Sleepless in Midland

Advertisers complain that Google Chrome's new cookie policy will prevent them from tracking everything we do on the net -- boo hoo

Google announced plans to phase out support for third party cookies on the Chrome browser within two years.

As for just what third party cookies do, WSJ provides an explanation in Marketers and Ad Agencies Ask Google Not to Kill Cookies Too Soon:

Cookies are a way to gather information on internet activity. Websites use first-party cookies to collect data on their own visitors. Third-party cookies, in contrast, track consumers’ activity across the internet. They generate information that is useful for ad targeting and other purposes, but have raised privacy concerns over the years.

Privacy concerns indeed.

Is there anyone whose paycheck isn't dependent on it really that sad about advertisers and others not being able to track us everywhere we go on the internet?

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2:11 PM 1/18/2020

Google buying Mastercard data on us is downright creepy

We've known for quite a while that Google has a massive database on each person who uses the Google search engine or email services. That's creepy enough. But now we learn Google has sucked in Mastercard's data on us, too. See Google quietly bought Mastercard credit and debit card records.

The claim is that the information is only going to be used to measure “the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns.” Furthermore, another claim is that personal identities won't be disclosed. However, there are ways to connect anonymous data with the individual it's about.

One has to wonder how many other companies' data Google has or is planning to vacuum into its data bank. Google is the new Big Brother.

P.S. Since we are the product, shouldn't we be getting paid?

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1:47 PM 9/4/2018

Yahoo, AOL selling email data to advertisers

This is how much a curmudgeon I am. For months -- since Yahoo sold out to Verizon and Oath -- I've been scrolling to the bottom of the first page and clicking "I'll do this later." That first page is a long winded script telling us what all they can do with our emails. I read enough of it to conclude they could do plenty with whatever users said in their emails and that I didn't want any part of it.

So it's nice to see some push back on them. Phil Baker at pjmedia.com summarizes a wsj.com article today. Baker at Yahoo Admits It Scans Emails to Collect Data to Sell to Advertisers and wsj at Yahoo, Bucking Industry, Scans Emails for Data to Sell Advertisers.

Here's an excerpt from Baker:

Doug Sharp, Oath’s vice president of data, measurements and insights, told the Wall Street Journal that email scanning is an effective method for improving ad targeting. "He said that the practice applies only to commercial emails in people’s accounts—from retailers, say, or mass mailings—and that users have the ability to opt out," the WSJ wrote.

Opting out is a challenge. A search for the word "opt" in the document turns up nothing. So by avoiding accepting maybe I haven't yet opted in.

But get a load of this:

"Yahoo paid $4 million in 2016 to settle a federal class-action lawsuit that claimed its scanning of email violated federal wiretap laws," the WSJ noted. "Yahoo, which didn’t admit wrongdoing, agreed as part of the settlement terms to make a technical change: Rather than scanning emails while they are 'in transit,' Yahoo now waits until they arrive in an inbox to scan them."

Well, isn't that sweet of them to wait until the email is actually delivered before purloining the user's conversation?

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2:04 PM 8/29/2018

Our vehicles will soon be spying on us

It's bad enough that our phones and TVs are spying on us, it turns out that our vehicles have that capability, too. Or if they don't have it now, they soon will have.

Does that worry car owners? It should, but people seem to have gotten very complacent about all those devices watching and listening to us.

Anyway, for a rundown on what's in the pipeline, see What Your Car Knows About You. Alternate link. Excerpt:

Already, some car makers are gathering this data to provide feedback to help improve a car’s performance, refine features and alert them to any potential quality problems early on. They’re also using it to create new and more personalized services for drivers.

But many car makers have bigger plans, including using the data to craft targeted in-car advertisements or selling it to mapping firms looking to provide more accurate traffic information.

General Motors Co. , Ford Motor Co. and other major car makers are hoping these connected-car services will generate new revenue streams that can help them diversify beyond their core business of building and selling cars. While it is still early days, McKinsey & Co. estimates monetizing data from connected cars will be worth up to $750 billion by 2030 as more cars are shipped with pre-installed modems and other internet-connected devices. ...

Car companies stress that they get the owner’s consent first before gathering any data. In cases where it is collected and provided to third parties, the data is anonymized, meaning it is scrubbed of all personal information and batched together with data from other vehicles to provide a more generalized picture of a car’s operations or consumer driving habits.

You did click "Accept," didn't you?

Still, privacy experts say it is not always clear to consumers when they are giving consent. As with other electronic devices, the data disclosures are often buried in the terms and service agreement and described in ways that aren’t always easy for customers to understand.

“That’s not going to give consumers a full sense of how their data is being used and collected any more than it is online,” said Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington, who specializes in digital privacy.

This is all the more reason for drivers to hang on to those clunkers as long as possible.

The company rushing to get your data moving out of the vehicle is Otonomo of Israel.

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1:20 PM 8/19/2018

Some websites record your key strokes -- including passwords -- during your entire web session

If you supply personal information on a website, you should expect that the owners of the website would get that information. But according to recent reports, some websites can record your key strokes during your entire browsing session. Here's one report about the issue: No, you’re not being paranoid. Sites really are watching your every move:

Session replay scripts are provided by third-party analytics services that are designed to help site operators better understand how visitors interact with their Web properties and identify specific pages that are confusing or broken. As their name implies, the scripts allow the operators to re-enact individual browsing sessions. Each click, input, and scroll can be recorded and later played back.

A study published last week reported that 482 of the 50,000 most trafficked websites employ such scripts, usually with no clear disclosure. It's not always easy to detect sites that employ such scripts. The actual number is almost certainly much higher, particularly among sites outside the top 50,000 that were studied.

"Collection of page content by third-party replay scripts may cause sensitive information, such as medical conditions, credit card details, and other personal information displayed on a page, to leak to the third-party as part of the recording," Steven Englehardt, a PhD candidate at Princeton University, wrote. "This may expose users to identity theft, online scams, and other unwanted behavior. The same is true for the collection of user inputs during checkout and registration processes."

Here's another one: No boundaries: Exfiltration of personal data by session-replay scripts.

There doesn't appear to be a way the site visitor can prevent it from happening. But as precaution a site visitor could open the browser only for that page in which he/she expects to supply a password or other personal info, then close it once the business is concluded.

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2:06 PM 12/13/2017

Cyber-insecurity -- is anything safe online anymore?

I started this post before the revelation about KRACK and the world wide vulnerability of the WPA2 protocol described in KRACK in Wi-Fi security: Everything you need to know and in articles elsewhere around the 'net. When there is this much attention paid to a tech problem then hopefully a easy fix is right around the corner.

But what about all those companies that get hacked? It seems that hardly a week goes by during which we DON'T hear about some big corporation losing all its customers' personal information to hackers. See, for example, Russian hackers reportedly found using Kaspersky software, Equifax website borked again, this time to redirect to fake Flash update, and get this, Secret files on jets and navy ships stolen in 'extensive and extreme' hack.

Yegads! Not our military secrets too! Apparently so.

Take a gander at this warning from this June 2017 blackhat.com survey: Portrait of an imminent cyberthreat.  Intro: Cyber attacks on US enterprises and critical infrastructure are coming soon, according to some of the industry’s most experienced and highly informed security professionals. And in most cases, defenders are not prepared.

The survey reveals a wide range of insights, including:

1. 60% of respondents believe that a successful cyber attack on US critical infrastructure will occur in the next two years. Only 26% are confident that U.S. government and defense forces are equipped and trained to respond appropriately.
2. 69% of IT security professionals believe that state-sponsored hacking from countries such as Russia and China has made US enterprise data less secure.
3. Only 26% of information security pros believe that the new White House administration will have a positive impact on cybersecurity policy, regulation, and law enforcement over the next four years.
4. About two-thirds of respondents think it’s likely that their own organizations will have to respond to a major security breach in the next 12 months. Sixty-nine percent say they don’t have enough staff to meet the threat; 58% believe they don’t have adequate budgets.
5. IT security professionals’ greatest concerns are around phishing and social engineering (50%) and sophisticated attacks targeted directly at their own organizations (45%).
6. The increased use of ransomware remains the most serious new threat faced by cybersecurity professionals, cited by 36% of respondents.

Take a look at number 5 again. "Security professionals’ greatest concerns are around phishing and social engineering (50%)..." Boy! If there's one thing Hillary Clinton, et al, taught us it's that we shouldn't fall for phishing schemes.

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10:46 AM 10/17/2017

Resist! They insist! -- about Trump's Commission on Election Integrity

Lots of folks are complaining about Donald Trump's Presidential Executive Order on the Establishment of Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity most likely because it might actually expose some long ignored voter fraud. But the public reason for the complaints is because of quantity of voter information requested from the states. So resist, they insist.

They do have a point. Anytime a government agency gets access to our personal information it opens the door to abuse for political purposes. Heaven knows we saw that in the last administration.

But there's as easy remedy to that. Congress could enact a bill which would limit the use of the information for actual fraud investigations and detection. Go a step further and prohibit any use for political purposes with adequate sanctions against any employee or contractor who violates it.

However, that's only part of the reason. Democrats traditionally oppose anything that might reduce the number of votes regardless of whether those votes were legal or illegal.

I personally have not researched the level of election fraud currently existing. But plenty of others have. See, for example:

Why Are Democrats Afraid of the Election Integrity Commission?; and

Growing Pile of Data Shows That Voter Fraud Is a Real and Vast Problem.

Furthermore, one doesn't have to look far to find anecdotal evidence. Here: Student headed to prison for registering dead voters for Democrats for example.

Finally, some irony. At least two states, Virginia and Maine, will sell you that information.

The swamp needs to be drained.

Nothing online is safe anymore, even at your Panamanian lawyer's office

Businessinsider.com gushes about it in The largest leak of secret documents in history was just released — here are its key findings.

Apparently, someone hacked a huge cache of documents belonging to a Panamanian mega-law firm and released the contents to journalists. Some of the contents regarding offshore accounts held by government officials will certainly be tantalizing. But the information is still stolen property.

That's what's scary. Maybe readers can justify it by citing the nefarious dealings of people in fiduciary positions. But it drives home the point that nothing is secret anymore. Or if it is currently, it's susceptible to computer hackers.

Pity that poor law firm. They are in for pure hell from the clients who trusted them with their dearest financial secrets. I don't know what the law is in Panama about that, and maybe the client has to agree in advance that the lawyers won't be liable for stolen information even it it was preventable. But one would think that to secure the reputation it had, the law firm must have convinced the clients that their information was safe.

Was Vladimir Putin one of the clients? Boy, look out. When he says heads will roll, they may not literally roll. But people who cross him somehow end up in hospice care not long after.

The perks of power -- getting a public loo all to yourself

You can imagine Hillary saying it, "I'm not going in there as long as she is in there."

The "she" was Lis Smith, according to Dailymail, "the deputy campaign manager for former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley," and "girlfriend of former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer."

If this is correct, Hillary Clinton was late returning to the Saturday night debate because she refused to go into a public restroom during the break because the aforementioned Lis Smith was in there already.

It sure seems like Hillary has been enjoying the perks of power way too long. The progressive media didn't care, though. But imagine the outcry if instead of Clinton refusing to share it had been Carly Fiorina. Whoa boy! That would have made headlines for a week.

P.S. With two former governors in her black book, Lis Smith certainly must enjoy cozying up to power. Next thing you know, she had Hillary waiting in line to use the loo. Smith has a power of her own -- she just had to get there first.

Catalist - a very scary Democrat weapon

Catalist is the database Democrats keep which contains information about every American. If we thought the NSA was scary, this is worse because it isn't just a nosy bureaucrat snooping into our life stories, it's a zealous progressive hell bent on advancing the lefty agenda.

They use this information to determine who might be persuaded to vote for Democrats, especially those who don't normally vote, and they target a very persuasive campaign directly at them. They were calling it Big Data in the 2012 election. It worked then, and it's getting bigger and better.

But the amazing part is that they don't target moderates or independents. They target people they determine would be sympathetic to the lefty agenda. So Democrats constituents ultimately turn out to be hard core lefties. Little wonder there's so much divisiveness these days.

Republicans don't have anything like it, at least not yet. And Republican candidates end up trying to appeal to moderates and independents but not conservatives. So far that's a strategy for failure.

Information about Catalist comes from J. Christian Adams. See CATALIST: Obama’s Database for Fundamentally Transforming America. Here are a few select excerpts:

During the 2012 election, a producer for a conservative news network received a knock at his door in a key swing state. Two neighbors were standing on his stoop campaigning for Obama. They weren’t there to talk to him — they were there to talk to his wife. They knew that she was employed in a profession which the Obama campaign had decided to microtarget: folks who deliver services to special needs children. The two neighbors were already armed with this personalized information. The Obama campaign didn’t just send a direct mail piece to the target or make a telephone call. Instead, the campaign matched a microtargeted demographic (special needs service providers) with a highly motivated Obama volunteer in close neighborly proximity to the target. Then they armed the neighbor/volunteer with data to visit the target. ...

Similarly, the data feeding the central Catalist database are coming from a wide swath of sources. Public records, pollsters, campaigns, non-profits, activist groups, unions, parties, commercial data — scores and scores of sources are feeding the central database data. ...

Not to mention databases probably made available to them by sympathetic social media types like Facebook.

You have your own individual voter file in Catalist. Everyone does. Under that file might be a massive amount of information about you — more than probably exists in any other database in the world. ...

Catalist allows customers to identify potential voters on the far ideological fringe, but who are usually unmotivated to vote. Catalist allows the left to then identify issues, concerns, or other lifestyle facts which would permit a customer to motivate the usually unmotivated on that fringe to vote.

Obama won reelection because he drove deeper into his ideological base than any Democrat ever had. His campaign largely ignored the middle and instead used Catalist data to wring out nearly every possible far-left vote they could.

Sigh. A few years ago the book 1984 was frighteningly prophetic. The present day equivalent is Idiocracy.

Texas DMV sells our private info

We've all probably received a telemarketing call from the seller of an extended auto warranty who knew exactly what make, year, and model of car we own. The one I received the other day ended after the telemarketer refused to disclose the name of the city from which she was calling. They knew exactly where I was but didn't want me to know where they were. Maybe that makes me a stalker for asking. Or maybe they were using my information illegally and didn't want to face too many questions.

They must have bought my information from the Texas DMV. CBS 11 DFW explains how easy the information is to get and even provides a link for a downloadable xlsx spreadsheet listing the names and addresses of the companies that bought the database in 2012. A list of the companies with Midland, Texas, addresses will follow in the addendum to this post.

The federal statute, Driver's Privacy Protection Act of 1994, 18 USC CHAPTER 123, is a prohibition with many exceptions. And a loose definition of the "driver safety" exception is probably the one the warranty seller was relying on.

Notice all the car dealers on the list below. One can imagine the sales representative typing in your plate number as you pull into the lot then viewing the DMV information about you as she watches you scrutinize the window sticker of that nice new BMW. But if the dealership subscribes to all the information available about us from private companies they probably know us as well as our own mothers. Or the NSA.

Addendum: The full list of the companies on CBS 11's list is quite long. For a sampling, here are the ones showing a Midland, Texas, address.

Action Wrecker Service
B & B Wrecker & Recovery
Basic Energy Services LP
Basin Auto Sales
Bi-Rite Auto Sales Inc
BMW of the Perian [sic] Basin
City of Midland / Code Administration
Farmers Insurance Group
GDR Investment Corp dba Golden Eagle Motors
Hubbard Certified
Linro Investments
Midland College Police Department
My Community Federal Credit Union
Nissan of Midland
Rogers Ford Sales Inc
Texas Car Company
Toyota of Midland
United Auto Sales

Stingray technology - spy tool mimics cell phone tower to capture call info - used by cops in L.A.

Many people were predicting that the tools developed and laws enacted to counter terrorism would be used by police in non-terrorism cases. They were right.

Stingray technology allows a portable device to mimic a cell phone tower. This link goes to a simple illustration showing how it works. Someone with a Stringray device will drive around with a computer and an antenna. They can either point the antenna in any direction and pick up information about phones within range. Or they can try to isolate a particular phone number by pinging it, then driving around to get enough information to triangulate the phone, thereby getting the phone's location. Source: How ‘Stingray’ Devices Work.

LA Weekly reports that the devices were obtained by the LAPD with funds provided by a Homeland Security grant for terrorism investigations. But they are now being used in routine criminal investigations to bypass cell phone service providers.

The problem is that the technology captures information not just about the phone belonging to the person investigated but about all the phones within range. And the issue is whether a full search warrant or some lesser court order should be required before the technology is used. At least one federal Magistrate thinks the technology, along with cell phone tower dumps, provide too much information about innocent people in the vicinity and its use should require probably cause and a search warrant.

Filed in "Nothing is private anymore."

Links:
LAPD Spied on 21 Using StingRay Anti-Terrorism Tool
LAPD using controversial spy tool in routine crime cases
LAPD Spy Device Taps Your Cell Phone
LAPD’s use of “Stingray” cell-phone monitoring tool revealed by FAC public records request
'Stingray' Phone Tracker Fuels Constitutional Clash
How ‘Stingray’ Devices Work
FBI Documents Shine Light on Clandestine Cellphone Tracking Tool
Judge Questions Tools That Grab Cellphone Data on Innocent People
Fighting unconstitutional stingray phone surveillance that tracks innocent people