Category Archives: data collection

Differences in App Security/Privacy Based on Country

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Depending on where you are when you download your Android apps, it might collect more or less data about you.

The apps we downloaded from Google Play also showed differences based on country in their security and privacy capabilities. One hundred twenty-seven apps varied in what the apps were allowed to access on users’ mobile phones, 49 of which had additional permissions deemed “dangerous” by Google. Apps in Bahrain, Tunisia and Canada requested the most additional dangerous permissions.

Three VPN apps enable clear text communication in some countries, which allows unauthorized access to users’ communications. One hundred and eighteen apps varied in the number of ad trackers included in an app in some countries, with the categories Games, Entertainment and Social, with Iran and Ukraine having the most increases in the number of ad trackers compared to the baseline number common to all countries…

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Facebook Has No Idea What Data It Has

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This is from a court deposition:

Facebook’s stonewalling has been revealing on its own, providing variations on the same theme: It has amassed so much data on so many billions of people and organized it so confusingly that full transparency is impossible on a technical level. In the March 2022 hearing, Zarashaw and Steven Elia, a software engineering manager, described Facebook as a data-processing apparatus so complex that it defies understanding from within. The hearing amounted to two high-ranking engineers at one of the most powerful and resource-flush engineering outfits in history describing their product as an unknowable machine…

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What’s polluting your data lake?

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A data lake is a large system of files and unstructured data collected from many, untrusted sources, stored and dispensed for business services, and is susceptible to malware pollution. As enterprises continue to produce, collect, and store more data, … Continue reading What’s polluting your data lake?→

Websites that Collect Your Data as You Type

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A surprising number of websites include JavaScript keyloggers that collect everything you type as you type it, not just when you submit a form.

Researchers from KU Leuven, Radboud University, and University of Lausanne crawled and analyzed the top 100,000 websites, looking at scenarios in which a user is visiting a site while in the European Union and visiting a site from the United States. They found that 1,844 websites gathered an EU user’s email address without their consent, and a staggering 2,950 logged a US user’s email in some form. Many of the sites seemingly do not intend to conduct the data-logging but incorporate third-party marketing and analytics services that cause the behavior…

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The challenges of consumer data and PII usage

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In this Help Net Security video, Nong Li, CEO at Okera, talks about the challenges of using and managing consumer data and PII. As consumer and PII data get tracked more and more, businesses can drive value and transform how they operate by leveraging … Continue reading The challenges of consumer data and PII usage→

Know which way the wind blows, whether weather boosts your mood

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As a quantified-self experiment, [Ayan] has tracked several daily habits and moods for a couple of years and discovered some insights. Too much coffee is followed by anxiety while listening …read more Continue reading Know which way the wind blows, whether weather boosts your mood→

Organizations need to evolve their data management strategy

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IDC predicts that, over the next five years, more than 80% of the data collected by organizations will be unstructured data, and that will only continue to grow 40-50% per year for most enterprises. With the sheer volume of unstructured data yet to be … Continue reading Organizations need to evolve their data management strategy→

Data privacy laws are an opportunity to become more honest in reaching your target audience

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Data privacy regulations are designed to give consumers more transparency into and control over how their data is collected, shared and used, especially as more consumers grow concerned about how their data is accessed and used by big data companies. A… Continue reading Data privacy laws are an opportunity to become more honest in reaching your target audience→