Link

News+: How to Stay Safe and Secure Online

Andrew Orr ·

In the latest issue of Mac Format magazine, Adam Banks writes a guide on how to stay safe online. This is a PDF version and on page 66.

Using a Mac makes you safer than average when going online. That’s partly because of Apple’s efforts to secure the operating system; partly because the Mac App Store gives you somewhere to get most of your third-party software safely. It’s also partly because bad actors – in the security industry sense, not the Hollyoaks sense – tend to be less interested in targeting macOS. But that doesn’t mean either you or your Mac can’t get fooled. Know your way around the common risks and basic protections to keep yourself out of harm’s way.

This is part of Andrew’s News+ series, where he shares a magazine every Friday to help people discover good content in Apple News+.

Link

Google's New reCAPTCHA is an Invisible Tracking Beacon

Andrew Orr ·

Google’s reCAPTCHA bot detector is now an invisible web beacon and currently on over 650,000 websites.

With reCaptcha v3, technology consultant Marcos Perona and Akrout’s tests both found that their reCaptcha scores were always low risk when they visited a test website on a browser where they were already logged into a Google account. Alternatively, if they went to the test website from a private browser like Tor or a VPN, their scores were high risk.

Link

DeepNude App That Could Undress Women Taken Offline

Andrew Orr ·

Yesterday Vice reported on an app called DeepNude. It used machine learning to turn a clothed photo of a women into a naked version. It has since been taken offline.

The developers have now removed the software from the web saying the world was not ready for it. “The probability that people will misuse it is too high,” wrote the programmers in a message on their Twitter feed. “We don’t want to make money this way.” The developers also urged people who had a copy not to share it, although the app will still work for anyone who owns it.

I mean, if we’re being pedantic, you can’t really misuse technology specifically designed for ill intentions unless you try to use it for good intentions, if that’s even possible.

Link

Trump Administration Talking About Banning Encryption

Andrew Orr ·

Politico reports that the Trump administration is in talks about banning encryption, or at least certain forms of it that law enforcement can’t crack.

The encryption challenge, which the government calls “going dark,” was the focus of a National Security Council meeting Wednesday morning that included the No. 2 officials from several key agencies, according to three people familiar with the matter…Senior officials debated whether to ask Congress to effectively outlaw end-to-end encryption, which scrambles data so that only its sender and recipient can read it…

Great. I can’t wait for Russia and China to intercept all of our insecure communications.

Link

A Green New Deal For Big Tech

Charlotte Henry ·

Under Tim Cook and Lisa Jackson’s leadership, Apple has prided its self on its contribution to tackling climate change. However, there is still a lot of tech firms could do. Fast Company looked at what they could learn from the Green New Deal.

Given that many corporations aren’t as focused on sustainability, the tech companies’ efforts to reduce emissions appear at first to be a good track record. But as the fight against climate change heats up, the big tech companies’ claims and commitments still are not enough to make an impact on a widening emissions gap… And while much of that growth in emissions can be attributed to a range of corporate bad actors, some leaders in the climate community think tech companies are not doing enough to use their clout and tech prowess to make real change.