Tech News: You're Being Tracked And Here's How

It's a news oriented episode, but I did that forgetting that I had already agreed to run the trailer for the next season of Smart Talks, hosted by Malcolm Gladwell, and so I didn't want to get rid of the episode I had researched and written and recorded because I felt like there was a lot of good information there.

Even though the news is a little less fresh than it would have been yesterday, it's still an important stuff because it's really focusing on a lot of stories about how tech and governments and companies are using technology to track us and to mass huge amounts of data, sometimes without our knowledge, sometimes explicitly without our knowledge, and what does that mean and is there anything we can do about it? I feel like this is an important thing to know about, even if you don't really have any

plans to change things. It's good to at least be aware that it's going on. So with that in mind, I hope you enjoy this slightly stale tech News episode. I mean, it's only a day late, and that means no classic episode this week. But next week we should be pretty much back to normal. And in the coming weeks tech stuff is going to change up a little bit and that occasionally we will run an episode of

smart Talks in the tech Stuff feed. And again that's going to be hosted by Malcolm Gladwell, not by me. That is a big level up, but that's only going to be occasionally. Most of the time, it's gonna be the regular old tech stuff, so you're stuck with me. Anyway. Let's listen to a slightly less fresh tech News episode. Take it away, Jonathan from the past. Wikipedia the online resource that you're not supposed to cite in your term papers, and for good reason. But I won't get off track here.

I'll just say Wikipedia is a great resource to use as a starting point. It just isn't a primary resource and was never intended to be anyway. It will soon launch a paid for service, but don't worry. This won't mean you'll have to cough up cash the next time you want to read up on, you know, Michael Bay Transformer movie, or you want to learn about medieval villages in the Netherlands, or you want to skim articles about

quantum entanglement or whatever. The paid for service customers will actually be really big companies like Google and Amazon and Facebook. The service will offer up developer tools, so these companies can use those to republish database information on other platforms, you know, to repurpose the info that's on Wikipedia for their own you know uses, and presumably these customers will have access to tools and data that aren't necessarily available

to the average Wikipedia user. According to Lane Becker, Senior director of the Wikimedia Foundation, some companies have been repurposing Wikipedia articles on their own sites for years, and often they employ people to clean and reformat articles to better fit the owned and operated sites design. I see this all the time, where I'll be doing research and it will send me to a page that looks like it's

an owned and operated page. But as I read, I realized this is literally pulling the article from Wikipedia into this page. That's the kind of thing that this paid for service will cover. Wikimedia has formed a division called Wikimedia Enterprises to develop this tool and to negotiate agreements with various customers. Now the company is still working out the finer details, and I could see this being used in lots of ways, including with Google Smart Home products.

Asking a Google Home device a question could lead it to pull from data that originated from Wikipedia, and it would be enabled by this sort of licensing agreement. It's also good to remember that the Wikimedia Foundation is a nonprofit organization. The money from these projects would presumably go back into supporting the hosting and continued development of Wikimedia itself. Now cast your memory back to the summer of twenty twenty, which,

by my reckoning, was approximately a lifetime ago. One of the many news stories that summer is how the Twitter accounts for several prominent people, including Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Joe Biden all got hijacked by hackers, and they used those accounts to perpetuate a scam. Now, basically, the scam promised a big return on investments in a supposed money making strategy. In fact, that scam claimed that participants

would double their money. They would give a certain amount in bitcoin, and they would get twice that back, and of course some folks fell for it and handed their hard earned cryptocurrency cash over to the hackers to the tune of more than a hundred fifteen thousand dollars. Well. One of those hackers, Graham Ivan Clark, was caught and charged and he pled guilty to charge as a fraud. In return, he received a sentence of three years in prison or a junile boot camp type thing, followed by

three years of probation. And during that probation he's not supposed to use a computer without actual permission and supervision. At the time of the crime, Clark was seventeen. He has since turned eighteen, so he was sentenced as a youthful offender. Otherwise he would be looking at a mandatory sentence of ten years in prison. He and the other two hackers used social engineering to get administrative access to

various Twitter handles. So, according to investigators, what they did was they scoured linked in to find profiles of Twitter employees who could have you know, like administrative access to the back end. Then they did deep dives to find how to contact their marks, typically by phone, and then convinced those Twitter employees that the hackers were in fact authorized to access Twitter systems for the purposes of maintenance.

They tricked the Twitter employees to go to a mocked up log in page, which was really just a means to fish those login credentials in order to get access to the back end of Twitter, and then they moved on from there. The two of or hackers, Nema Fazelli and Mason Shepherd, are older than Clark and will likely face more serious sentences for their part in the crime. And I just want to point out social engineering is

a major tool in the hacker tool set. It's one of those things where you know, you don't have to figure out how to crack a security system or find a vulnerability if in fact you just leverage the people who have access to that system and you go into it through there. That's a very effective means. And you know, with COVID nineteen making a lot of people have to work from home, it created a lot of and still does creates a lot of opportunities for hackers to go

after that social engineering point of attack. So just be aware of that, and you know, use critical thinking whenever you get requests to perhaps sign into something that you know you didn't anticipate. It's not to say that every case of that is, you know, not legit, but it's something. It's a red flag, so you know, just be wary.

Another big tech story in twenty twenty was how companies like Uber campaigned really hard to defeat a proposition in California that would have forced the company like Uber in this case, but also companies like Lift to classify drivers as employees rather than as contract workers as as sort of independent contractors. Such a classification would require Uber to provide additional compensation and benefits to drivers, and that's something

that the company is not too keen on doing. While Uber was successful in convincing enough voters to oppose the proposition in California, things are different across the pond. The courts in the United Kingdom, after five year legal battle, ruled that Uber drivers are effectively employees, and Uber says now that drivers will earn at least the UK's national living wage, which is currently set at eight pounds seventy two pence per hour. It will also offer holiday pay

and pensions to drivers. Uber already offered free insurance to cover cases of sickness or injury. Those will remain in place. The change only applies to those who are driving passengers around. However, Uber drivers who are delivering food as part of Uber Eats still classified as being self employed. Also, that hourly rate only applies to the times when Uber drivers are actually transporting customers. Once someone has dropped off, that clock

effectively stops until another fare enters the car. That's something that unions say is inadequate. But still this may mark a change in direction for the gig economy in general,

and possibly will see further measures in the future. Meanwhile, over here in the United States, the Washington Post had a pretty critical piece about Uber, saying that while the company was seeing huge boosts to its stock, you so, the value of the company was going through the stratosphere back in especially after it helped get that California proposition off the table. It also wasn't really helping out when

it came to things like unemployment benefits for drivers. That left a lot of drivers in a very tough economic position. So those drivers instead largely depended upon government assistance. Around eighty million dollars of it all told, they received funds from the Economic Injury Disaster Loans Program. Now, as the name suggests, that program gives out loans and grants two small businesses in times of economic upheaval to help those businesses survive as well as you know, the people who

run those businesses. That's really what's important here. So you've got a multibillion dollar company with Uber, which I should add has never once turned a profit by the end of a fiscal year in its entire existence, and meanwhile it has workers who have qualified for a small business government assistance program. Again, because Uber was able to maintain that arrangement that these workers are independent contractors, they're they're

self employed, they're not employees according to the law. So Uber saw its value increase while the US government took over the job of helping Uber's drivers make ends meet. Now, this experience really points to how people in the gig economy are particularly vulnerable to economic disruption, which I know is kind of like me telling you that water is wet. These are people who have to hustle constantly just to

make ends meet. So if you are someone who works in the gig economy, my hat is off to you, and I really hope things are going well for you right now and that they just keep getting better. Joseph cox Over at Vice Media has written a piece titled cars Have Your Location. This spy firm wants to sell it to the US military, which is a heck of a headline. I mean it made me click on the story. So what's going on here? Well, it really kind of boils down to telematics. Telematics is a kind of portmanteau

of telecommunications and informatics. So modern cars have numerous sensors to monitor car performance and safety parameters. You know, that's when you get that check engine light or whatever. Someone always has to plug your car up to a computer to read what is actually going on. Well, that's kind of what I'm talking about here, But these sensors are doing more than just keeping an eye on how things

are handling while you're driving the vehicle. Many of these systems pair with communications devices essentially like a simcard and a modem, and it sends data back to automotive companies. So what do these companies do with that data? Well,

they do a lot of things. They might use that information to help design the next generation of vehicles based on how people are using their cars today, or they might have deals with major insurance companies which then use those telematics to figure out what kind of driver you are, how big a risk you pose, and that in turn affects the rates you pay for car insurance. Or they might sell data to other parties, which is probably where the company mentioned in the Vice article comes in. That

company is called the Ulysses Group. It's a company that has worked in various surveillance related products and services for several years. Ulysses has proposed a deal with US government to provide data that could give real time location information about more than fifteen billion vehicles around the world in

pretty much every country except North Korea and Cuba Gali. Now, according to ulysses own document about this proposal, quote, the data can be used to geolocate, track and target time sensitive mobile targets, tip and que sensors, developed patterns of life, identified networks and relationships, and enhance situational awareness, among many

other applications end quote. See this is the kind of thing that makes me long for the old days of cars, where the systems were really more just like mechanical devices and they were less like computers. Now I should add that Ulysses doesn't have some sort of magic bug or tracker that's installed in every car. The company would be relying on data provided by those telematics systems. It's just a question of how they get hold of that data. So in a way, ulysses could be sort of a

resale business in that regard. Now, I presume the company would first purchase the data from some other party and then package it specifically for the US government, should the government want to pursue this opportunity. I should also add that not every vehicle out there actually has onboard telematics systems.

They are really common in the commercial vehicle markets, so play you know, businesses that have fleets of cars frequently have this just so that they can keep an eye on how all those cars are doing in order to you know, maintain the proper efficiencies. And some automakers have embraced telematics more passionately I suppose than others like BMED you and GM are are leaders in the space. Now, there's not a whole lot you can do about this as a as a driver, apart from maybe buying and

maintaining older vehicles that don't have onboard telematic systems. But those have their own issues. For example, they might not be terribly efficient, they could have some emissions problems. Getting them repaired can sometimes be a bigger bit of a pain because it may be hard to find parts for them, So there is definitely a trade off there. But I did want to cover the story because it's one of

those things that people just should be aware of. Ours technical reports that TikTok parent company Bite dances investigating ways to track iPhone users with the intent of serving those users targeted advertisements. But see that happens to be against Apple's privacy rules, which now state that apps have to alert users before they can track those users, and they have to give users the option to opt out of tracking.

But that's something that companies in general aren't too keen on because targeted advertising is really a cash cow in revenue terms. It's an incredibly valuable tool for companies like Facebook, for example. It's very valuable to sell that capability to advertisers. However, these companies worry that if you give people the choice, they're gonna opt out of being tracked, because hey, you know what, most folks aren't super keen on feeling like they're in a song by the police. You know that song.

Every little thing she does is magic. Wait, no, no, no, no, I'm sorry. I'm sorry man, every breath you take. Anyway. The China Advertising Association, which I'm sure you will not be surprised to hear, is a state backed institution in China, is now trying an alternative way to track iPhone users that bypasses the methods that apps are using right now now. Essentially, this group is looking to sidestep the process and keep tracking people without having to them know about it and

potentially opt out of it. Apple says it is going to ban any app that tries to circumvent the privacy rules. But on the flip side, if most of China's apps are actually using this alternative method, it would be very weird to see Apple actually take advance action against all of them, because doing so would essentially open up the opportunity for the Chinese government to just outright ban Apple from operating in the country. They could say, hey, you

need us more than we need you. You're out of here, And you know, China's got a lot of people over there. Anyway. While TikTok tries to downplay its connection to its Chinese parent company, it is worth remembering Byte Dance is definitely one of the companies that is pursuing this, and we're not done with stories about companies and governments tracking people.

Apple's new privacy rules also meant that companies had to disclose more information about how they track and use personal data from users, and that includes Google, a company that has built its entire empire around the aggregation and exploitation of data, personal and otherwise. Google took a long time to comply with Apple's new rules, but once it did, it became clear that the company collects a lot of data for lots of different reasons. Uh. Sometimes it's to

provide a personalized experience through an app. Sometimes it's just a monitor app functionality. Make sure that if an app keeps crashing, figure out why it's doing that. Sometimes it's general analytics. But it prompted duct duct Go, a web browser and search engine, to take to Twitter and fire a few shots at Google. The company posted quote. After months of stalling, Google finally revealed how much personal data they collect in Chrome and the Google App. No wonder

they wanted to hide it. Spying on users has nothing to do with building a great web browser research engine. We should know our app is both. In one end, quote, some serious shade there, duc duct go. Meanwhile, Google is also facing a class action lawsuit brought against the company by users who allege the Google violated their privacy by collecting data while the users were using Chrome in in

incognito mode. The claim is that Google was collecting info on browser history even when people are in private mode. Google has moved to have the case dismissed, but a judge then denied that request, so it's going to go to court. Google representatives have pointed out that when you open an incognito window and Chrome, you're greeted with a page that says Chrome doesn't say browsing history, but the activity could still be visible to other websites that you

visit and moral on those lines. So I suppose this case we'll try to determine if Google is being a bit coy about that whole browser history thing or not. And finally, do y'all remember the Apple commercials in which Justin Long would come on screen he announced that he's a Mac, and then John Hodgman would come on screen

and announced that he's a PC. And Austin Long was always portrayed as kind of a hip, young, cool guy with a lot of creative ideas, and Hodgment always came across as outdated and out of touch and a bit of a fuddy duddy. Well, now how the turns have tabled or whatever, because Justin Long is now appearing in a series of commercials for Intel in which he's kind

of slagging off on his old Mac buddies. The ads show Long comparing Max, which now sport the Apple designed CPUs, not the Intel processors, and he compares them against PCs that do have Intel chips inside them. And I guess you can figure out where this is going over and over in each of these ads. Justin Long's job is to suggest that Apple is really a hassle and that Max limit what users can do with their machines, and

he's particularly brutal when it comes to gaming. Now, I normally wouldn't report on ads, but this was just one of those things I found kind of amusing for those of us who have been subjected to tech company adver tisements for a few decades. So if you remember the I'm a Mac, I'm a PC ads, maybe you watch a couple of the new Intel ones just to see how they are leaning hard on that history. And it just makes me think, as someone who has read plenty

of ads himself, how awkward that initial conversation must have been. Um. I mean, granted, Apple's very different company now than it was when Justin Long was doing ads for it, but even so awkward. That wraps up the news for Thursday, March one. If you have any suggestions for topics I should tackle in future episodes of tech Stuff, let me know. The Best way to get in touch with me is over on Twitter. The handle for the show is text Stuff H. S W and I'll talk to you again

really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H.