2019

[admin]

When potential customers visit the online resale store ThredUp, messages on the screen regularly tell them just how much other users of the site are saving. “Alexandra from Anaheim just saved $222 on her order” says one message next to an image of a bright, multicolored dress. It’s a common technique on shopping websites, intended to capitalize on people’s desire to fit in with others and to create a “fear of missing out.” But “Alexandra from Anaheim” did not buy the dress. She does not exist. Instead, the website’s code pulled combinations from a preprogrammed list of names, locations and items and presented them as actual recent purchases. The fake messages are an example of “dark patterns,” devious online techniques that manipulate users into doing things they might not otherwise choose to. They are the digital version of timeworn tactics used to influence consumer behavior, like impulse purchases placed near cash registers, or bait-and-switch ads for used cars.

 How E-Commerce Sites Manipulate You Into Buying Things You May Not Want - The New York Times

More than 1,000 apps are gathering personal data from our smartphones despite not having permission, a study has revealed. Up to 1,325 Android apps available on the Google Play store could be secretly tracking people, researchers at the International Computer Science Institute in California discovered. The apps use hidden work-arounds to bypass permission systems within the Android operating system. “Our work shows a number of side and covert channels that are being used by apps to circumvent the Android permissions system,” the study stated.

 Hundreds of Android apps steal your data even if you deny permission, study reveals | The Independent

Ever since Alexa and Google Assistant first burst onto the scene and started populating people's homes with smart speakers and other gadgets outfitted with always-listening microphones, people have wondered whether anyone other than their AI assistant of choice was listening in.  Well, the answer is yes -- both Amazon and Google have admitted that they hire contractors to listen to anonymized user audio clips for the purposes of improving their respective assistant's capabilities.

 Amazon and Google are listening to your voice recordings. Here's what we know about that - CNET

Porn sites are riddled with web trackers, including from Google, Facebook, and Oracle, according to researchers at Microsoft, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of Pennsylvania. More than 22,484 porn sites were analyzed, of which 74% were found to contain Google trackers. Oracle had trackers on 24% and Facebook on 10%.

 Facebook and Google know what porn you're watching, even when you're in incognito

A large-scale “sextortion” campaign is making use of a network of more than 450,000 hijacked computers to send aggressive emails, researchers have warned. The emails threaten to release compromising photographs of the recipient unless $800 (£628) is paid in Bitcoin. And they contain personal information - such as the recipient’s password - probably gathered from existing data breaches, to specifically target more than 27 million potential victims at a rate of 30,000 per hour. While analysis suggests a small fraction of targets have fallen for the ploy, one expert said such botnets still offered a great “return on investment” for cyber-criminals.

 'Sextortion botnet spreads 30,000 emails an hour’ - BBC News