Chemo Patient targeted with Cremation ads and UK Schools monitor Students in the Bathroom (Issue 31, 2024)
Plus, a supermarket chain deploys facial recognition, AT&T attempts to end California landline service, and a legal victory for privacy as warrants are now required for Ring doorbell footage...
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In this edition:
Chemotherapy patient targeted with cremation advertisements
UK schools will monitor students in the bathroom
OpenAI investigated by Italian data authorities
Data breach affects thousands using Europe’s largest parking app
Amazon’s Ring will no longer provide warrantless requests for doorbell footage
Google settles $5B lawsuit caused by secretly tracking users
Facial recognition cameras target poorer areas in UK
AT&T attempts to end landline service in California
Chemotherapy patient targeted with cremation advertisements
A recent complaint sent to the Connecticut Attorney General exposed that a person who had recently undergone chemotherapy treatment was mailed an advertisement for cremation services.
Far from being an isolated event, many people have experienced targeted advertising that they consider to cross an ethical line, such as the woman who had a miscarriage in 2016 and was inundated with ads for infant supplies for months.
This is possible due to an increasingly close relationship between data brokers and data analytics firms. In the case of the complaint sent to Connecticut’s AG, an inference was made from the data showing this person had a likely terminal illness, and so they were shown an advertisement for an end-of-life service.
While the outcome of the Connecticut complaint ended with a privacy enforcement update from the Attorney General, there is still a long way to go before the negative effects of targeted advertising are fully understood and this kind of targeting is not wholly prohibited.
UK schools will monitor students in the bathroom
In a misguided attempt to crack down on vaping and bullying, schools across the UK are installing sensors that listen in on students using the bathroom.
Programmed to detect keywords like “Help me” and “Stop it”, school staff receive a text message when these or other customizable keywords are triggered by the sensors. Announcements for this initial implementation claim that no recording of audio or identification of students is possible. If true, this still leaves the door open for these types of surveillance schemes in the future.
Madeleine Stone, senior advocacy officer at Big Brother Watch said, “Secretly monitoring school bathrooms is a gross violation of children’s privacy and would make pupils and parents deeply uncomfortable.”
OpenAI investigated by Italian data authorities
Italian data privacy watchdogs have concluded a months-long investigation into ChatGPT, the flagship service offered by OpenAI. Details of the investigation have not been disclosed but it is suspected that OpenAI has been in violation of European Union privacy laws.
Last year the Italian authority ordered a temporary ban on ChatGPT processing local data which directly led to OpenAI removing the service for Italian users. After quickly implementing compliance changes, ChatGPT was again available for Italian citizens. However, some of the concerns from the previous ban are again causing issues for the popular AI company.
The privacy concerns are rooted in the massive data sets that OpenAI utilizes to train its AI machine language system. ChatGPT was developed using a wide variety of data scraped from the Internet as well as other public and private repositories. The public information from the Internet is especially likely to include personal data from individuals, and EU legislation requires that the processing of such data have a legal basis.
Data breach affects thousands using Europe’s largest parking app
The owner of Europe’s largest parking app, EasyPark, has reported itself to information authorities in the EU and UK for allowing hackers to access customer data. The type of data stolen included names, phone numbers, email, and physical addresses along with parts of credit card numbers.
EasyPark emphasized that parking data was not compromised in the cyber attack. This may seem a small consolation for their users who are now vulnerable to malicious communication such as phishing emails due to their personal data being distributed and used to target them.
The breach was discovered in early December 2023 but it is not known exactly what time it began. This type of breach highlights the downside of central collection of location data as it can be used to physically track people for nefarious purposes.
Amazon’s Ring will no longer provide warrantless requests for doorbell footage
A controversial service known as “Request for Assistance (RFA) will no longer be offered via Ring’s Neighbors app, per parent company Amazon. The Neighbors app previously allowed law enforcement to request doorbell footage from private users and prompted criticism from public officials and privacy advocates alike.
The sunsetting of RFA comes on the heels of a $5.8M Federal Trade Commission (FTC) settlement which saw Ring unable to keep audio and video footage from users’ homes private and safe from malicious actors.
Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Policy Analyst Matthew Guariglia commented that, “Ring ended its practice of allowing police to automatically send requests for footage to the email inbox of users, opting instead for a system where police had to publicly post requests onto Ring’s Neighbors app. Now, Ring hopefully will altogether be out of the business of platforming casual and warrantless police requests for footage to its users.”
Google settles $5B lawsuit caused by secretly tracking users
A California judge has put a class action lawsuit trial on hold after lawyers for Google and consumers reached a preliminary settlement earlier this month. While the original lawsuit sought $5 billion USD in damages, the settlement amount has not been disclosed but is expected to be formalized by the end of February.
The core of the suit stemmed from accusations that “Google’s analytics, cookies and apps let the Alphabet unit track their activity even when they set Google’s Chrome browser to ‘incognito’ mode and other browsers to ‘private’ browsing mode.”
Furthermore, the plaintiffs said this turned Google into an “unaccountable trove of information” that allowed the company to learn about their friends, hobbies, favorite foods, shopping habits and “potentially embarrassing things”.
In August, the same judge threw out a motion filed by Google attorneys to dismiss the case, stating that Google “had made a legally binding promise not to collect users’ data when they browsed in private mode”.
Facial recognition cameras target poorer areas in UK
According to privacy rights group Big Brother Watch, a supermarket chain is installing facial recognition cameras in locations that disproportionately target people in lower income areas.
The company Southern Co-op is using Facewatch live recognition cameras in over 30 locations with just 5 of these locations being in the top 33% of wealthiest neighborhoods for the UK.
Professor Pete Fussey, the director of the Centre for Research into Information, Surveillance and Privacy at University of Essex stated, “This is another example of the many ways in which surveillance is more intensely focused on minorities and those who are disadvantaged socioeconomically.”
AT&T attempts to end landline service in California
Californians are upset about a potential AT&T service change that would remove the requirement for providing landline telephone service. Ultimately it will be up to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to determine if AT&T will have to maintain “Carrier of Last Resort” obligations that affect nearly 580,000 people.
Residents have argued that if the landlines are unavailable, many of their rural areas with poor wireless service will have a much harder time contacting emergency services, especially in locations that AT&T has deemed “not profitable enough for fiber”.
In a potential sign that CPUC may side with consumers, their Public Advocates Office has disputed AT&T’s claim that wireless service is reliable enough to replace landlines with a statement saying, "Californians living in census blocks where AT&T has only identified a wireless alternative to POTS service are likely to experience a loss of guaranteed, reliable voice service."
That concludes this edition of Your Worldwide INTERNET REPORT!
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This issue of Your Worldwide INTERNET REPORT was written by Matt Millen of WillenRimer; Edited by Suzie Dawson and Sean O’Brien; Graphics by K4t4rt; with production support by Beth Bracken.
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