Yet Another Security Blog

One of the provisions of the GDPR is that you can request all data about you that a company has.  Now I suspect that much of this is obfuscated even from the company so they can not actually comply at this time.  This case is one in which someone requested their data but also got the data of someone else.  This has a couple of different implications.  First, someones life could be ruined by the disclosure, but secondly, as I have pointed out before, this data is used for all kinds of things.  What happens if your data and that of someone else get intermixed?  How would you ever know?  Did you get turned down for that loan because of something you did or because of something another person did? https://threatpost.com/amazon-1700-alexa-voice-recordings/140201/

Facebook has filed 3 patents that together will help their AI figure out where you are going.  I have noticed that Way's now tells me that on this day you normally go X would you like to get directions to X?  I suspect this is something that many companies will offer in the future.  To get this information though, they have to have a good idea of who you are and what your travel patters are. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/facebook-location-data-prediction-patent Offline Trajectories patenet http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220180352383%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20180352383&RS=DN/20180352383 Location Prediction Patent: http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?docid=10129705&PageNum=17&IDKey=64AFEDB6BBD7 Predicting Locations and movements based on historic locations patent: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO...

Once again we see that a company is collecting and storing all kinds of personal data as the price you pay for using their service.  While Moviepass says in its terms of service that it is only collecting information during the movie, their CEO indicates that they actually collect data before and after so they can build a bigger picture of who their customers are and provide a better exerience. As the linked article points out, this could be a treasure trove to a hacker who gains access.  What if a government entity issues a search warrant?  Is it for sale?  http://bgr.com/2018/03/06/moviepass-location-tracking-data-explained/

China gives us a glimpse in to where the world is going.  Their big data analytics are more out there than most, but honestly, if we were honest with ourselves we know many companies the world over are already looking at our social as well as political and financial interactions.  At the end, this article brings up another intriguing idea.  Insurance has been the primary way we hedge against the financial issues involved in disasters big and small.  For over 100 years now most insurance has been a pooled risk type of product.  It looked at others who were kind of like you.  If you are a deep sea fisher you are lumped in with other deep sea fishermen.  If you are a computer programmer you are lumped with them.  Now, insurance companies can put trackers on your phone and on your car and look at your individual risk.  They can look at all your digital footprint.  In many cases they can even see your health information.  In general, we...

It might surprise you to know that you don't own your own image.  How you look, is not legally protected.  The way the paparazzi make their money is by taking photos of others often without their consent.  Legally, there is little people can do to stop this and there are only very narrowly defined laws to stop it.  In general, in the United States at least, the highest law (the US Constitution) says that a persons right to free speech should be preserved at most any cost.  That brings us to new technology.  A reddit user named DeepFake started uploading hyper-realistic porn with famous faces on different bodies.  The technology used was modified in to an app that now let's anyone with even a moderately powerful system create images and movies with the face of one person on the body of another.  The implications outside of creating fake porn are enormous.  First, what if the fake porn was no some famous actor or actress but rather your daugh...

One of my consistent rants is that we no longer own our image.  When I first started going to college in the 80's one of my legal type classes discussed the fact that people who enter certain professions (actors, artists, politicians, reporters, etc.) give up the right to have a private life.  Their every move is watched and analyzed.  People make judgements on them based solely on data and not on who they are. These days this goes for all of us.  We are now traced from prenatal to well after death.  We have lost our individuality and are now part of a vast sea of data owned by companies.  People fear the government getting too much information, but what happens when the one who owns your data is a private organization?  If they loose it what legal recourse do you have?  And, as I have pointed out before, what happens if the government gains access to it? The Hill has an article about both the pros and cons of this new world we find ourselves i...