Up Times • Nov. 2024

Bryley-curated stories from around the internet:

File it under “no conscience” – Privacy advocates Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF) has excerpted highlights from the recent FTC investigation of what becomes of the data collected by nine social-media-categorized businesses including YouTube, Facebook and X/Twitter. Not a lot of good news.

Most companies had no vetting process for third parties before sharing your data, and none conducted ongoing checks to ensure compliance with data use restrictions. For example, when companies say they’re just sharing your personal information for something that seems unintrusive, like analytics, there’s no guarantee your data is only used for the stated purpose. The lack of safeguards around data sharing exposes consumers to significant privacy risks.

EFF offers a legislative plan to help put the brakes on this ad-surveillance gone berserk … [5 min. read] eff.org

Do fake security signs protect a physical building? – Hard to say. But one of the animals shown turns out to be a for-real deterrent.

Geraldine Orentas of Forbes Home offers an overview of home criminal deterrents. Bona fide locks and alarms seem to be the genuine crime-preventers – only 13% of would-be burglars continue messing with a house that’s alarmed.

But for many alternate methods the data looks weak or conflicting. And that may be understandably hard to study and who would fund the research? A sticker company?

A news channel interviewed over eighty burglars, and most cited large dog breeds to be a deterrent when picking homes. “Dogs are a deal-breaker for me. Big breeds, home protectors, are the best to keep people out,” said one inmate … [7 min. read] forbes.com

To the wolves – Ars Technica tells the story of the government of Michigan inviting its citizens to pick an “I’ve Voted” sticker to be handed out at polling sites.

But the government board didn’t love the choice that won – a werewolf tearing its shirt – and decided instead to offer the nine top designs to polling stations. This is an echo of the UK’s 2016 Boaty McBoatface.

In fact, we ask random internet users their opinions all the time. When we search (or use AI chatbots built from this data), shouldn’t we ask is somebody playing with us? Or are there other reasons for manipulated results?

Maybe if the wolf-sticker pickers had been asked face-to-face, maybe some might have added “just messing with you.” Maybe not, but how we relate is different through machines and through talking … [4 min. read] arstechnica.com

The Trouble with Spear Phishing – Spear phishing [is] a highly-personalized form of email attack … attackers research their targets and craft carefully-designed messages, often impersonating a trusted colleague, website or business. Spear-phishing emails typically try to steal sensitive information, such as login credentials or financial information, which is then used to commit fraud, identity theft and other crimes.

This is a comprehensive look by Bryley partner Barracuda at the criminal practice of spear phishing and the types of defenses that work. Email defense used to be more straightforward: record the characteristics of malicious emails and their links and infecting attachments and block these from being delivered. But spear phishing is part of the criminal response to circumvent these measures.

Types of spear phishing include:

• Business Email Compromise (BEC), the most costly business cybercrime (per the FBI).
• Brand impersonation. At the time of the study, Microsoft is impersonated in 56% of these types of spear-phishing attacks.
• Scamming, tricks to get personal data for the criminals to exploit.
• Extortion, criminals claim to have a compromising video … recorded on the victim’s computer, and threaten to share it with all their email contacts, unless they pay.

Because of BEC’s severity, Barracuda focuses on BEC with tactics and a variety of examples – helpful to know and to share with employees. The report concludes with several tips for defending an organization from BEC … [20 min. read] barracuda.com

Completely collapsed – Social media, according to the multi-year, college-student research of University of Michigan’s Sara Konrath, has sucked-up 40% of empathy.

And it’s the foundation of social media, the algorithm, that’s to blame. The algorithm was put there first to give the people what they want. And later to monetize that giving. (And the algorithm is at the back of AI, too.)

Konrath writes, studies of college students find that perspective-taking [Konrath’s preferred understanding of empathy] can help us open our hearts to people who may be different from us: It can promote more positive attitudes and increase helping behavior directed toward people from stigmatized groups, such as disabled people, AIDS patients, and homeless people. In general, perspective-taking and empathic concern are also associated with lower aggression and bullying.

So to counteract the social media effect, psychologist Anthony Silard writes, get up from your screen and interact with people – especially those with different views … in the famous Milgram experiment on conformity, the only thing that stopped people from harming another person was when they were in the same room … [9 min. read] psychologytoday.com

^{Note: The section directly above is Bryley’s curated list of external stories. Bryley does not take credit for the content of these stories, nor does it endorse or imply an affiliation with the authors or publications in which they appear.}