As I wrote recently, data scientists have been able to decode unstructured data to accurately predict where violence will occur in Afghanistan. Now, they can also mine unstructured data to determine the identity of a document’s writer. All of us, it seems, have a “write-print” as unique as our fingerprint.
Microsoft stunned the online ad business earlier this year with its announcement that the Internet Explorer 10 browser, when launched, would be set to a default "Do Not Track" position, frustrating advertisers who want to target users based on their browsing history.
But the ad biz can breathe easy: IE10 contains a gaping flaw that will allow any advertiser to ignore its DNT signal, multiple sources tell us.
URL shorteners are such a wonderful thing: they not only make URLs shorter (obviously), but they also give away some juicy details from those who use them when pushing online campaigns. Services like bit.ly, goo.gl, and others, provide publicly-viewable statistics you can often gleen valuable insight from. In this post, I'm going not only dive into some great URL shortener research methods, but I'm also going to show you how to use Google to find some of these links from your competitors! Results will inevitably vary, but the methods should still prove useful, regardless.
Twitter today renewed its privacy defense of a user accused of disorderly conduct during an Occupy Wall Street protest last October, telling a New York appeals court that police failed to comply with the U.S. Constitution's safeguards when trying to access his account.
A lower court's ruling in June that user "tweets are unprotected by the federal and New York constitutions is still erroneous," Twitter said in a brief filed this morning.
Brain hacking is a hot subject right now and has moved from science fiction into reality. At the Usenix Security Symposium, one mind hack looked to create better security and an “unbreakable crypto” system; another brain hack focused on threats to privacy by extracting secrets with brain computer interfaces. Yet other scientists have created a helmet to make an Inception-like world in which reality can be manipulated.
Your exposure on social networks can enable a rather unusual solution for general computing applications.
For example, a future computer system may question you about who you know and who you do not and grant you access to the system based on your answers.
An ad agency is testing a new app that uses strategically placed cameras, facial recognition tools, and Facebook histories to offer targeted local deals.
The system, dubbed Facedeals, uses cameras placed at the doors of participating stores and facial recognition software to identify users of the app and then offer them customized deals based on their history of likes and interests on Facebook.
This may or may not be news to you, but Facebook is recording your location – specifically, wherever you are every time you log in to the service.
In fact, this is one of the bits of information the social network maintains in your complete Facebook log. (If you are a resident of the European Union, you can request a copy of that file. If you’re on this side of the pond, you’re out of luck, amigo.)
Known computer security researcher Nadim Kobeissi has posted up some interesting information on the behavior of Windows 8 whenever you install an application. According to some quick researching he did, the Windows SmartScreen feature reports every application a user installs to Microsoft, and does so in a way that could be intercepted by malicious hackers.
Google, which settled a privacy case with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last week, is building a "red team" dedicated to solving privacy problems.
The team will be focused on tracking down and fixing privacy risks within the company's products, services, and businesses processes. Its existence came to light after a Google posted a job advertisement seeking a "Data Privacy Engineer, Privacy Red Team".
