Laura’s Lens

“Kinsa sells its data to other companies under the name Kinsa Insights. While Mr. Singh declined to share the names of other customers, citing confidentiality agreements, he said other companies had used the data to target advertising.”

“I can just think of how cigarette and alcohol companies could use strategies like this, or other industries that could really have more harmful effects on people,” [Christine Bannan, the consumer protection counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center] said.

Read ‘This Thermometer Tells Your Temperature, Then Tells Firms Where to Advertise’.

“In this opinion piece, activist Aral Balkan says we’re living in a world where data companies have become factory farms for human beings.”

Aral recorded this video with BBC Ideas back in July. It gives a brief introduction to surveillance capitalism, complete with animation.

Read ‘Surveillance capitalism has led us into a dystopia’.

“To observers, these might seem like easily avoidable errors, but to Facebook, whose very identity and foundational mandate is the instinctual drive to amass personal data, they make perfect sense.”

Read ‘Facebook Isn’t Sorry — It Just Wants Your Data’.

“What is at stake here isn’t privacy, the right not to be observed. It’s how companies can use our data to invisibly shunt us in directions that may benefit them more than us.”

Read ‘Just Don’t Call It Privacy’.

“Facebook is not content to use the contact information you willingly put into your Facebook profile for advertising. It is also using contact information you handed over for security purposes and contact information you didn’t hand over at all, but that was collected from other people’s contact books, a hidden layer of details Facebook has about you that I’ve come to call “shadow contact information.”

Read ‘Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access to Your Shadow Contact Information’.

“Google Inc. told lawmakers it continues to allow other companies to scan and share data from Gmail accounts… The company also disclosed that app developers generally are free to share the data with others”

Read ‘Google Says It Continues to Allow Apps to Scan Data From Gmail Accounts’.

“At the end of the day, I sold my company,” Acton says. “I sold my users’ privacy to a larger benefit. I made a choice and a compromise. And I live with that every day.”

A fascinating read that doesn’t exactly paint Acton as a hero (he’s a billionaire—he’s got more money than he could ever possibly need, he never really criticises Facebook) but does show Facebook’s ruthless greed.

Read ‘WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton Gives The Inside Story On #DeleteFacebook’.

Written by Jack Morse on Mashable.

“Notably, these protections won’t do privacy-conscious consumers any good while they’re logged into Facebook, but it will help to protect them from the social network’s ever-expanding grasp while they’re logged out.”

Read ‘Apple moves to thwart Facebook tracking’ on the Mashable site.

Caroline Wilson Palow, General Counsel at Privacy International, said:

“Today’s judgment rightly criticises the UK’s bulk interception regime for giving far too much leeway to the intelligence agencies to choose who to spy on and when. It confirms that just because it is technically feasible to intercept all of our personal communications, it does not mean that it is lawful to do so.

The judgment also rightly recognises that collecting communications data - the who, what, and where of our communications - is as intrusive as collecting the content. This is a significant and important enhancement of our privacy protections.”

Read ‘Campaigners win vital battle against UK mass surveillance at European Court of Human Rights’.

“Since Feedbin is 100% funded by paying customers, I can focus solely on making the best product possible without compromises. Therefore, Feedbin can be private by default.”

Read ‘Feedbin: Private by Default’.