Your own personalised stalker
It always seemed slightly creepy that your computer shows advertising that is strangely accurately targeted at things you might have been interested in. On the surface, that seems quite useful. If you have to tolerate ads on your screen, at least having them show things you were interested in seems helpful.
Instead, we wonder how the system knows. It feels like a breach of our privacy.
It all starts when you install an app, and it pops up a question asking for permission to use your location, and/or your camera and/or your microphone.
This is useful for advertisers. For example, they can use your location. If the app reports this back to the content provider, they can match up your location and compare you to other people nearby. If you tend to go to the same places as other people, you are probably interested in the same things, so an advertiser might use that assumption to present advertising to you, or other people that you spend time with.
That does sound a bit overreaching, but we reluctantly agree to the presented terms simply because we want to use the app. If that is a condition of use, and we want to use the app, then we agree.
So, now we are seeing consumers getting the choice to push back.
Apple
Now, with iOS15, Apple are saying that you will get to see what apps are accessing your data. You will be able to see when an app used that permission, and there it was sent to. Whether that list of third party sites is any use or not is meaningful is unclear.
Not quite as advanced but following quickly behind is Google Android. With Android 12, you will have the option to de-personalise your data. They will still track usage, but won’t link it back to you.
Is there any truth to the rumour that your phone or TV is listening to you, and presented content based on private conversations it overhears?
Given how poor the voice recognition is on phones , cars, or tools like Alexa or Siri, its pretty evident this can’t be reality. If it, is, then heaven only knows what it thinks it’s hearing. The voice recognition tools are getting better all the time, but there is a long way to go.
Don’t accidentally throw away your WiFi!
Canon just sent out a warning. Wipe your old printers before selling/discarding them! It seems that printer technicians can access the memory and go into settings to uncover old Wifi passwords. Their advisory seems to suggest wiping the settings a couple of times...
REWATCH – Webinar – Meet the Microsoft Teams 2.0
We rely on Teams for so much and now, Microsoft are releasing a major update to it. Teams has been changing in front us, and adding new features, but this new version means that change is accelerating. Why are Microsoft changing it? What is 'new' in it, and what can...
Avoiding Subscription Bombs
If 10,000 emails suddenly flooded your inbox, what would you do? Suddenly any real messages will be lost in the blitz of spam that's overloading your screen. It is hard enough to delete all those messages, let alone filter out the genuine ones from the flood. This...
Gotcha!
"GROUP-IB" are a Singapore-based cyber-security provider. They go deep into the cyber-crime sphere and it's paid off. After 30+ attacks, and over $US30M stolen, "OPERA1ER" have been caught! They describe a bad actor who, from 2019, had used the same MO over and...
Look before you click
The latest trend in phishing is pictures! It might be a thumb nail of a picture - a cute pet, interesting garden scene, or some other curiosity. It might be in the form of advertisement. Maybe it is offering a time sensitive, and urgent deal. It might even be a...
REWATCH Cyber Lessons from the field.
What can we learn from recent NZ cyber-events? What is real and what is hyperbole? Scroll down for the MFA revelation - it will surprise you!Introducing Campbell McKenzie from Incident Response, the team called in after cyber-events to help clean up and manage the...
Get ready for your AI Copilot
We’re excited about Copilot. It was announced a few weeks ago, Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot – your copilot for work - The Official Microsoft Blog and promises to help us do what Microsoft call ‘the drudgery of work on tasks that zap our time, creativity and...
Free AI images: Have you tried Microsoft Designer yet?
What is Microsoft Designer? If you have had fun with ChatGPT, (ChatGPT, write me a security policy in the theme of a country and western ballad) then you’ll love experimenting with Microsoft Designer. Like ChatGPT, designer brings AI to the desktop, in this case to...
A move to the cloud for TBB: Kinetics advances prominent law firm’s digital journey
Faced with a legacy practice management system coming towards end of support, Auckland city firm TBB tested the market and decided on partnering with Kinetics for the delivery of a replacement. Through the engagement, Kinetics has not only successfully migrated TBB to...
REWATCH Did you know that, on average, 1.2 million Microsoft accounts get compromised every month?
Did you know that, on average, 1.2 million Microsoft accounts get compromised every month? According to Microsoft, 99.9% of hacked accounts didn't use MFA, and only 11% of all accounts have MFA enabled. The average cost of a ransomware security breach is $4.62...