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3 votes
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Apple’s ad-targeting crackdown shakes up ad market
22 votes -
How to fight back against Google AMP as a web user and a web developer
28 votes -
Behind the one-way mirror: A deep dive into the technology of corporate surveillance
9 votes -
The citizen scientist who finds killers from her couch: How CeCe Moore is using her genetic knowledge to expose murderers
8 votes -
Multiple Fortinet products communicate with FortiGuard services while only "encrypting" sensitive user data using XOR with a hardcoded key
9 votes -
The voting on topics and comments now ends when they're 30 days old and all individual vote records are deleted, retaining only the count
This is a privacy-related update that I've always intended to implement on Tildes, and I finally spent some time on it this week. Keeping eternal records of everything that every user ever voted...
This is a privacy-related update that I've always intended to implement on Tildes, and I finally spent some time on it this week.
Keeping eternal records of everything that every user ever voted on is some of the most sensitive data that sites with a voting system have. Your voting history says a huge amount about you, your interests and opinions, and can even serve as a decent proxy for showing what times you were active on the site, what posts you were reading, and how long you spent reading the comments on each of them. In exchange for these major privacy implications, you get the tiny benefit of being able to tell which old posts you voted on (if you even go back to old posts).
So now, to match up with Tildes's general approach of deleting as much sensitive data as possible after 30 days, the voting on posts closes when they're 30 days old. After a post's voting is closed, the records of which individual users voted on that post are deleted, but the count of how many votes there were is kept. So old posts will continue showing their same "scores" exactly the same as before, but there will be no record of which individual users cast those votes.
However, this isn't a purely positive update: the main downside is that the voting does need to be closed (otherwise there would be no way to prevent people from voting again after their first vote is deleted), which prevents the occasionally useful ability to vote on old topics or comments. Overall though, voting on older posts is extremely rare, with less than 1% of the votes on Tildes ever made on something that was over 30 days old at the time of voting.
When the "delete old sensitive data" job runs for the first time after this update later today, 97% of the voting data in the database will be deleted. That's a massive decrease in the amount of sensitive data the site is retaining, and something that most sites would never consider doing, because of the value of that data for behavior analysis and ad-targeting.
121 votes -
Private Internet Access VPN acquired by Kape Technologies for US$127.6 million
30 votes -
A new tracking technique using CNAME aliases to circumvent third-party cookie restrictions is blockable using a Firefox DNS API, but not in Chrome
18 votes -
Android exploit of system camera apps enabled a malicious app to record and upload photos, video and audio with only "storage" permission
10 votes -
Firefox’s fight for the future of the web: With Google’s Chrome dominating the market, not-for-profit rival Mozilla is staking a comeback on its dedication to privacy
49 votes -
Would you pay for social media platforms and search engines if it meant they would not have any advertising or data collection?
(Someone posted a thread like this but for triple-a videogames rather than software and people said no so I wonder if software is gonna be different.) If you would or not, why? If you would, how...
(Someone posted a thread like this but for triple-a videogames rather than software and people said no so I wonder if software is gonna be different.)
If you would or not, why? If you would, how much? What would be the side effects of this change if it was applied on a mass scale? What would be the potential drawbacks?
Edit: Can also apply to video-sharing platforms or forums or instant messengers any software as long as it serves a general purpose and complies with what's mentioned above.
26 votes -
What half of iPhone users don’t know about their privacy
18 votes -
Google is an emerging health-care juggernaut, and privacy laws weren’t written to keep up
14 votes -
Google’s secret ‘Project Nightingale’ gathers personal health data on millions of Americans
12 votes -
YouTube is requiring all new and existing videos be marked as "Made for Kids" if they're intended for children, which will disable personalized ads, end screens, comments, and more
16 votes -
Interpreting GDPR data requests: Why does British Airways need to know that I'm 98% LGBT?
10 votes -
Smart TVs collect data for political-advertising use
16 votes -
Give Firefox a chance for a faster, calmer and distraction-free internet
27 votes -
In China, surge in students informing on professors
8 votes -
Almost 7000 pages of leaked Facebook documents show how they leveraged user data to fight rivals and help friends
15 votes -
The fantasy of opting out
16 votes -
Two former Twitter employees charged with spying on behalf of Saudi Arabia
9 votes -
“Affordances” - A new science-fiction short story by Cory Doctorow about algorithmic bias
7 votes -
ISPs lied to Congress to spread confusion about encrypted DNS, Mozilla says
15 votes -
Chinese professor sues wildlife park after it introduces facial recognition entry system
6 votes -
Australia's idiotic war on porn returns, this time using facial recognition
16 votes -
Think you’re anonymous online? A third of popular websites are ‘fingerprinting’ you.
18 votes -
NSO exploited WhatsApp to hack at least 1400 phones and spy on top government officials at US allies
16 votes -
Australia wants to use face recognition for porn age verification
22 votes -
What are people’s thoughts on Edward Snowden?
So what are your thoughts on him do you like him dislike him what do you think about the things he says and what he does
20 votes -
New release: Tails 4.0
12 votes -
Fifty ways to leak your data: An exploration of apps’ circumvention of the Android permissions system
12 votes -
Student tracking, secret scores: How college admissions offices rank prospects before they apply
15 votes -
Google’s auto-delete tools are practically worthless for privacy
9 votes -
How safe is Apple’s Safe Browsing?
9 votes -
An analysis of the implications of using Google's G Suite products in a newsroom
10 votes -
Into the web multiverse
6 votes -
Facebook's dating service is full of red flags
19 votes -
US Attorney General and officials from UK and Australia will ask Facebook to halt plans for end-to-end encryption in its messaging apps
10 votes -
Social Networks or Social Nightmares? with Roger McNamee, Max Schrems and Evgeny Morozov
3 votes -
DoorDash data breach - Affects approximately 4.9 million consumers, Dashers, and merchants who joined before April 6, 2018
12 votes -
Centralised DNS-over-HTTPS is bad for privacy, in 2019 and beyond
7 votes -
Ring says it doesn't use facial recognition, but it has “a head of face recognition research”
16 votes -
Facebook has suspended tens of thousands of apps as part of their ongoing investigation into data misuse
8 votes -
Facebook’s suspension of ‘tens of thousands’ of apps reveals wider privacy issues
5 votes -
What’s the status on anonymous comments?
A long time ago, there was a discussion about anonymous comment posting. I’d link it if I wasn’t typing at mobile, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find. How did things about anonymous posting...
A long time ago, there was a discussion about anonymous comment posting. I’d link it if I wasn’t typing at mobile, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find.
How did things about anonymous posting evolve, @Deimos? Do you plan to eventually make something like this?
There are plenty of topics such as this one which would IMO strongly benefit from anonymous comments - I can definitely see much higher participation if that was the case.
Regarding the abuse, I won’t reiterate all the points made in the thread [todo: link] and purposed solutions, but what about turning anonymous posting on only in some topics, perhaps where the topic author manually turned them on? We could have them for sensitive topics while holding people accountable for their words in all the political topics.
14 votes -
University of Alabama uses location-tracking phone app to know who leaves football games early
8 votes -
Firefox’s test pilot program returns with Firefox Private Network beta
11 votes -
Face recognition, bad people and bad data
6 votes