Tag Archives: Data mining

Tech Trends/Lifestyle, Online Safety, Social Networking, home

Beware Facebook Quizzes

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By Tracey Dowdy

Which Disney mom are you? Which Hogwarts house do you belong in? Only a true genius will score 100 percent on this quiz. 

How many times a day do you see a quiz like this pop up in your Facebook feed? You may have even been tempted to test your knowledge or play along because the topis piques your interest. That’s no coincidence. Facebook’s complex algorithms and data-gathering technology have been gathering information on users since it’s inception, and one of the most effective ways is through quizzes. 

According to CBC Information Morning tech columnist Nur Zincir-Heywood, though these quizzes may seem innocuous and fun, taking them leaves you vulnerable to identity theft or fraud. “Never do these,” said Zincir-Heywood, a cybersecurity expert who teaches in the computer science department at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. 

But it’s not just Facebook itself that’s gathering information. Security experts, media literacy groups, The Better Business Bureau, and law enforcement agencies across the country warn that hackers and scammers – not Facebook itself – are behind many of these social media quizzes, collecting, using and profiting from the personal information you share.

Zincir-Heywood cautions that social media quizzes often ask the same questions your financial organizations use for security purposes to verify your identity when you need to change your password or access your account without a password such as your mother’s maiden name or the name of your first pet.

Though the different questions may not all be on the same quiz, multiple quizzes can collect enough information to enable a cybercriminal to access your banking or credit card information.

“Maybe they are watching [your] social media in general, they know your location, they know other things about you,” Zincir-Heywood said. “All of these then put together is a way to collect your information and, in your name, maybe open another account or use your account to buy their own things. It can go really bad.”

She offers the following tips to protect yourself from their more nefarious side of social media quizzes: 

  • Be careful. Just like in real life, nothing is ever really free. Those quizzes offered on social media actually aren’t free, they come with a hefty cost – your personal information is data mined for companies to use in targeted advertising, or for cybercriminals to sell on the dark web.
  • If you can’t resist the temptation, use fake information, especially for sections that ask for similar information to security questions used by your financial institutions. For example, if you are asked, ‘What’s the name of your childhood best friend,’ use a fake name.
  • Remember, once you take these quizzes, you can’t take back the information you’ve provided. Keep a close eye on your online transactions for unusual or unauthorized banking or credit card activity.

Tracey Dowdy is a freelance writer based just outside Washington DC. After years working for non-profits and charities, she now freelances, edits and researches on subjects ranging from family and education to history and trends in technology. Follow Tracey on Twitter.

 

Online Safety, How To, home, Tech Trends/Lifestyle

Prevent Data Mining in Android Apps

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By Tracey Dowdy

 At a time when sites like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and others are facing scrutiny for their data breaches as well as data mining, it comes as no surprise that over 1,000 Android apps have been doing more than a little harvesting of their own. Not only are they violating your privacy, they’re doing it behind your back, and without your consent.

Research has found that some apps – with no permissions enabled – actually piggyback off other apps you’ve given permission, even pulling data from your Wi-Fi connection. If you’ve ever seen ads in one app or your browser for an item you searched for in a completely different app, that’s data mining at work.  The good news is that Android Q is nearing release, and Google has promised it has security patches coming to correct the issue.

In the meantime, there are steps you can take to limit the amount of spying those apps can do.

Use common sense when giving apps permission to access data. Think about it – if it’s necessary for the app to have access to your location in order for it to function – e.g. Google Maps – then allow permission. On the other hand, do the developers over at Candy Crush need to know your location? Should they have access to your contacts or camera? Be especially mindful if an app asks for access to your microphone – last year it was discovered that the official La Liga league app used the microphone and GPS of user’s smartphones to surreptitiously identify venues broadcasting matches. But you can easily prevent this by denying an app permission to access unnecessary data in the first place.

Another simple way to limit access is to enable or disable app permissions one by one. When you install an app, disable permissions, then go back and turn on specific permissions individually.

  • Go to Settings
  • Select Apps or Application Manager
  • Choose the app that you want to change by selecting
  • Choose which permissions to turn on and off, for example, your microphone or camera.

You can also allow Google Play Protect, built into Android, to scan for potentially dangerous or invasive apps.

  • Go to Settings
  • Choose Security
  • Select Google Play Protect. A list will populate with all apps that have been scanned with any suspicious apps flagged as potentially dangerous.

Another smart option is to turn off Location Services, a prime target for trackers.

Go to Settings 

  • Tap Location
  • Select Google Location Settings
  • Toggle off for Location Reporting and Location History
  • You can also delete your location history
  • If you need your location enabled for a specific app, you can manually toggle it on then toggle off again when you’re done.

One final way to protect your privacy is by disabling location services in your photos.

  • Go to the Photos app.
  • Tap the menu and choose
  • Select Remove geo location.

Another way is to open the photo, tap the three stacked dots, select Info and choose No location. You can also go into a submenu below the map and click Remove Location.

Tracey Dowdy is a freelance writer based just outside Washington DC. After years working for non-profits and charities, she now freelances, edits and researches on subjects ranging from family and education to history and trends in technology. Follow Tracey on Twitter.

 

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Change Your Default Privacy Settings

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By Tracey Dowdy 

In a recent article, Washington Post technology columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler asked, “It’s the middle of the night. Do you know who your iPhone is talking to?”

In the story, Fowler outlines a problem most iPhone users aren’t even aware of, that being the volume of data-mining that occurs while you – and your phone – are asleep. “On a recent Monday night, a dozen marketing companies, research firms and other personal data guzzlers got reports from my iPhone. At 11:43 p.m., a company called Amplitude learned my phone number, email and exact location. At 3:58 a.m., another called Appboy got a digital fingerprint of my phone. At 6:25 a.m., a tracker called Demdex received a way to identify my phone and sent back a list of other trackers to pair up with.

And all night long, there was some startling behavior by a household name: Yelp. It was receiving a message that included my IP address -— once every five minutes,” Fowler says.

Data mining is nothing new, but it’s becoming an increasingly bigger problem. Though Apple stated in a recent ad, “What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone,” Fowler’s investigation proves that’s far from the truth. Another problem is that some of it is our fault. Charles Arthur points out that 95% of us don’t change any of the default settings on our devices, and how many of us take the time to read updates on Privacy Policies? It’s the Rule of Defaults. We’re just too lazy to try and Scooby-Doo the mystery.

Fowler published an excellent article last June that maps out how to start setting boundaries on all the information we willing hemorrhage into the ether via everything from our smartphones, laptops, tablets, and smartwatches to our smart home devices like Alexa, and our Nest doorbell.

If you’re wondering whether it’s worth the trouble to dive into the deep end and change those default settings, consider this, by default:

Fowler calls his suggestions “small acts of resistance,” but if The Handmaid’s Tale has taught us anything, those small acts of resistance are critically important. Blessed be.

Tracey Dowdy is a freelance writer based just outside Washington DC. After years working for non-profits and charities, she now freelances, edits and researches on subjects ranging from family and education to history and trends in technology. Follow Tracey on Twitter.