Sleepless in Midland

The telephone -- transformed by technology from a useful communication device into a robocalling nuisance

Robocalls have ruined the phone. My land line receives as many as a dozen robocalls a day. My poorboy solution is to let the machine answer it, if the caller cares enough to leave a message. Too often, though, the caller is itself a recording, which is too stupid to simply hang up.

Anyway, this is simply a rant. And there doesn't seem to be any workable solution without serious work by the phone companies and lawmakers. In that regard, the FCC issued a notice in February titled Stop Unwanted Robocalls and Texts. To wit:

Unwanted calls – including illegal and spoofed robocalls - are the FCC's top consumer complaint and our top consumer protection priority. In addition, complaints are on the rise from consumers whose numbers are being spoofed or whose calls are being mistakenly blocked or labeled as a possible scam call by a robocall blocking app or service. The FCC is committed to doing what we can to protect you from these unwelcome situations and is cracking down on illegal calls in a variety of ways:

• Issuing hundreds of millions of dollars in enforcement actions against illegal robocallers.

• Allowing phone companies to block certain types of calls that are likely to be unlawful before they even reach consumers.

• Empowering consumers to use call blocking or labeling services for calls to their telephone number.

• Working to develop ways that phone companies can authenticate caller ID to reduce illegal spoofing.

• Making our complaint data available to enable better call blocking and labeling solutions.

Download the FCC Report on Robocalls (PDF; 2/14/19)

You can file a complaint with the FCC if you believe you have received an illegal call or text.

 

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3:29 PM 5/8/2019

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

Predictive policing -- police efforts to predict crime work but with limits

"Predictions are tricky, especially if they are about the future." The source of that quote is unknown, but its truth is obvious.

There's a pretty good definition of Predictive Policing at this article from last year: Is Predictive Policing the Law-Enforcement Tactic of the Future?. To wit:

Known as predictive policing, the practice involves analyzing data on the time, location and nature of past crimes, along with things such as geography and the weather, to gain insight into where and when future crime is most likely to occur and try to deter it before it happens.

When police departments try to predict crime they are successful, up to a point. The mapping of crime hot spots has been around for quite a while. And police departments have used it successfully to highlight areas where more patrols might be useful.

It has been well known for years that a small number of people commit most of the crimes. Those individuals become well known to police. (The issues of race and privacy permeate the atmosphere inhabited by police and citizens, but that's a topic for another day.) The issue of what to do to actually reduce crime is an ongoing problem.

Furthermore, new influences are emerging. Shibani Mahtani updates us on a recent development in Social Media Emerges as New Frontier in Fight Against Violent Crime. (It's behind a paywall but available here for free.) There we learn that police are grappling with the influence of social media on prospective murderers. It's not a good influence. Here's an excerpt:

Facebook and other platforms have emerged as new frontiers in the fight against violent crime that continues to grip major cities.

In Chicago, which is on track to have more than 600 murders for the second year in a row, a number it had been below for over a decade prior, community leaders and police say the immediacy of these platforms has played a major role in escalating disputes, while also providing more evidence that can aid arrests and convictions.

“It pours an accelerant on what was already there,” said Eric Sussman, the first assistant state’s attorney for Chicago’s Cook County.

The Chicago Police Department and prosecutors don’t keep data on how many instances of violence were provoked by an exchange on social media, but they say anecdotally that they are seeing a rise in the number of “petty conflicts that have leapt from social media platforms to violent crimes on the street.” A Wall Street Journal tally found at least 100 cases nationally where an act of violence was streamed on just one of these platforms, Facebook Live, since it was launched in early 2016.

“Unfortunately, in too many instances, these conflicts are resolved with a gun,” said a Chicago police spokesman.

Unfortunately, like so many law enforcement innovations, use of Facebook posts is more helpful in clearing crimes than actually preventing them. There are some who might suggest custom notification with warnings to people who pop up on the list of potential criminals. But if there is a disproportionate number of minorities in that group then it becomes problematic.

In any event, that quote at the top of this post still stands. Predictions are tricky, especially if they are about the future.

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.

23andme test sounds tempting but customers' dna information might go on the market

Who wouldn't want to know whether their body has the gene for Alzheimer's Disease? 23andme.com claims to be able to detect the gene that is associated with the late onset variety. And the price tag of $200 seems reasonable. But there's a catch.

Charles Seife addressed it a few years ago in 23andMe Is Terrifying, but Not for the Reasons the FDA Thinks. "The genetic-testing company's real goal is to hoard your personal data."

Oh sure, they have a privacy policy in which they promise not to do anything illegal with your data. But that leaves a pretty broad area uncovered.

Add to that the plague of hacking. The data will be on the internet for ease of customer access. And it will be secure only as long as their security stays ahead of the hackers. Unfortunately, it seem as though anything on the net is vulnerable -- hardly a week goes by in which we don't hear of some company or government entity getting hacked.

In any event, Here's some useful information pulled from alzinfo.org What you Should Know About Testing for Alzheimer’s Disease – New Guidelines. Excerpt:

The science remains imperfect and more research needs to be done, but experts are learning more about the role of genes in Alzheimer’s disease. Over all, the lifetime risk of getting Alzheimer’s is estimated at between 10 and 12 percent. So the average person in the general population living to 75 or 80 has about a one in 10 chance of getting Alzheimer’s. Having a mother, father, brother, sister or other close relative with the disease increases that risk two-fold.

[Early-onset familial Alzheimer’s] has been linked to specific genes, and inheriting a mutated gene from either parent – a parent has a 50 percent chance of passing it on to a child — almost always causes the disease to arise.

But the far more common late-onset Alzheimer’s, which occurs after age 60 to 65 and grows increasingly common in people in their 70s and 80s and older, is only partly influenced by genetics. It clusters in families only 15 to 25 percent of the time, and is generally referred to as sporadic Alzheimer’s. In these cases, having a mother or father, brother or sister, aunt or uncle, grandparent or other close relative with Alzheimer’s increases your risk for the disease. But a family history by no means guarantees that you will get it. ...

It’s possible to inherit one or two copies of APOE-E4, from one or both parents. Those who carry only one copy have a two- to three-fold increased risk compared to the general population, though the risk is uncertain and experts can’t assign a definitive number to it. In people who carry two copies of APOE-E4, the overall risk is increased two- to 10-fold. Some studies suggest that having the APOE-E4 gene may cause symptoms like memory loss to appear at an earlier age than if you didn’t carry the gene. And some forms of APOE, like APOE-E2, may actually help protect against Alzheimer’s. In addition to APOE-E4, other genes that increase risk have been identified, and more may be found, though APOE-E4 seems to be most important.

Insert your own memory loss joke here.

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.

123456 holds onto 1st place as most used password

It's always fun to see the list of most common passwords gleaned from published lists of purloined passwords. The most recent top 25 can be found at teamsid.com.

The top two maintained their positions on the list: "123456" and "password." And here's a new one on the list at #24: "passw0rd." Get it? Very clever. They used a zero instead of an o. The program probably required at least one number or character other than letters. Problem solved!

Of course, most of the stuff we have to seal with a password isn't worth stealing anyway. But it's like locking a car door. There may be nothing in there, but the idea of a thief browsing around in our personal space can be disturbing -- even more so knowing they can change the lock.

Via Washingtonpost.com which contained an easily copied HTML list of those 25, to wit:

1) 123456
2) password
3) 12345678
4) qwerty
5) 12345
6) 123456789
7) football
8) 1234
9) 1234567
10) baseball
11) welcome
12) 1234567890
13) abc123
14) 111111
15) 1qaz2wsx
16) dragon
17) master
18) monkey
19) letmein
20) login
21) princess
22) qwertyuiop
23) solo
24) passw0rd (using zero)
25) starwars

I had to look up letmein. Sounded foreign. Nope. Let me in. Doh!

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.

Google, Gmail and privacy

Anyone with a healthy dose of skepticism has been avoiding Google products for quite some time. And it's not that surprising to see a privacy advocate issue a news release like this: Google Tells Court You Cannot Expect Privacy When Sending Messages to Gmail -- People Who Care About Privacy Should Not Use Service, Consumer Watchdog Says. This admission from Google was supplied in a court filing in a class action suit alleging that Google violated wiretap laws by collecting information from emails sent to or from Gmail users. Via Naked Security.

Google defends their process by contending that their automated system of extracting email content in order to target ads at users is a common business practice which other free email services are doing and that they've disclosed all of this to their users, who, by the way, have consented to it.

The suit may get dragged out for a long time, or it could get dismissed by the judge, or maybe Google will end up settling it by agreeing to a few minor changes to their terms of privacy plus a few million dollars paid to the plaintiffs' attorneys.

But regardless of the outcome, there remains the issue of trust. Google doesn't say how long they store the emails, although we can hope that the duration is at least limited by the life of the equipment on which it is stored. Google's filing says they have 400 million Gmail users, and apparently those users are satisfied with it. But it's good bet that very few have actually read the agreement they accepted when they signed on. They merely accept whatever Google does in exchange for free email.

Privacy has been eroding for a long time, and in the last ten years that erosion has drastically accelerated. And recent disclosures tell us that our emails are legally available to government agencies. So there's another level of trust required if we are to believe that said agencies will not use the data to or detriment.

What should we do? There's a good article describing how to get Google out of your life -- see How I divorced Google. Some of the things he suggests are fairly common place, such as removing and blocking cookies and trackers. Others are more complicated, like redirecting hosts files.

As for search engines, the author suggests DuckDuckGo.com because they don't retain or forward any information about the user. I like the Netherlands based Ixquick.com because they say right up front that they won't comply with Prism.

But the most obvious suggestion is to simply avoid Google products.