Tag: Privacy

Friday on My Mind – Technology And Our Private Lives

technology-privacy
“Hacker’ image by www.pixabay.com

“Och*, technology – it’s the Deil’s work,” my Scottish Dad said in 1964, when I bought one of the early transistor radios.

Dad died in 1991, so he missed the Internet (and Windows 98, the best version). He also missed WIFI, smart phones, internet banking, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Bluetooth, video and music streaming and that nemesis of 21st century parents −  Facetime. I’m not sure what he’d make of hackers, spammers, viruses, malware, or dealing with glitch-prone software and untimely computer crashes.

As we all should know privacy risks for internet and mobile phone users include data harvesting, web tracking and government spying. Many internet security companies are now advocating the use of a virtual private network (VPN) which encrypts your data and hides your internet address. And, as this article reveals, the Internet of Things poses new cyber threats, as security is often lax or absent in domestic items like smart TVs, fridges and microwaves and other connected devices.

This week I conducted an IT security review after a sudden flood of spam emails jammed up one of our addresses (not this one). She Who Goes By Various Acronyms was extremely pinged off with the 200 dodgy emails that came several nights in succession. They were dressed up to look like emails we’d sent but had been ‘rejected by sender’.

I can’t say our Internet Service Provider (iinet) was overly helpful. They insisted that the email address had not been hacked or compromised. The support team advised me to change my password (duh) and later referred me to a service where you can report ‘new’ spam. That didn’t really help much, so I spent a good few hours doing my own troubleshooting.

As part of a usor emptor security review, I reset my WIFI router to its default settings, and then re-installed it with a complex admin password and a new WIFI password. Tedious, yes, and the tediousness extended to relaying the new WIFI password to every device that shares the same router. As a result, we slowed the spam to a trickle and now it has stopped altogether. (Yay, techy Bob-Ed)

In the early days of starting a WordPress website, my weekly posts were inundated by what is known in blogger world as ‘comment spam’ – most of it from Russia. We slowed the onslaught by installing an effective anti-spam plugin (Akismet) and stopped it by limiting post comments to 14 days.

I began to wonder about spam; who distributes it and why. Do they want to sell you stuff or are they just creating mischief? What they want more than anything is for you to click on the inevitable malware-ridden attachments. Do so at your peril.

I discovered that a sudden flood of spam can (a) bury messages you did need to find and (b) sometimes they are phishing emails. These are emails that purport to be from one of your legitimate service providers. You can usually detect them by the stilted use of English and also by the fake email address

Later, I forwarded the bogus email to iinet support and complained. Since then, I have had other attempts by swindlers to milk credit card details by forging emails. It is beyond me why a large ISP (iinet, now owned by TPG), can’t put a stop to this. I’m told scams like this are commonplace, no matter which ISP you use.

There’s a lot of it about. As you may have read recently, cyber crooks impudently set up a facsimile of the MyGov website, which holds an enormous database of tax, medical and social security detail.

Many of my Facebook friends are currently complaining about nuisance calls, phishing emails, spam or hacking of their ‘Messenger’ app. These scams are becoming so prevalent it behoves us all to put another layer of security in place. Many banks and institutions (including MyGov), use a ‘dongle’ or some form of two-step verification (a time-sensitive pin sent to your mobile).

There is a certain amount of sales-driven hysteria promulgated about the ability of ‘Russian hackers’ to covertly take control of your computer and start delving into your private details. Some swear by online password managers, but I favour an in-house, two-step method. It is tedious but safe, provided you don’t fall into the trap of allowing your web browser to save logins and passwords. Surely you don’t do that?

The anti-virus programme I uninstalled this week was quite good at doing what it is supposed to do, but it kept alerting me to potential threats and PC performance issues. Solving these supposed threats and issues meant upgrading to one or more ‘premium’ programmes.

Hassles aside, when technology works, it can be a joy to all. Last week I compiled a short video to send to my Auntie in the UK who was turning 100. My sister and her daughter sent me a video on Messenger as did my nephew. We recorded our own video greeting on the veranda at home, complete with kookaburras in the background. I called my other sister in New Zealand and recorded her audio message and then edited the clips into a 10-minute video and slideshow. I then uploaded it to YouTube with a privacy setting. My cousin in the UK said it came up great when cast to the big screen TV.

That milestone occasion got me musing about my teenage years (Auntie outlived her sister (my Mum) by 52 years. Technology sure has changed from those days as a rugby-mad teenager in New Zealand. I bought the transistor radio for one purpose; I’d set the alarm (a clock with two bells on top), and get up in the middle of the night to listen to (e.g.) the All Blacks play England at Twickenham.

Dad (left) had no interest in sport, but as a volunteer member of the St John’s Ambulance, he spent many a cold Saturday afternoon on the rugby sidelines, first-aid kit at the ready.

He’d have probably credited the ‘Deil’ with this 2019 example of electronic surveillance of professional athletes. When professional rugby players run out onto the field, a small digital gadget is tucked into a padded pouch on the back of their jumpers. The GPS tracker relays performance information to the coaching team (and, apparently, to rugby commentators). From this wafer-thin tracker they can upload data and analyse the player’s on-field movements. This is how Storm winger Josh Addo-Carr was proclaimed the fastest man in the NRL. He set a top speed of 38.5 kmh chasing a scrum kick down the left touchline in the round five match against the North Queensland Cowboys in April. He’d still get run down by a panther or a tiger, but it’s pretty darned fast.

While the top 10 stats look thoroughly impressive, I doubt the general public will get to hear about the half-fit players slacking off in the 63rd minute.

Fair go, as we say in Australia, as if it isn’t intrusive enough going into the dressing sheds and interviewing sweaty blokes in their underwear.

*general interjection of confirmation, affirmation, and often disapproval (Scots)

 

Human Rights and Halloween

human-rights-nauru
Human rights billboard Image provided by Fr Rod Bower of Gosford Anglican Church

You always have to look for the silver lining; like the Queensland Parliament introducing a Human Rights Act on the same day (31st October) that people were walking the streets dressed as ghouls and zombies, reminding us that Christmas is just 55 days away.

Christmas Island is just around the corner too – well, it’s precisely 1,550 kms north-west of Perth. But it is an Australian territory, unlike Nauru and Manus Island.

I mention human rights in the context of offshore processing of asylum seekers to make the point that Australia is one of the few democracies that does not have a so-called Bill of Rights.

Victoria and the ACT have their own Human Rights acts and Queensland’s new act will become law next year. But there is no specific Federal law. In case you did not know, Queensland’s Human Rights Act will replace a hit-and-miss system in which individual liberties are said to be protected under the constitution and by common law. The Federalists have always argued that the latter is sufficient protection to ensure freedom of speech, privacy, equality and such like. The anti-Federalists in Queensland have been quietly pushing for this new act for the last four or five years.

The subject came up more than once when former Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs was in town for Outspoken, a literary event that draws a mixed crowd of avid readers. Triggs, as one would imagine, was well aware that Queensland was considering introducing a Human Rights act and there was a bit of discussion as to what form that might take. As she mentioned at the time, she hoped this new Act would protect indigenous culture (and it does).

Queensland’s act mimics Victoria’s laws in many ways – it protects 23 human rights as basic as the right to freedom from forced work, to equality, the right to life and the right to peaceful assembly and freedom of association (remember Campbell Newman’s bikie laws?).The Australian Government should make a note of this one: ‘protection from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment’, in terms of refugees being kept on Nauru and Manus Island.

If this new Act is set to enhance the protection and privacy of individuals, will this extend to trick and treaters coming down the driveway, uninvited? This did not happen in our street, the Halloween revellers opting to approach only those houses suitably adorned with spooky lights, cobwebs, pumpkins and other faux-accoutrements of a distinctly American tradition.

Protecting the privacy of individuals should surely extend to preventing real estate agents, politicians, Clive Palmer and the NBN from shoving unwanted solicitations in your letterbox?

Should it not also cover the telephone ringing at 6.50pm with the chatter of a call centre in the background and a long pause while someone realises yours is the next cold call they must attend to (by which time you have hung up).

ABC News provided a handy guide to the new Act, which meant that although I downloaded it, I do not necessarily have to wade my way through all 88 pages of the Act. The main objects are to:

  • to protect and promote human rights; and
  • to help build a culture in the Queensland public sector

that respects and promotes human rights; and

  • to help promote a dialogue about the nature, meaning

and scope of human rights.”

Under this new Act, the Anti-Discrimination Commission will be re-named the Queensland Human Rights Commission and as such receive complaints from the public. The specifics of the Act ensure that the Parliament, the government and more importantly, the bureaucracy that administers Queensland’s laws will have to comply with them.

Dan Rogers from Caxton Legal told the ABC the new act would provide a broad spectrum of individual rights. He said Victoria and the ACT had benefited from having similar legislation for over a decade.

“When government departments deliver services, they’re more likely to comply with our fundamental human rights.”

Rogers gave examples of when these rights may be compromised (cameras recording conversations or abuse of search powers by police and government inspectors).

Queensland Council of Civil Liberties president Michael Cope told the ABC that Australian States were some of the last in the world not yet be covered by a human rights act.

“We know from history that democracies can quickly change from being democracies to something else. It only took Hitler six or seven years to transform Germany.”

Predictably, the Queensland Opposition described the new Act as a ‘distraction’ from the real issue (the economy) and harped on about the time and money spent implementing the new Act. (Victoria’s Human Rights Act has been estimated to cost 50c per person, per year).

Most democracies have a bill of rights of some type and 192 member States have become signatories to the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights since it was established in 1948. There are eight notable hold-outs: South Africa, Belorussia, Ukraine, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Saudi Arabia, Yugoslavia and Russia.

Since we mentioned Nauru in the context of Australia’s decision to use the tiny island as a holding depot for asylum seekers and refugees, here’s what we know about its place in the world.

Of the nine core United Nations human rights treaties, Nauru, which has been a member since 1999, has ratified or acceded to four of them. They include the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention against Torture. In response to recommendations from other States and human rights monitoring bodies, Nauru ratified the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees in June 2011. Just so we know.

The UN has gone to a lot of trouble to set up a portal to teach children the basics of human rights. It’s not a bad place for adults to digest a summary of the obvious and not-so obvious things we regard as rights.

Item 19 is of particular interest to me and my 27 readers (and an old blue heeler called Herbie who chases his tail when he hears FOMM go ‘ping’ in the inbox):

We all have the right to make up our own minds, to think what we like, to say what we think, and to share our ideas with other people.

That would be of small comfort to journalists jailed last year by regimes that do not brook public dissent. A record 262 journalists were jailed in 2017, amid an aggressive crackdown by government authorities, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

In this free-ranging discussion about human rights you may have noticed my own bias creeping in about Halloween. I just do not care for the pervasive infiltration of American ‘culture’ into the Australian-way-of-life. Pumpkins were meant to be cooked and eaten, mate, by me or the dog.

And don‘t get me started on those Council workers cluttering up the only roundabout in the village with a truck and crane adorning the Flame Tree with shiny Christmas baubles and fake presents.

“Mate, you’re infringing on my right to freedom of movement,” the grumpy septuagenarian hollered out the car window.

FOMM back pages

Facebook – does it really matter if they share our data?

first-facebook-postSince we’re discussing Facebook and who has the rights to personal information you’ve posted, I wanted to show you my ‘Wall.’  People used to call their Facebook page their ‘Wall’, though that has become passe. As walls go, this one would be ‘liked’ by Shirley Valentine fans (cultural reference), as it suggests romance and sun-bleached beaches.

    I joined Facebook in 2009 (apparently) as this is the first image I posted. At the time we were renovating the downstairs bedroom, rumpus room laundry and ensuite. Apart from hiring a guy to lay tiles throughout, we did all the work ourselves. If I’d known better, I’d have first put a coat of sealer on the besser brick wall as it took four coats of paint until it matched the hardboard on the opposite wall.

    I resisted joining Facebook for such a long time and then when I did, my posts were few and sufficiently opaque to resist understanding by all but my inner circle.

    Facebook has proved handy in terms of keeping in touch with younger family members around the world because, as we know, they don’t write letters. So too I’ve formed loose ties with musicians around the world, which can either be a way of sharing the passion or fishing for a gig.

    Later, Facebook became a good way of spreading the news about folk music events in our small town, some of which we promote.

    Dani Fankhauser’s history of Facebook on mashable.com charts the development of Facebook from its launch in 2004 and the 18 features it used to have and either changed or discontinued. I had no idea the original idea of the ‘wall’ was that people could use it like a whiteboard, leaving messages for their friends. You could change or delete what was there and replace it with your own messages. As Dani says, at one stage it was cool to ‘de-virgin’ someone (be first to post on their wall).

    The wall disappeared and Timeline took its place. Other critical changes since Facebook was launched includes the controversial and constantly changing News Feed and the over-weaning Like button which turned social interaction into a competition.

    Dani writes that Facebook used to be like a journey down the Rabbithole, being diverted down unexpected paths to discover new and interesting worlds. Now it’s like standing in front of the fridge with the door open, not quite sure what you’re looking for. Five years ago she wrote that – has anything changed?

    The hoo-haa about fake news and private data being manipulated by computer data experts should surprise no-one. If you are on Facebook, you are the content.

    You have probably read one version or another of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The Guardian Weekly ran a two-page expose this week so if you really want to delve into it, here’s the ultimate link.

    The fall-out when this news broke was most noticeable on Wall Street. When the Observer revealed that Cambridge Analytica had harvested millions of people’s user data for political profiling, Facebook’s stock plummeted. It fell 17% between March 17 and Easter, wiping $US50 billion off the company’s value. Regulators in several countries are investigating Facebook and may try to limit how the company makes money from data.

    Meanwhile,Google, Apple and Amazon are like little kids who played a joke on someone and are now hiding behind a tree, giggling. The laugh might be on them, according to this broader story.

    There is a social movement (#DeleteFacebook), but social media analyst Andy Swan, writing for Forbes magazine, said the spike in Facebook deletions – the highest since 2004 – peaked on March 21 and has been in decline ever since.

    Most of the outrage stems from reports that Donald Trump’s campaign consultants, Cambridge Analytica, used ‘psychographics’ which allows personality traits to be manipulated.

    But what about our music pages, Mark?

    In January this year Facebook began changing the algorithms that influence what users/members see in their news feed. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said the changes were made because of feedback that public content – posts from businesses, brands and media – was ‘crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other’.

    Changes started last year and as Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post, will take months to implement. “As we roll this out, you’ll see less public content (in your Newsfeed) like posts from businesses, brands, and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard – it should encourage meaningful interactions between people.”

    This must be a deeply disturbing trend for mainstream media, which has hooked its disintegrating business model to the hems of social media’s skirts.

    Our local paper, the Sunshine Coast Daily (now owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd), recently ran a 150-word ‘news story’ – Keep News #1 in your Facebook feed. The article suggested Daily readers keep up with the latest local news by ‘making a simple adjustment’.

    This means first find the SCD page on Facebook, like, click ‘follow’ then click ‘see first’.

    Well yes, it works, but it didn’t take long for the stream of sensationalist stories to ‘clutter up’ my news feed and the same could be said of choosing this option for other media outlets. Beware the Paywall!

    Just for the mental exercise, I downloaded my Facebook data. It has always been possible to download your own data and if we were smart, we’d all do it every year so we at least can find copies of the photos we posted then forgot about. Just go to your profile page and click on settings (the link is at the bottom of the page).

    Just downloading your data file does not mean you are deleting your information from Facebook. Leaving, closing your account and demanding the return of the original data is not so easy.

    But it was illuminating to trawl through this 136MB file. There is an exchange (a thread) between me and a former colleague. I wished to write something about him in my blog, about the merits of academic ambition when one is supposedly past student age. Within the conversation, my former colleague revealed quite a lot of detail about his school years, what work he did on leaving school and how he came to study journalism. I used hardly any of this information in the blog which was eventually published. But it is sitting there quietly, within my (private) Facebook data files. Let’s hope it stays that way.

    So what does the Cambridge Analytica privacy furore mean for folk who just want to post photos of their cats, dogs, partners and kids? Not much, I suspect, unless you have a ‘brand’ page like the ones I use for pur stage name, The Goodwills and this blog.

    I thought it would be fair play to share Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook post. It is interesting for his over-use of marketing-speak and the sometimes snarky comments which follow his ‘community-oriented’ explanation for making business, brands and media pages less visible.

    I’m with the people who asked why couldn’t Facebook users simply curate their own news feed without having it dictated by algorithms.

    Meanwhile, if you want to keep the Bobwords brand page at the top of your news feed, click on the link, like and follow.

    Or not!