Laptops Are Great. But Not During a Lecture or a Meeting.
A growing body of evidence shows that college students generally learn less when they use computers or tablets during lectures. That is probably true in workplace meetings, too.
Why Shouldn’t You Shop While Hungry? Ego-Depletion and the Brain as a Muscle
I’ve heard it a few times: Don’t shop when you’re hungry, you’ll spend more and buy unhealthy food! There is more than a grain of truth to this, and plenty of empirical rese…
How Retail Stores Track You Using Your Smartphone (and How to Stop It)
When you walk into a brick and mortar retail store like a Nordstrom, Cabela, or even Family Dollar, you're being tracked around the store. Not by an over-suspicious security guard, but by the store's wireless network, using your phone's Wi-Fi. The store then uses your phone to track you around the store, determine if you're a repeat visitor, see what departments you visit, and more. Here's how they do it, and how to stop them.
Google is under fire for watching you while you shop even when you're not online
Thomson ReutersGoogle is watching you while you shop in stores.Google has long tracked shoppers' activity online. Now it's stepping up its surveillance and
'This oversteps a boundary': teenagers perturbed by Facebook surveillance
News that Facebook shared teens’ details with advertisers throws focus on firm’s ability to mine the data of its 2 billion users – and raises serious ethical questions
For nearly a year, Google was suppressing ProtonMail from search results for our primary keywords. This episode illustrates that Search Risk is serious and potentially fatal for small businesses.
Pennsylvania schools spying on students using laptop webcams, claims lawsuit
A suburban Philadelphia school district remotely activates the cameras in school-provided laptops to spy on students in their homes, a lawsuit filed in federal court Tuesday alleged.
‘Fitbit for your period’: the rise of fertility tracking | Moira Weigel
The long read: Investors are pouring money into apps that allow women to track their fertility. Can tech companies use data to change the world of women’s reproductive health?
How Period Apps Are Profiting Off Your Private Data & Selling Your Sex Life
Are you using a period tracking app for your menstrual cycle? Be careful! While you’re tracking your cycle, health data, moods, even sexual activity and medications, most apps out there are tracking YOU. Most fertility apps (as well as fitness, health and diet apps - and any free app th
Recently, a slew of reports have popped up showing how fitness apps are logging and selling off your data to ad companies, city planners, and others. By their nature, these apps have a lot of sensitive personal data about you that you might not want out in the world. Let’s take a look at what’s going on.
Facebook (Still) Letting Housing Advertisers Exclude Users by Race
After ProPublica revealed last year that Facebook advertisers could target housing ads to whites only, the company announced it had built a system to spot and reject discriminatory ads. We retested and found major omissions.
Facebook's Privacy Incident Response: a study of geolocation sharing on Facebook Messenger
After demonstrating how Facebook Messenger was collecting user geo-location data by default with Facebook Messenger to thousands of users, Facebook responded to the public and media pressure by releasing an updated product within 9 days.
Facebook Says It Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the U.S. and Israeli Governments
The Silicon Valley giant says it deleted the accounts of the Chechen Republic’s tyrant — followed by 4 million people — because the U.S. government required it to do so.
People are getting locked out of innocuous Google Docs for supposedly violating Terms of Service
Google Docs users are reporting various bugs today that result in them getting locked out of their documents. Most of the issues center on a mysterious Terms of Service violation. The reports...
BT and Phorm escape prosecution for secret wiretaps
BT and Phorm will not face prosecution for trials of technology that secretly intercepted and profiled the broadband traffic of tens of thousands of people, the Crown Prosecution Service has announced.
Nissan tech allows a car to read your mind to boost reaction times
Nissan’s latest research project is ‘brain-to-vehicle’ (aka ‘B2V’) tech that could have your next car anticipating your driving reactions before you can even translate them into a turn of the wheel or applying the brake. The neural interface, which can not only improve reaction times, but also manage cabin comforts based on signals it takes […]
Facebook tracks everything you type even if you DON'T post it
A San Francisco-based Facebook data scientist studied HTML code on 3.7 million profiles to find that 71% of users type comments and posts but don't submit them.
Facebook Wins Belgian Court Appeal Over Data Collection
Facebook Inc. on Wednesday won its appeal at a Brussels court against Belgium’s privacy watchdog, allowing the U.S. tech company to restore its ability to collect information about internet users in the country not registered with the social media site.
Facebook Fiasco: Was Cornell University’s study of ‘emotional contagion’ a breach of ethics?
Chris Chambers: A covert experiment to influence the emotions of more than 600,000 people. A major scientific journal behaving like a rabbit in the headlights. A university in a PR tailspin