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Location is One of The Big Factors in Advertising

Andrew Orr ·

Jennifer Jolly wrote an article wondering if Siri was spying on her because she began to see ads in Spanish after her husband began speaking Spanish at home, within “earshot” of her iPad. The answer is, of course, no. In her buried lede she tells us that she had just moved to a predominantly Spanish-speaking part of Oakland California. It seems reasonable to me that you would see Spanish ads in a Spanish area. Although I’m sure the device’s language is a factor. We did have news last year that contractors listened to some snippets of Siri recordings, but that was to improve the service and not sell ads. Meanwhile, if you turn on Limit Ad Tracking in Settings, your advertising identifier is zeroed. After that, location becomes one of the big factors in advertising.

And Apple says it engineers its devices to protect user privacy. When it comes to Siri, which is integrated in nearly every Apple device, the assistant is designed to activate only after the wake word (“Hey, Siri”) or a waking action is completed, Apple says.

Podcast

One Eight Hundredth Geek Out! – Mac Geek Gab 800

John F. Braun & Dave Hamilton · · 2 Comments

What to do for the eight hundredth episode? Share tips, answer your questions, and solve your problems, of course! Today learn about HDMI adapters, iOS backups, mounting network shares, Copying from Screenshots, and a cool edit to the iOS Share Sheet. What more can you ask for? Well, maybe a rant about Neil Young, too! Listen and learn five new things with John F. Braun and Dave Hamilton, that’s what!

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CERN Replaces Facebook Workplace With Open Source

Andrew Orr ·

CERN is ending its trial of Facebook Workplace and replacing it with open source alternatives, like Mattermost and Discourse.

Facebook Workplace is Facebook’s corporate-focused product for internal real-time communication and related communication needs within organizations. CERN had been making use of Facebook Workplace and in addition to data privacy concerns, they were recently confronted with either paying Facebook or losing administrative rights, no more single sign-on access, and Facebook having access to their internal data. But now they have assembled their own set of software packages to fill the void by abandoning Facebook Workplace.

I hope to see more of this. Facebook is the Fox News of social media. Like The Mac Observer’s editor-in-chief Bryan Chaffin says: “Death by a thousand paper cuts.”

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Lindsey Graham’s Draft Bill Punishes Companies Using End-to-End Encryption

Andrew Orr ·

Senator Lindsey Graham is drafting a bill [PDF] that could penalize companies using end-to-end encryption.

Although the measure doesn’t directly mention encryption, it would require that companies work with law enforcement to identify, remove, report and preserve evidence related to child exploitation — which critics said would be impossible to do for services such as WhatsApp that are encrypted from end-to-end.

If technology companies don’t certify that they are following the best practices set by the 15-member commission, they would lose the legal immunity they currently enjoy under Section 230 relating to child exploitation and abuse laws. That would open the door to lawsuits for “reckless” violations of those laws, a lower standard than contained in current statutes.

Of all the dumb things this administration has done, attacking encryption is a doozy. It’s not clear how much this would impact Apple, since the company does in fact scan for child abuse images. But iMessage and a few other services are end-to-end encrypted.