The Internet never forgets

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Recently Facebook released a tool called Off-Facebook Activity, which allows you to review and remove data collected by Facebook from other sites. Facebook of course uses this information to help tailor personalized advertising. That's the most generous explanation of the purpose of this data. Facebook has of course been criticized in the past for its use of user data, and it lax controls over that data. The Cambridge Analytica scandal being the most famous example. Facebook has had ways for you to look at the data from its own site, which it rightly calls your information (facebook.com/your_information/). You can download your data, although there doesn't seem to be a way to delete things like your search history. Oddly enough there is a category called Search History, although it doesn't really show you your search history as much as all of your activity (which pages you liked, which posts you commented on, etc.): Google has for some years allowed users to manage their browsing data and other related private information (through the My Activity tool), including the deletion of your entire history. Not the most user-friendly tool, there are many different things you would need to turn off to get Google…

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What ever happened to the Open Handset Alliance?

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What ever happened to the Open Handset Alliance (OHA)? Some of you are probably scratching your heads wondering that the OHA is to being with, and that's not so surprising. What you might be shocked to know is that, officially, the OHA is the organization that guides the development of the Android operating system. You can be excused for thinking Android was a product of Google. The OHA hasn't even bothered to update their own web site since 2011. The last phone manufacturer to join the OHA did so in 2009 (Acer). Even when a major breach of the OHA partnership emerged in 2012 (the launch of a phone by OHA member Acer running an 'incompatible' version of Android) it was Google itself which responded, not the OHA. Interestingly, in Google's response, it does mention the OHA and the responsibilities of its members. So what happened? The Mobile World in 2007-2008 Back in 2007 when the OHA was launched, we were living in a very different mobile world. The most popular phones, by a far margin, were made by Nokia (and were 'candybar' shaped). On January 9th, 2007, Steve Jobs got up on the stage in the Moscone Center in…

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