaky app thing is promising. Isn’t the former head of the Weather Channel now head of Watson. The IBM revolving door makes me dizzy.
Stephen E Arnold, January 6, 2019
The Five Stages of Digital Death and Dying
January 5, 2019
Check out “Childhood’s End.” I noted this passage:
The digital revolution progressed through five stages: the repurposing of war-surplus analog vacuum tube components into the first generation of fully-electronic stored-program computers; the era of large central mainframes; the era of the microprocessor and personal computer; the advent of the Internet; and finally the era of fully-metazoan codes that populate the mobile landscape of today. The next revolution is the assembly of digital components into analog computers, similar to the way analog components were assembled into digital computers in the aftermath of World War II.
There you go, you fully metazoan code unit. Is this another way for a vacuum expert to say something sucks?
Stephen E Arnold, January 5, 2019
Why Not Filter for These Hashtags?
January 4, 2019
This is one of our DarkCyber news items.
The DarkCyber research time noted some of the child porn hashtags. A list was released by the Child Rescue Coalition. If you are a sworn law enforcement office, complete the form and request the full list.
In the news reports about the CRC’s list, we compiled some of the words and phrases used to allow bad actors to locate child porn.
Here’s a partial list of hashtags:
#babykini
#babypeeing
#bathtime
#bathtimefun
#bikinikids
#bikinikidslovers
#bikinikidsmodeling
#cantkeepclothesonhim
#cleankids
#diaperfree
#diaperfree
#kidbikini
#kidsshower
#kidsshowertime
#kidsswimwear
#lillootoddlerpotty
#lovesbeingnude
#modelingchild
#nakedbaby
#nakedchild
#nakedchildren
#nakedkid
#nakedkiddos
#nakedkids
#nakedkidsagain
#nakedkidsarehappykids
#nakedkidsclub
#nakedkidseverywhere
#nakedtoddler
#nakedtoddleralert
#nappyfree
#nudechild
#nudekids
#peeingkid
#potty
#pottydance
#pottydanceparty
#pottydancetime
#pottylife
#pottyparty
#pottytime
#pottytrain
#pottytrained
#pottytrainedbefore2
#pottytraining
#pottytraining101
#pottytraining4kids
#pottytrainingbootcamp
#pottytrainingboys
#pottytrainingdays
#pottytrainingdiaries
#pottytrainingfail
#pottytrainingfun
#pottytrainingguide
#pottytrainingsuccess
#pottytrainingsucks
#pottytrainingtime
#pottytrainingtwins
#pottytrainingwoes
#sexychildren
#sexykids
#sinkchild
#skinnybabybooty
#skinnybabybooty
#skinnybabybooty.
#startpottytraining
#toddlerbathfun
#toddlerbathing
#toddlerbaths
#toddlerbikinis
#toddlerbikinisrule
#toilettrain
#toilettraining
toddlerbikini
There are, of course, numerous variations, which should be relatively easy to map to an old school filter—unless of course the service doesn’t want to lose ad revenue or invest developer time in this offensive exploitation of indexing terms.
Several thoughts:
- Services should filter for these terms, note the individual or handle using the hashtag, and compile that data. The information may be useful to law enforcement.
- Why are social media services not blocking these hashtags? DarkCyber knows that bad actors will cook up new terms or use emoji combinations, but mapping the tags to identities may be useful in some investigations.
- These terms strike DarkCyber as obvious? What other hashtags are in use?
These “in plain sight” index terms are available to anyone with an Internet connection. No Dark Web, Tails, or Whonix required.
Stephen E Arnold, January 4, 2018
Data Protection: Many Vendors, Many Incidents
January 4, 2019
This is one of our DarkCyber news items.
Search engines are getting smarter and better, especially since they began to incorporate social media in their indexing. It is harder than ever to protect personal information, then there is the rising Dark Web fear. While there are services out there that say they can monitor the Dark Web and the vanilla Web to protect your information there are things you can do to protect yourself. TechRadar shares some tips in the article, “AI And The Next Generation Of Search Engines.”
The article focuses on Xiliab’s Frank Cha, who works on South Korea’s largest AI developer. Xiliab recently developed the DataXchain data trading platform that is described as the search engine of the future. Cha explained why DataXchain is the search engine of the future:
“Dataxchain engine is the next generation of data trading engine which enables not only data processing such as automatic data collection, classification, tagging, and curation but also enables data transactions. These transactions are directly applied to human development without human intervention by pre-processing data matching and deep learning engine. These trials can be accessed to the implicit knowledge through the intervention of people that the traditional search engine already had.”
Cha stresses the biggest challenge with DataXchain is creating connections with clients. He said, “When this connection becomes a chain, we will be able to exchange value for private data of each individual or organization and it will bring innovation to sophisticated AI in dataXchain…”
It is also being for national defense, which can be translated into protecting an individual’s data without changing the algorithm.
It is a basic interview without much meat about how to protect your data. Defensive forces can use the same algorithm as regular people, but that does not sound reassuring. How about speaking in layman’s terms?
With many competitors why are their so many successful breaches?
Whitney Grace, January 4, 2019
TruthFinder: Dark Web Scan Reseller
January 3, 2019
TruthFinder, founded in late 2014 or early 2015, provides background check services. We wanted to document that the firm offers Dark Web scans.
The company states:
Our new Dark Web Monitoring feature is an indispensable tool for people who want to protect their identity from data breaches. You can monitor your sensitive personal information — like your name, phone number, and even credit card number — and receive an instant notification if your data is found on the Dark Web. Cybercriminals buy and sell personal information on the Dark Web every day, but with TruthFinder, you can reduce your chances of becoming a victim of identity theft.
According to the company’s Web site, these services are provided by Experian. DarkCyber believes that Experian obtains Dark Web scanning services from another third party.
The firm also provides public records data to its customers. The services are provided on a fee basis.
In an interview published by Superbcrew, TruthFinder stated:
TruthFinder is also an essential resource for online daters and those who routinely interact with strangers online. With just a quick search, online daters can make sure they’re talking to a real person and not getting catfished. People can also use this service to see if people have prior criminal records, which is one of the many ways TruthFinder helps people stay safe in the real world.
Note: A “catfish” is someone who pretends to be someone else online. The idea is that an individual adopts a persona in order to mask his or her actual identity.
A customer can search by name, phone number, email address, or physical address. The company offers reverse address lookup (who lives at this address?) and reverse phone look up (who has this phone number?).
A TruthFinder report is assembled from the data the company pulls from various data sources. A report, presumably generated by the TruthFinder system, typically offers:
- Personal Information: Your name, known aliases, and date of birth
- Possible Photos: TruthFinder crawls images from various social media profiles, including those you may have forgotten existed
- Jobs and Education: A list of places you have worked and studied, including relevant dates
- Possible Relatives: View the name, age, and location of people who may be related to you
- Related Links: Related links may include blogs, relevant news stories, and additional social profiles
- Contact Information: View landlines, cell phone numbers, and email addresses associated with your name
- Location History: A list of places you have lived, including the date you were last seen at the location
- Criminal Records: TruthFinder reports may include arrest details, the outcome of the case, and prison status, when available
- Sex Offenders: View a map of nearby sex offenders, details of their crime, and links to view their full background report
- Social Media Profiles: Uncover social media profiles associated with your name, including accounts you may have forgotten
- Assets
- Evictions
- Business associates.
DarkCyber wants to point out that Dark Web scanning is now an item on a punch list, not a rarified service available only to law enforcement and intelligence professionals. TruthFinder’s help section states that reports begin at about $30. An annual subscription runs about $280 per year.
Kenny Toth, January 3, 2019
IBM: Sharing Wisdom
January 3, 2019
Apparently, it does not take just one white paper to convince people that IBM is number one—it takes 10. That is the number of publications the company shares on its AI Research page, “The New Frontiers of AI: Selected IBM Research AI Publications from 2018.” The introduction to the collection reads:
“Much of the recent progress in AI has relied on data-driven techniques like deep learning and artificial neural networks. Given sufficiently large labeled training data sets and enough computation, these approaches are achieving unprecedented results. As a result, there has been a rapid gain on ‘narrow AI’ – tasks in areas such as computer vision, speech recognition, and language translation. However, a broader set of AI capabilities is needed to progress AI towards solving real-world challenges. In practice, AI systems need to learn effectively and efficiently without large amounts of data. They need to be robust, fair and explainable. They need to integrate knowledge and reasoning together with learning to improve performance and enable more sophisticated capabilities.
We also noted:
“Where are we in this evolution? While ‘general AI’ – AI that can truly think, learn, and reason like a human- is still within the realm of science fiction, ‘broad AI’ that can learn more generally and work across different disciplines is within our reach. IBM Research is driving this evolution. We have been a pioneer of artificial intelligence since the inception of the field, and we continue to expand its frontiers through our portfolio of research focused on three areas: Advancing AI, Scaling AI, and Trusting AI.”
As the echoes of IBM tooting its own horn linger, one can glean some interesting information from the documents presented. The papers are broken into color-coded categories—Advancing AI, Scaling AI, and Trusting AI. A couple of the simpler titles include “Listening Comprehension over Argumentative Content” and “Training Deep Neural Networks with 8-bit Floating Point Numbers.” Navigate to the post for all the (very) technical wisdom.
Cynthia Murrell, January 3, 2019
Google: Is Unionization an Possibility?
January 3, 2019
While some companies are being called out for sexual misconduct, Google is being called out for an ethics violation along with sexual harassment. The Verge reports on how Google is breaking its ethical code of conduct in the article, “A Looming Strike Over Project Dragonfly Is Putting New Pressure On Google.” Project Dragonfly is Google’s attempt at launching search in China. The problem, however, is that China operates behind the Great Firewall and censors all Internet content.
Google workers or Googlers are against their projects being thrown under China’s governmental thumb, thus forced to censor search results. This is not the first time Googlers were unhappy with their company. In November 2018, Googlers staged a walkout in retaliation for Google ignoring sexual harassment claims. The walkout was successful and forced Google to react. If Google refuses to change its business tactics on Project Dragonfly, Googlers might do more than stage a walkout. They will have an old-fashioned strike and are already collecting funds to help strikers pay for daily expenses.
“What would trigger a strike? [Liz] Fong-Jones suggested that Google would have to cross a red line — launching Dragonfly in China without a proper review of Dragonfly’s privacy implications, for example. “I firmly suggest that my current fellow colleagues think about what they’d do if the red line were crossed and an executive overrode a S&P launch bit, or members of the S&P team indicated that they were coerced into marking it green,” Fong-Jones wrote, referring to the company’s security and privacy teams. How far away are we from that red line? …reports that at one point, the Dragonfly team was told to prepare to launch between January and April of next year. Given the current controversy — and the ongoing US trade war with China — that timeline almost certainly has been pushed back.”
Googlers have way more power than factory workers striking against their manufacturing plant shutting down. They are smart, know how to use social media to their advantage, and could cripple Google in more ways than one. It is nice to see Silicon Valley standing up for ethical practices, but how long will they last?
Whitney Grace, January 3, 2019
Factualities, January 2, 2019
January 2, 2019
Anyone can create facts. How about these “factualities” for the second day of the new year?
1,000,000. The number of Web sites allegedly seized by the US government. The data suggest lawyers are often iffy in the math department. Source: TechDirt
58 million. The number of YouTube videos removed by Google in the third quarter of 2018. Engadget
101 million dollars. The amount Dataiku, a French outfit, has raised for its collaborative data science platform. Two points: That’s a hefty sum for French Silicon Valley type companies. And Dataiku has some Dassault Exalead alums. Source: Techcrunch
150+. The number of companies to which Facebook allegedly gave user data. Source: Slashdot
75 percent. The number of artists whose work is in US museums. Source: Technology Review
90 percent. Spam calls made in India by telecom companies. Source: Quartz
300 percent. The amount by which spam calls grew in 2018. Source: Verge
20 percent. The percentage of US adults who get their news from social media. Source: Pew Research
49 percent. The relative number of cloud databases which are online but not encrypted. Source: Dark Reading
46 percent. Percentage of organizations surveyed by Tata, an Indian services firm, which have implemented artificial intelligence. Source: Venture Beat
21. Number of Google self driving autos attacked in Arizona. Source: Business Insider
80 percent. The number of Bitcoin wallets which hold less than $100. Source: Next Web
I want to start the new year with a renewed commitment to believe almost everything I read on the Internet.
Stephen E Arnold, January 2, 2018
Voter Data on the Dark Web
January 2, 2019
Sixgill, an Israeli company, says that voter data are for sale on the Dark Web. “Who Controls Your Vote? Sixgill Sheds Some Light on the Dark Web” states:
Sixgill, the cybersecurity leader which analyzes the Dark Web to detect and defuse cyber attacks, discovered that the U.S. voter database tracing back to the 2008 Vermont election was being offered for sale on a top-tier forum on the Dark Web.
The article reports:
Sixgill gained access to the breached database of the most recent elections and noted that the information enclosed seemed to be authentic. Among the list of credentials are those of Vermont Senators Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders. The Dark Web investigator noted that the stolen credentials contain 476,560 records, numbers that align with recent official data published by Vermont’s Secretary of State. For each individual record in the database, one can see sensitive personal information belonging to individual voters, including their full name, legal and mailing addresses, year of birth, and even their past voting history.
The BestTechie article did not suggest ways to protect these data nor remediation methods.
Kenny Toth, January 2, 2018
Facebook Starts 2019 with Some Advice to Consider
January 2, 2019
Ah, the Guardian. I read “‘Resign from Facebook’: experts offer Mark Zuckerberg advice for 2019.” My hunch is that the Zuck will ignore the input. But it is fun for an outfit struggling with revenue and technology to provide suggestions to an organization with plenty of dough and a new advertising business to flog. Jealous much?
Facebook makes headlines because of allegations or discoveries like those reported in “Facebook Collects information from Your Android Even If You Don’t Have Facebook.” One with capitalist DNA automatically responds to this type of business method.
The Guardian begs for dollars with increasingly large yellow banner pleas. Facebook gathers data and goes about its business.
The Guardian reported:
Tom Watson, deputy leader of the Labor party
Will be: Continue to evade parliamentary scrutiny and personal responsibility for Facebook’s problems.
Should be: Have a productive life having resigned from the company he founded to leave a new leadership team to clean up his mess.
Unlikely. Money can be messy when there is a lot of it.
Stephen E Arnold, January 2, 2019
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