Facebook Dating Cleared for Launch in EU
November 6, 2020
Facebook has cleared a regulatory hurdle in Europe, meaning it will soon launch its dating service in 32 more countries over a year after going live in the US. An opt-in option within the Facebook app, the service is currently available in 20 countries. Voice of America reports the development in, “Facebook Launches Dating Service in Europe.” The brief write-up reveals:
“The social media company had postponed the rollout of Facebook Dating in Europe in February after concerns were raised by Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), the main regulator in the European Union for a number of the world’s biggest technology firms, including Facebook. The DPC had said it was told about the Feb. 13 launch date on Feb. 3 and was very concerned about being given such short notice. It also said it was not given documentation regarding data protection impact assessments or decision-making processes that had been undertaken by Facebook.”
Facebook Dating’s product manager Kate Orseth assures us that users who create a dating profile can delete it whenever they want without deleting their entire Facebook profile. The service grabs first names and ages from users’ Facebook profiles and does not allow users to edit them. Last names are not displayed, but one can choose to share other personal information right from the main profile. How many users understand how easily AI tech could be used to correlate that information and pinpoint their identities? We advise caution for anyone who chooses to use Facebook Dating, whatever continent one lives on.
Cynthia Murrell, November 6, 2020
Washington Might Crack Down On Mobile Bidstream Data
November 4, 2020
Mobile devices siphon data from users and sell the data to third parties, mostly ad companies, to make a profit. The bidstream is mobile’s dirty secret that everyone knows about and the federal government might finally do something to protect consumers’ privacy says The Drum: “Mobile’s Dirty Little Data Secret Under Washington’s Microscope.”
“Bidstream” is the mobile industry jargon used for data mobile services collect from users then sell. The data is sold to advertisers who bid on ad space in real time exchange for targeted ads. Bidstream data could include demographics, personal hobbies and (even more alarmingly) real time coordinates for consumers’ current location.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) executive vice president Dave Grimaldi stated that his organization has recently communicated a hundred times more with the federal government about the bidstream than the past two months. There are politicians worried that the bidstream could not only violated privacy, but could lead to deceptive business tactics (and maybe violent actions). There are currently no industry standards or rules from the IAB or the Mobile Marketing Association against bidstreams.
In June 2020, Mobilewalla released demographic information about BLM protestors under the guise of data analysis, while politicians called in surveillance. They want to know if Mobilewalla’s analysis along with the midstream violate the FTC act:
“The FTC won’t say whether it is probing bidstream data gathering, but its chairman did respond to lawmakers. ‘In order to fully address the concerns mentioned in your letter,’ wrote FTC Chairman Joseph Simons in a letter to Wyden obtained by The Drum, ‘we need a new federal privacy law, enforceable by the FTC, that gives us authority to seek civil penalties for first-time violations and jurisdiction over non-profits and common carriers.’… In questions sent separately to Mobilewalla, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and other legislators asked the company to provide details of its “disturbing” use of bidstream data.‘Mobilewalla has and will respond to any request received from Congress or the FTC,’ a Mobilewalla spokesperson tells The Drum, declining to provide further detail.”
Those mobile phones are handy dandy gizmos, aren’t they?
Whitney Grace, November 4, 2020
What Does Disappearing Mean?
November 2, 2020
Do messages disappear? A user may not be able to view them, but is it possible that those messages reside in a server, indexed, and ready to analyze? “WhatsApp Disappearing Messages Coming Soon: Everything Explained” does not pursue this line of thinking. The write up states:
You should use disappearing messages only with trusted individuals and groups because the recipient can still take screenshots, forward, or copy disappearing messages before they disappear. Also, if you share a photo, video, or document using disappearing messages, it’ll get deleted from the chat window; if the receiver has auto-download turned on, it’ll be saved to their device.
The article points out: “It’s not a foolproof solution for sharing secrets over the instant messaging platform.”
What if Facebook retains these data? What if these disappearing chats include details about digital currency transactions? How likely is it that certain governments will curtail Facebook’s most recent initiative? Some regulators and enforcement authorities may find value in Facebook’s allegedly deleted messages. With enough value, Facebook is unlikely to explain what “disappearing” means.
What is the solution? Stop using Facebook? No problem.
Stephen E Arnold, November 2, 2020
A Challenge for Federal Records Management
October 6, 2020
Federal agencies are facing a mandate without adequate funding. This is sure to go smoothly. GCN explains why, for these entities, “Records Management Is About to Get Harder.” The White House’s Office of Management and Budget is requiring federal agencies to completely shift to electronic recordkeeping by the end of 2022, after which the National Archives and Records Administration shall accept no new paper records. The directive presents two challenges which overlap: digitizing existing records and providing a process whereby new records are created digitally in the first place. Officials plan to begin at the intersection of those requirements, invoking a Venn diagram. They must be as efficient as they can because, we’re told, Congress is reluctant to loosen purse strings enough to sufficiently fund the project.
The article cites a recent discussion among federal records management specialists regarding the transition. Reporter Troy K. Schneider writes:
“Although agencies’ readiness levels varied widely, most participants said they were on track to meet the M-19-21 deadlines. Yet whether the available tools and resources are sufficient, however, is another matter. ‘There never are enough resources,’ one official said. ‘We’ve got great resources to the extent that we have them,’ referring to the staff and the record schedules that have been developed, but the work will outstrip them — and this year’s telework-driven embrace of collaboration tools has only increased the degree of difficulty….“Complicating that resource challenge in terms of staff and money is the rapidly growing suite of communication tools agencies use. Too often, participants said, the adoption and deployment of those tools is happening before Federal Records Act requirements are accounted for.”
SharePoint and Office 365 are but two examples of software in which agencies have invested much that may not be able to keep pace with current governance needs and a greatly increased cloud-centered user base. One suggestion is to mimic the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation Program now used by the Department of Homeland Security and the General Services Administration for their approved product lists, reporting requirements, and cybersecurity funding. Whatever the solution, we’re told:
“Ultimately, the group agreed, fundamentals are more important than specific technologies. ‘What I’ve seen in looking at my compatriots in other agencies is they spent incredible sums of money to deploy a technology,’ one participant said. ‘And those solutions have not been nearly as effective as they have been sold as because some of the fundamentals hadn’t been done — like understanding your record schedule and the organizational and institutional changes around processes and capabilities that really need to be in place to feed the right records.’”
Indeed, rushing to choose a solution before closely examining one’s needs is a recipe for waste and disappointment. Let us hope decision makers think things through and spend the limited funds wisely. If they do not, our nation’s records are bound to become a huge, paperless mess.
Cynthia Murrell, October 6, 2020
China: A Digital Currency Forecast
September 27, 2020
DarkCyber noted “‘One Day Everyone Will Use China’s Digital Currency.” If you have read Beyond Search/Dark Cyber before, you may know that words like “all,” “every,” and similar categorical affirmatives are irritants. We live in an era of “black swans” and words like “never” are tough to accept as characterizing the present datasphere. Nevertheless, we have an “everyone” from the Beeb.
The main idea is that Chinese digital currency will become the big dog. Hasta la vista dollares en efectivo. The Delphic statement comes from Chandler Guo, a “pioneer in cryuptocurrency.” The Chinese DCEP is coming. DCEP is the digital currency electronic payment, and it seems destined to become the way to pay.
The write up notes:
But many question whether it will succeed and there are concerns that it will be used by Beijing to spy on citizens.
And there is the Chinese spy thing.
The article includes an anonymous source, a now standard journalistic convention:
“The Chinese government believes that if some other countries can also use the Chinese currency it can break the United States’ monetary sovereignty. The United States has built the current global financial system and the instruments,” says an anonymous Chinese crypto currency observer known as Bitfool.
Are Guo and Bitfool correct? Sure, why not. It is 2020, the Year of the Black Swan.
Stephen E Arnold, September 27, 2020
Automated Databases: Data Sets for Sale
September 25, 2020
The word “scrape” refers to software. The code copies data from a Web site. The data are converted to a standard format. These data are gathered in a database. The key points are that the data can be accessed on a public Web site. Some scraping processes can log on and enter passwords. The result of “scraping” is the digital equivalent of an old-fashioned researcher’s note cards. Scrapehunt provides scraping as a service. The magic of Scrapehunt.com’s service is that you can purchase a set of scraped data created by the company. You can also use the service to generate a custom database. One example is the firm’s news database which can cost a couple of hundred dollars or less if there is a sale underway. The data can be used to provide grist for a machine learning mill. For more information, navigate to Scrapehunt’s Web site.
Stephen E Arnold, September 25, 2020
Data Brokers: A Partial List
September 7, 2020
DarkCyber has fielded several inquiries in the last three months about data brokers. My response has been to point out that some data brokers are like quinoa farmers near Cusco: Small, subsistence data reselling; others are like Consolidated Foods, the industrialized outfits.
Yon can review a partial list of data brokers on this Github page. However, I want to point out:
- Non US data brokers have information as well. Some of that information is particularly interesting, and it is unlikely that the average email phisher or robocall outfit will have access to these data. (No, I am not listing some of these interesting firms.)
- There are several large data brokers not on this list. In my lectures I mention a giant data broker wanna be, but in most cases when I say “Amazon”, the response is, “My family uses Amazon a couple of times a week.” I don’t push back. I just move forward. What one does not know does not exist for some people.
- Aggregating services with analytics plumbing are probably more important than individual chunks of data from either the quinoa farmers or from a combine. Why? With three items of data and a pool of “maybe useful” content, it is possible to generate some darned interesting outputs.
Putting the focus on a single type of digital artifact is helpful, sometimes interesting, and may be a surprise to some uninformed big time researcher. But the magic of applied analytics is where the oomph is.
Stephen E Arnold, September 7, 2020
Another Data Marketplace: Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, or Other Provider for This Construct?
August 31, 2020
The European Union is making a sharp U-turn on data privacy, we learn from MIT Technology Review’s article, “The EU Is Launching a Market for Personal Data. Here’s What That Means for Privacy.” The EU has historically protected its citizens’ online privacy with vigor, fighting tooth and nail against the commercial exploitation of private information. As of February, though, the European Commission has decided on a completely different data strategy (PDF). Reporter Anna Artyushina writes:
“The Trusts Project, the first initiative put forth by the new EU policies, will be implemented by 2022. With a €7 million [8.3 million USD] budget, it will set up a pan-European pool of personal and nonpersonal information that should become a one-stop shop for businesses and governments looking to access citizens’ information. Global technology companies will not be allowed to store or move Europeans’ data. Instead, they will be required to access it via the trusts. Citizens will collect ‘data dividends,’ which haven’t been clearly defined but could include monetary or nonmonetary payments from companies that use their personal data. With the EU’s roughly 500 million citizens poised to become data sources, the trusts will create the world’s largest data market. For citizens, this means the data created by them and about them will be held in public servers and managed by data trusts. The European Commission envisions the trusts as a way to help European businesses and governments reuse and extract value from the massive amounts of data produced across the region, and to help European citizens benefit from their information.”
It seems shifty they have yet to determine just how citizens will benefit from this data exploitation, I mean, value-extraction. There is no guarantee people will have any control over their information, and there is currently no way to opt out. This change is likely to ripple around the world, as the way EU approaches data regulation has long served as an example to other countries.
The concept of data trusts has been around since 2018, when Sir Tim Berners Lee proposed it. Such a trust could be for-profit, for a charitable cause, or simply for data storage and protection. As Artyushina notes, whether this particular trust actually protects citizens depends on the wording of its charter and the composition of its board of directors. See the article for examples of other trusts gone wrong, as well as possible solutions. Let us hope this project is set up and managed in a way that puts citizens first.
Cynthia Murrell, August 31, 2020
Forget Structured Query Language Commands? Yeah, Not Yet
August 29, 2020
One of the DarkCyber team spotted a demonstration service called NatualSQL.com. The idea is that the system will accept natural language queries of information stored in structured databases. According to the DarkCyber person, the queries launched into the natural language box were:
Sheva War with Whom
Sheva Frequency
The sparse interface sports a Content button which displays the information in the system.
How did this work?
Not well. NLP systems pose challenges still it seems.
Interesting idea but some rough edges need a bit of touch up.
Stephen E Arnold, August 29, 2020
Amazon and Toyota: Tacoma Connects to AWS
August 20, 2020
This is just a very minor story. For most people, the information reported in “Toyota, Amazon Web Services Partner On Cloud-Connected Vehicle Data” will be irrelevant. The value of the data collected by the respective firms and their partners is trivial and will not have much impact. Furthermore, any data processed within Amazon’s streaming data marketplace and made available to some of the firm’s customers will be of questionable value. That’s why I am not immediately updating my Amazon reports to include the Toyota and insurance connection.
Now to the minor announcement:
Toyota will use AWS’ services to process and analyze data “to help Toyota engineers develop, deploy, and manage the next generation of data-driven mobility services for driver and passenger safety, security, comfort, and convenience in Toyota’s cloud-connected vehicles. The MSPF and its application programming interfaces (API) will enable Toyota to use connected vehicle data to improve vehicle design and development, as well as offer new services such as rideshare, full-service lease, proactive vehicle maintenance notifications and driving behavior-based insurance.
Are there possible implications from this link up? Sure, but few people care about Amazon’s commercial, financial, and governmental services, why think about issues like:
- Value of the data to the AWS streaming data marketplace
- Link analytics related to high risk individuals or fleet owners
- Significance of the real time data to predictive analytics, maybe to insurance carriers and others?
Nope, not much of a big deal at all. Who cares? Just mash that Buy Now button and move on. Curious about how Amazon ensures data integrity in such a system? If you are, you can purchase our 50 page report about Amazon’s advanced data security services. Just write darkcyber333 at yandex dot com.
But I know first hand after two years of commentary, shopping is more fun than thinking about Amazon examined from a different viewshed.
Stephen E Arnold, August 20, 2020
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