03 Monday Aug 2020
Posted in Misc.
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link: https://reason.com/2020/08/03/face-masks-confuse-facial-recognition-technology/
But we should at least be able to agree that face coverings are a great way to defeat the surveillance state—especially now that the U.S. government has conceded that masks confuse the hell out of facial recognition technology.
06 Friday Oct 2017
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Upgrading to iOS 11? Beware of changes to the control of bluetooth and wifi!
Turning off your Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios when you’re not using them is good security practice (not to mention good for your battery usage). When you consider Bluetooth’s known vulnerabilities, it’s especially important to make sure your Bluetooth and Wi-Fi settings are doing what you want them to. The iPhone’s newest operating system, however, makes it harder for users to control these settings.
On an iPhone, users might instinctively swipe up to open Control Center and toggle Wi-Fi and Bluetooth off from the quick settings. Each icon switches from blue to gray, leading a user to reasonably believe they have been turned off—in other words, fully disabled. In iOS 10, that was true. However, in iOS 11, the same setting change no longer actually turns Wi-Fi or Bluetooth “off.”
Instead, what actually happens in iOS 11 when you toggle your quick settings to “off” is that the phone will disconnect from Wi-Fi networks and some devices, but remain on for Apple services. Location Services is still enabled, Apple devices (like Apple Watch and Pencil) stay connected, and services such as Handoff and Instant Hotspot stay on. Apple’s UI fails to even attempt to communicate these exceptions to its users.
It gets even worse. When you toggle these settings in the Control Center to what is best described as”off-ish,” they don’t stay that way. The Wi-Fi will turn back full-on if you drive or walk to a new location. And both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth will turn back on at 5:00 AM. This is not clearly explained to users, nor left to them to choose, which makes security-aware users vulnerable as well.
The only way to turn off the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios is to enable Airplane Mode or navigate into Settings and go to the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth sections.
31 Monday Aug 2015
Posted in Computers
If you’re a Windows user, and I feel sorry for those trapped on Windows, you likely have heard that the upcoming Windows 10 is free and is loaded with Microsoft spyware and adware. Now it turns out that Microsoft is adding this spyware and adware into Win 7 and Win 8 via software updates, a processes called backporting. To make matters even worse, this spyware communicates with Microsoft’s servers through nonstandard channels within the OS, so the only currently known way to circumvent is with a customizable router firewall.
Here’s the link: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/213183-once-more-with-tracking-microsoft-backports-privacy-invading-windows-10-features-to-windows-7-8
18 Thursday Jun 2015
Posted in Computers
Apple has won strong endorsement from the Electronic Frontier Foundationthis week, which says, “We commend Apple for its strong stance regarding user rights, transparency, and privacy.”
Now in the latest (fifth) edition of the EFF’s “Who Has Your Back” report which examines how closely Internet firms guard user privacy, the organization notes: “This is Apple’s fifth year in the report, and it has adopted every best practice we’ve identified as part of this report.”
Good job Apple!
19 Friday Dec 2014
Posted in internet
Remember Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the motion picture association’s attempt to censor the internet? It’s back! Check out the following links please.
#ZombieSOPA
