privacy

The Internet never forgets

Post published:January 30, 2020
Post author:philip

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…

Privacy in the age of technology

Post published:November 23, 2014
Post author:philip

The recent kerfuffle over Uber and Lyft employees being able to track the locations that individual customers get picked up and dropped off at reminded me of an incident back when I worked at WebTV Networks in 1996. WebTV, for those who don't remember, was a set-top box that allowed users to surf the web and send e-mail using a wireless keyboard and their television. It was truly a revolutionary device, and it was put together by some of the smartest people in Silicon Valley. It launched with devices manufactured by Sony and Philips, with the service run by WebTV. This was the early days of the Internet – the first mainstream browser Netscape was only introduced in late 1994, and Internet Explorer about a year earlier in 1995. These were dial-up days, when most people were not yet on the Internet, and those that were mostly accessed it via their telephone lines (at university were were able to access it via AppleTalk). The WebTV box had a modem inside and would dial-up to the WebTV Networks service, which was an ISP. Dial-up ISP Business Model The business model of dial-up ISPs was interesting in that they did not have the ability…