Meta's submission to the government review of privacy law reforms has been made public and being one of the biggest boogeyman when it comes to privacy, their submission is getting some attention. They're actually okay with the vast majority of the law changes, including the right for individuals to sue for privacy breaches. Meta's main beef is the proposal to define all online personalisation as targeting and allowing users to opt-out of targeted advertising, because if too many people opt-out, online platforms will have to make "less-desirable choices, like relying on generic, less effective, and more costly advertising, or moving to other business models such as subscriptions". Umm, good?
Google announced yesterday that starting in December 2023, "if a Google Account has not been used or signed into for at least 2 years, we may delete the account and its contents — including content within Google Workspace (Gmail, Docs, Drive, Meet, Calendar), YouTube and Google Photos". That's a pretty bold move considering there's lots of personal data there that probably isn't backed up, that someone might want to access eventually. They say they're doing it to avoid the risk of account takeover as idle accounts usually have crap passwords and no 2FA. Google has already made a slight adjustment after some community outcry, excluding YouTube from the list of data nuked after 2 years of inactivity.
The ABC has a great interactive article explaining how scammers and hackers use data gained by multiple data breaches to create a detailed overview of someone's digital footprint. Using data from HaveIBeenPwnd, you can enter your email address and see a visual representation of all the data breaches that address is part of. I put in my email address and the top 3 biggest sources of data about me on the darkweb are from services I have no recollection ever signing up for or using - Wattpad, VerificationsIO and Apollo. I think for most of us this is common knowledge, but for a large section of society that thinks "well I have nothing to hide, what's the big deal?" about account security and mass data collection, it could be educational.
Tiny Temperature Monitor. A tiny seven segment temperature monitor using ATtiny861A microcontroller and BME280 sensor. Powered by a CR2032 coin cell. (Mohit Bhoite via Kottke.org)
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