Tag Archives: social media

Smart home. A helping hand or a spying sneak.

Smart devices are everywhere these days. They are in your phone, newer thermostats, and even in some lightbulbs. They can help us but can they also hurt us?

In 2019 statistics showed that 53% of Americans have smart devices in their homes. And approximately 33% of responders said that they would buy any IoT device in the next 3 years.
Customers have spent 62 billion dollars on smart home devices in 2020. 52% of all customers think that voice assistants are revolutionary.

But there is still the big question of is it safe and are the big companies spying on us.

Now there is the facts that they are. According the US patterns for both Google assistants and Amazon Alexa. They have the ability for surveillance for or against you. The patent that amazon filed reveals creapier capabilities. Consumer Watchdog went into more detail you can read that here: https://www.consumerwatchdog.org/privacy-technology/google-and-amazon-really-do-want-spy-you-patent-reveals-future-versions-their .

Amazon’s Patent [USP&TO]
Consumer Watchdog pdf
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Fake news bots. The cause of lies and confusion.

Fake news was bad enough. But now that we are in a global pandemic it is even worse. It can negatively affect people’s lives.

The effect of the false news about COVID-19 was so bad the the CDC had to add a myth-busting section the the coronavirus informational page

An example of one of the myth busters on the CDC’s COVID-19 informational page.

Because of the scale of the problem, the World Health Organization (WHO), which is leading the UN’s response to the pandemic, has added a “mythbusters” section to its online coronavirus advice pages. It refutes a staggering array of myths, including claims that drinking potent alcoholic drinks, exposure to high temperatures, or conversely, cold weather, can kill the virus

United Nations News, https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/04/1061592

The issue now is it isn’t just bad people that are posting it. There are now entire social media pages that are dominated by bots that post convincing fake news articles.

Data breaches vs social media

As we get more and more online and people start using social media more prevalently. Should we worry about the data that they have in their hands? Can we trust large social media corporations with our data?

When social media gets started it requires personal information to create an account. Examples are first name, last name, email, password, DoB, country, and some require security questions. There are downsides to them having all that information. If they get hacked and a data breach occurs then peoples personal information is out on the web.

Once that information is out there the people that have access to it can do nefarious stuff with it. They can log into your account and do bad stuff on it. When a data breach occurs you Should immediately change your password. That will prevent them from being able to log into your account.

In 2021 Facebook had a data breach in which 553 million users’ data was leaked. That data contained phone numbers, full names, locations, email addresses, and biological data.

Security researchers say hackers could use the data to impersonate people and commit fraud.

Business Insider, https://www.businessinsider.com/stolen-data-of-533-million-facebook-users-leaked-online-2021-4

In response, Facebook said that they would crack down on people and organizations that scrape data that access is against their TOS.