Archive for January 29, 2024

NSA Admits To Buying User Browsing Data

Posted in Commentary with tags , on January 29, 2024 by itnerd

The NSA has recently admitted to buying user browsing data. Here’s what Senator Ron Wyden had to say on this:

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., released documents confirming the National Security Agency buys Americans’ internet records, which can reveal which websites they visit and what apps they use. In response to the revelation, today Wyden called on the administration to ensure intelligence agencies stop buying personal data from Americans that has been obtained illegally by data brokers. A recent FTC order held that data brokers must obtain Americans’ informed consent before selling their data. 

“The U.S. government should not be funding and legitimizing a shady industry whose flagrant violations of Americans’ privacy are not just unethical, but illegal,” Wyden wrote in a letter to Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines today. “To that end, I request that you adopt a policy that, going forward, IC elements may only purchase data about Americans that meets the standard for legal data sales established by the FTC.”

 John Gunn, CEO, Token had this comment:

Senator Wyden’s efforts are misguided. Instead of working to hinder the critical work of law enforcement agencies that keep everyone safe, he should focus his efforts on the data aggregators. Data purchased by the NSA, marketers, and others is out there in regular commercial markets for anyone to purchase. Nothing is gained by excluding law enforcement from doing their jobs, and people’s privacy is not any more protected by excluding law enforcement from public markets for information. If some of the data being used is obtained illegally, then stop the illegal collection.

I can see a different view on this issue. I am all for law enforcement having access to the data that they need to fight crime. But there needs to be clear limits on how they access that data. It cannot be a free for all where the NSA or any law enforcement agency can get anything that they want with little or no oversight. I’m free to be convinced otherwise as this is a complex issue.

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Twitter Blocks Searches For Taylor Swift After Deepfake Nudes Appear On The Site

Posted in Commentary with tags on January 29, 2024 by itnerd

Most of the time when I write about Twitter, I usually talk about what a dumpster fire that this social media platform is. But today, I’m doing something different. I’m going to give it some praise. Twitter has stopped searches for Taylor Swift after deepfake nudes, meaning fake nude pictures, started to flood the site. The BBC has the details:

In a statement to the BBC, X’s head of business operations Joe Benarroch said it was a “temporary action” to prioritise safety.

When searching for Swift on the site, a message appears that says: “Something went wrong. Try reloading.” 

Fake graphic images of the singer appeared on the site earlier this week.

Some went viral and were viewed millions of times, prompting alarm from US officials and fans of the singer.

Posts and accounts sharing the fake images were flagged by her fans, who populated the platform with real images and videos of her, using the words “protect Taylor Swift”. 

The photos prompted X, formerly Twitter, to release a statement on Friday, saying that posting non-consensual nudity on the platform is “strictly prohibited”.

While this is one of the few good moves that Twitter has made lately, one wonders what would have happened if these images were not of Taylor Swift, and were instead a woman who doesn’t have millions of fans to flag images on her behalf so that Twitter could take action. Would Twitter have acted to deal with the issue? I don’t know. But it’s a question worth asking. In any case, this highlights why strict laws need to be enacted everywhere to stop this sort of thing from happening.

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23andMe Didn’t Notice That They Got Pwned For Five Months…. WTF??

Posted in Commentary with tags , on January 29, 2024 by itnerd

So if you haven’t been keeping track of the ongoing story of 23andMe being pwned in epic fashion, here’s a quick update:

Let’s fast forward to today. According to a filing that was sent to California’s attorney general, the hack actually started in April 2023 and continued until September. That’s five months. Five months where threat actors were able to do their evil work. And what’s worse than that is the fact that 23andMe only found out about this when the threat actors started posting the data on the unofficial subreddit for 23andMe. Now it’s pretty bad when you get pwned. It’s worse when you don’t know about it for months and you only find out about it because someone was browsing Reddit. Which to me suggests that 23andMe was seriously asleep at the switch. 23andMe seriously needs to be sued out of existence because this is frankly unacceptable. And this level of #fail needs to be punished severely.

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A Quick Look At Apple’s Live Voicemail Along With Some Troubleshooting Advice

Posted in Commentary with tags on January 29, 2024 by itnerd

One of the features that came out with iOS 17 was Live Voicemail. This basically can be described as an old school answering machine where you can take an incoming call and punt it to voice mail. Then watch a transcription of the person leaving the voice mail on your iPhone’s screen. On top of that, you can pick up the phone and talk to the person if you feel that you need to talk to them. That all sounds great, but I’ve had a number of clients have trouble with Live Voicemail. Thus I wanted to do a story on this where I talk about the main issue that I have seen in the field, as well as answering one question that I get asked on a frequent basis.

First of all, let me frame something here so that this whole discussion makes sense. Live Voicemail is a feature that is local to your iPhone. It isn’t sitting in a phone carrier’s cloud or anything like that. Thus for it to work, your iPhone has to be turned on and connected to WiFi or a cellular network. That leads to the question that I keep getting asked. Which is since this feature came out, does that mean that I can kill off my carrier’s voice mail service and save a few bucks in the process?

The answer is that it depends on your use case. If you are going to be on the Internet 99% of the time, and your phone stays on 99% of the time, then I suppose that you could do that. But here’s the catch. Remember when I said that this feature is local to your iPhone and it needs to be connected to WiFi or a cellular network, or turned on. That means that if it isn’t turned on, or connected to a cellular network, you calls will not go to voicemail. So if you depend on being able to have calls go to voice mail 100% of the time, you should not kill your carrier’s voice mail plan.

Now over to the number one issue that many of my clients have. I’ve had a surprising number of clients report that after upgrading to iOS 17, their customized voice mail greeting is gone and been replaced by a greeting that is voiced by Siri. The reason for that can be found if you go into the phone app, and then clicking on the voicemail icon at the bottom right of the screen, followed by clicking on Greeting at the top right.

Chances are that your greeting is set to Default just like the picture above. What you likely need to do is choose Custom and then click the word Record to record your own customized greeting. Once you do that everything should work you expect it to.

The other thing that I can offer up as a troubleshooting tip is to make sure that you have Live Voicemail set up as per this Apple Support document. The most common thing that I see is that a voicemail password hasn’t been set which can break Live Voicemail for whatever reason. My guess is that even though this feature is turned on by default, there are some prerequisites that need to be present for it to work.

What do you think of Live Voicemail? Drop a comment below and share your thoughts.

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