Tag: Data mining

Some Top 100,000 Websites Collect Everything You Type—Before You Hit Submit | Ars Technica

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When you sign up for a newsletter, make a hotel reservation, or check out online, you probably take for granted that if you mistype your email address three times or change your mind and X out of the page, it doesn’t matter. Nothing actually happens until you hit the Submit button, right? Well, maybe not. As with so many assumptions about the web, this isn’t always the case, according to new research: A surprising number of websites are collecting some or all of your data as you type it into…

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Governments Could Track COVID-19 Lockdowns Through Social Media Posts | CNET

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A research group scrapes more than 500,000 Instagram profiles in Italy to see if people abiding by the quarantine. The Italian government enforcing its nationwide lockdown measures to control the spread of the coronavirus outbreak. Your posts on social media have been harvested for advertising. They’ve been taken to build up a massive facial recognition database. Now, that same data could be used by companies and governments to help maintain quarantines during the coronavirus outbreak. Ghost Data, a research group in Italy and the US, collected more than half a…

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The FBI Wants To Collect Social Media Data From Instagram, Facebook, And Twitter | Digital Trends

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The FBI is looking for a partner to collect data from your social media profiles, which could pit it against new privacy policies Facebook agreed to as part of its $5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). A request for proposal posted on Aug. 8 reveals that the FBI wants to hire a third party contractor to help it scrape to social media data “to proactively identify and reactively monitor threats to the United States and its interests.” The document was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.…

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More Than 1,000 Android Apps Harvest Data Even After You Deny Permissions | CNET

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Permissions on Android apps are intended to be gatekeepers for how much data your device gives up. If you don’t want a flashlight app to be able to read through your call logs, you should be able to deny that access. But even when you say no, many apps find a way around: Researchers discovered more than 1,000 apps that skirted restrictions, allowing them to gather precise geolocation data and phone identifiers behind your back. Read full story here: More Than 1,000 Android Apps Harvest Data Even After You Deny…

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Who Has Your Data? Researchers Scrutinize Apps For Undisclosed Ties To Advertisers, Analytics Companies | CBC News

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If you want to better understand how an app or a service plans to use your personal information, its privacy policy is often a good place to start. But a recent study found there can be a gap between what’s described in that privacy policy, and what the app actually collects and shares. An analysis by University of Toronto researchers found hundreds of Android apps that disclosed the collection of personal information for the app developer’s own purposes — but, at the same time, didn’t disclose the presence of third-party…

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A Secretive Silicon Valley Tech Giant Set Up Shop In Canada. But What Does It Do? – Technology & Science – CBC News

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It’s one of the most valuable and secretive technology companies in Silicon Valley: Palantir Technologies, a developer of data mining software used by spies, banks and some of the biggest companies in the world. The company was co-founded in 2004 by billionaire Peter Thiel — previously the co-founder of PayPal — and now an adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump. Financial institutions are said to use Palantir’s software to detect fraud and cyberattacks, while pharmaceutical researchers have been sold on its potential to more speedily discover new drugs. Hershey says…

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