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THIS SHOW - SATURDAY - June 3, 2017 - 11:05 AM (PT)
!! OURCARMEL.COM – Part 4 !!
I’m going to take us on a tour of some of the really cool websites on the internet that are transforming our culture and civilization, and that may just be the key to a future beyond imagining. Let’s talk a little bit about the idea of using the Internet to shape society and culture. It can be used to create healthy 1 community or unhealthy community. But who decides how that website should work, and do we understand enough to use websites and the internet to shape our lives, or are we just going to continually move people into shallower, less capable, less intelligent, and more controlled modalities, as do, for example, Facebook, Google, Twitter and so many of the other social impacting websites on the net.
NEXT SHOW - SATURDAY - June 10, 2017 - 11:05 AM (PT) !! TO BE DETERMINED !!
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News from The Neal Show
Eight of the best sharing economy companies
Sharing economy mainstays like AirbnB and Lyft aside, here are eight others helping people share, ride, and borrow collaboratively
Sarah LaBrecque Monday 7 July 2014 12.06 EDT First published on Monday 7 July 2014 12.06 EDT
Access over ownership is the mantra of the sharing economy: a sector based on peer-to-peer lending, borrowing, exchange and collaboration. The idea of borrowing a ladder from your neighbour, who then pops round for a cup of sugar the next day, is not new. But the technology which now facilitates and formalises these exchanges is.
2 Rachel Botsman, author of What's Mine Is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption is Changing the Way We Live has valued the consumer peer-to-peer rental market at $26bn (£15bn), and new services and platforms are popping up all the time. Online review systems mean that the gauge for success is based on trust. The anxiety of handing over your car keys or your pet to a stranger is eased by the transparency of the transaction, and the checks and balances put in place to ensure safety. Crash a borrowed car and you won't be getting a glowing review.
Well-known services such as Airbnb and Uber have met with success and gathered lots of attention. Here are eight more - working under the same principles of collaborative consumption - to watch out for. Vinted Ordered a dress that doesn't quite fit and want to see it go to a good home? Modern day consignment boutique, Vinted.com allows users to sell or swap pre-loved clothing, and aims "to make secondhand clothing the best and easiest choice." Although Vinted takes a fee when items are sold, users can swap items at no cost. Spinlister Fairweather skiiers, surfers and cyclists can use Spinlister to rent out their equipment. Useful for those who have invested in a racing bike or other sporting gear but feel it's not getting used to its fullest potential or anyone after fancier gear. Listings so far are concentrated in the US. LeftoverSwap If you've overestimated appetites at your last social gathering and can't stomach the thought of eating bean salad for the next fortnight - or throwing it in the bin - LeftoverSwap can help. Take a picture of your offerings and arrange for pick up or delivery. Parkatmyhouse Users can rent out their private parking spots to those looking to avoid exorbitant parking fees. Especially handy for making a bit of extra cash for those who live near a rail station or airport. RelayRides A US-based service, RelayRides allows car owners to rent out their under-used vehicles. Renters can find a vehicle that's close to where they live, instead of trekking out to a rental lot, and can rest easy safety wise, as insurance is provided by RelayRides. They estimate that by renting out your car to neighbours, an average of 14 other cars are kept off the road.
Bla Bla Car 3 A ride-sharing service based in the UK, BlaBlaCar matches riders looking to hitch a ride with drivers interested in getting some help with fuel costs for long journeys. Riders pay a set fee directly to the driver for a seat, which is enough to help with motoring costs, and is usually between 50% to 90% cheaper than a train. DogVacay Instead of sending your dog to a kennel while you're away, DogVacay sitters take care of your dog in their own home. A feature of the service is daily photo updates of your dog enjoying its vacation, and of course, peace of mind that it is well looked after. Streetbank Streetbank allows neighbours to share with each other. According to its website there are currently 40,683 neighbours sharing 51,338 things - everything from tools and instruments, to sofa beds and skills. The aim is to build a sense of community through lending and it's free to join.
The circular economy hub is funded by Philips. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled advertisement feature. Find out more here.
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{{ https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/eight-best-sharing-economy-companies }}
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[ ED: This may be the most comprehensive listing of Sharing Economy Websites on the net that I have been able to find. Enjoy. All the links should be active. Pick an area of interest for you, and go exploring. ]
Discover a world of sharing Our Share Guide is packed with amazing services that will transform your everyday life through sharing…
What are you looking for?
Places to stay
Show 602 more
Transport
Show 806 more
Communities & Networks
Show 1,222 more
Finance
Show 887 more
5 Food & Drink
Show 596 more
Pets
Show 31 more
More experiences
{{ http://www.thepeoplewhoshare.com/sharing-economy-guide/ }}
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[ ED: Here is another list of websites for the Collaborative/Sharing Economy. Links are active. If you're on a PC, hold down your CONTROL key and click on the link to go there. ]
The Master List of the Collaborative Economy: Rent and Trade Everything
Posted on February 24th, 2013 in: Collaborative Economy, Industry Index
My next Open Research report (see my body of research) will be about the Rise of the Collaborative Economy. If you’d like to be interviewed for this upcoming report, please fill out this submission form. In my career as an analyst, I often list all the players in a category, announce a formal research effort, then publish a series of analyses, as part of my continuing methodology. In this case I will also be presenting my findings as a speaker at LeWeb, whose theme, “Digital Hippies” is directly related to this trend. Thanks to friend Loic Lemeur for triggering this idea.
[Collaborative Economy Defined: A digital system that manages the coordination of buyers and sellers who offer or exchange used products and remnant services] 6
[Market impact: These startups enable the crowd to get what they need from each other –rather than go to corporations]
The Three Categories of Collaborative Economy Markets
Within this market, there are multiple use scenarios. Right now, we see the following three categories:
Market Type Description Examples First Collaborative Market Manufactures and business owners that are now offering products for rent or barter BMW and Toyota have made motions to offer cars for rent from their lots – beyond selling them. Second Collaborative Market Often denoted as the “Used or Second Hand” market a consumer may offer to rent or lease of used products or remnant services. Lyft allows for any consumer to act like a taxi, and pick up members of the service. Craigslist and eBay (disclosure: client) empowers the selling of used products, worldwide Third Collaborative Market Barter, gifting, or non-currancy exchanges of used products or remnant services. Toyswap allows parents to exchange toys with other parents, rather than purchase products that their kids will outgrow. Giftflow encourages users to ask for what they need, then to help others in the future, paying it forward
Market Rises: Media Attention, Over $2billion in Funding
There’s been remarkable media coverage on this topic as vendors like AirBnB, Lyft, Uber and TaskRabbit have gained the media’s attention. Pushbacks against this category have emerged in San Francisco, as well as in Amsterdam, as unofficial places of rent. We don’t foresee this space going down, as a cursory analysis indicates that there’s been a whopping $2 billion in venture funding across a sampling of 200 startups within this category. A spinoff from the consumer social networking category, this movement will have significant runway before true winners are determined.
Disruptions to CPG, Retail, Service Industry, and Governments There are potentially extensive disruptions for companies that create products or services. If this trend continues at the current speed and trajectory, it may force retail and product-based companies to acquire startups within this space or to offer products in their own stores for lease or barter. Furthermore, governments could be displaced if the barter economy rises. Tax revenues are 7 diminished as people share products with no money exchanged. We’re also seeing new forms of nontraditional currency emerging, including peer-to-peer BitCoin, which is not backed by any central bank or precious metal. It’s backed by processing power.
How You Can Get Involved with this Research
1. Submit a startup in the comments below 2. Request to be interviewed for this upcoming Open Research report in this web form. 3. Share this post with others.
List of 200 Companies in the Collaborative Economy Using the spirit of this space, I contacted a TaskRabbit (thanks Rachel) to conduct significant research from a variety of sources over 22.5 hours to compile a list of startups in this space. This database will be the primary source of a sample which I’ll use to parse trends and data for my upcoming report.
Update: Many of these examples and specific language were from the Collaborative Consumption Hub, to which I failed to provide full attribution (my fault) upon first publication of this piece. Please see the many resources available there, including their many service offerings.
Update: March 26: They’ve built a dynamic directory on their website, which you should visit.
• Personal Services o Rent a Friend Rent a friend for family events, social, business, workout, companionship o Hire A Boston Wingwoman Your WingWoman will put YOU in the spotlight (help you meet women in a social scene). o Airtime The platform for great video conversation
• • Miscellaneous Services o Nanny in the Clouds Changing the way young families fly by connecting them with an in- flight nanny o Wello Bye Bye Gym, Hello Convenience
8 o GetMaid Instant booking, effortless payments, and exceptional home cleaning at your door within two hours. • • Car sharing o Uber Everyone’s Private Driver
o Zipcar Wheels when you want them o Sidecar Connects people with space in their car to those who need a ride
o Lyft Your Friend with a Car o GoGet Get going fast. Never look back.
o WhizzCar Wheels on Demand (Singapore)
o Autoshare Keys to Wonderful (Toronto) o Stattauto CarSharing – Munich Germany
o CarSharing CarSharing Austria (operated by Zipcar) o Zazcar Car Share Brazil
o City Car Club Book, jump in, drive away… o Cambiocar CarSharing
o Autolibre Car Share – very small cars, maybe electric with battery packs and stations around France to recharge. No English translation o Enterprise has purchased IGO carsharing in Chicago
•
• Car sharing (from big automobile manufactures) o BMW Drive NOW Premium Car Sharing by BMW i, Mini, and Sixt o Volkswagen Quicar Car Share by VW (Hanover)
o Peugeot Mu Mobiliy Services Rentals o Daimler Car2Go Spontaneity on Wheels
• • Peer-to-Peer Car Sharing o Whipcar Rent cars from real people in your neighborhood
o RelayRides Rent Cars from People in Your Community
o Drivemycar Rentals Rent Out Your Car o Getaround Rent a car from someone nearby
o Tamyca Take My Car
9 o Buzzcar Borrow the Car Next Door (Europe)
o SnappCar The Ideal Car Loan – Netherlands o Nachbarschaftsauto German Neighborhood Car Share
o Autonetzer Car Rentals Near YOU
• • Bike sharing o Velib Parisian Bike Share o Bixi Canadian Bike Share (Montreal)
o Barclays Cycle Hire Transport for London (Brand) o B-Cycle Pedal it Forward.
o Call-A-Bike Call A Bike – Munich o CyclOcity Bicycle Freedom (Europe and starting in Japan)
o Niceride Twin-Lakes Bike Sharing System (Minnesota)
o HZ Bike China Bike Share o Social Bicycles GPS-enabled Bikes
o Spinlister (rebranded as Liquid) peer to peer bike rental
• • Ride sharing o Zimride Grab a Seat. Save money and meet people heading your way. o Nuride Get rewards for greener trips
o Liftshare Travel Together UK o Jayride Travel A to B with Jayride – UK/Ireland, AUS, NZ
o GoCarShare Life’s a journey…share it o Carpooling Join the leading Global carpooling network!
o Caronetas Smart Rides – Brazil
o DuckSeat Ridesharing for Events o Avego Welcome to Avego, your ride sharing network
o Amovens Find ridesharing partners o Tickengo Click to get a ride
• • Solar Power o Solar City America’s leading full service Solar provider
10 o Solar Century intelligent generation – UK
o PretaSol Renewable energy for homeowners in Spain o CitizenRe renewable energy
o One Block Off The Grid save money on solar energy
• • Toy Rental o Dim Dom Save time, space and money o BabyPlays committed to fun not clutter!
o Rent-a-toy Singapore toy rental o Speelotheken Netherlands toy lending
o Brinquedoteca Brazil Toy and book lending
•
• Textbook Rental o Chegg Your Academic Hub o CampusBookRentals You Textbook Alternative
o Zookal Save HUNDREDS of dollars
o BookRenter Rent your textbooks, save a bundle
• • Art Rental o Art.sy Learn about and collect the worlds greatest art o Artsicle What’s Your Art Style?
o TurningArt Art that speaks for you
•
• Fashion Rental o Bag Borrow or Steal Heart-Stopping Style o Fashionhire Why Buy When You Can Hire
o Shopittome Your favorite brands. Yours sizes. 40-70% off. o Love Me and Leave Me Rent or buy designer fashion
o Rent The Runway Like Netflix, but with fantastic dresses and accessories
o The Outnet The most fashionable fashion outlet
• • Movies o Netflix Watch TV shows and movies anytime, anywhere 11 o Quickflix Smart Movies /
o LoveFilm Out of thie world films
• • General Online Rental o Getable Equipment rental from your mobile phone o AnyHire Your hire and rental marketplace
o Toolspinner Find tools in your area o Snapgoods Want it. Get it. Give it back.
• • Peer-to-Peer Rental o Zilok Zilok Rent anything, On-line! Rentals from Businesses and Individuals.
o Neighborgoods Save money and resources by sharing stuff with your friends o Rentoid The place to rent anything
o Ecomodo The marketplace of good returns o HireThings Hire in what you need, hire out what you have
o Rentalic Rent anything anywhere (site under construction for another month)
o RentStuff A RentalCompare Company o Open Shed Why buy when you can share?
• • Neighborhood Rental/Share/Market o Share Some Sugar Why buy when you can borrow?
o Neigh*borrow Things people need to use but don’t need to own o The Sharehood Meet your neighbors, share with them…
o Frents Collect and share o Friends With Things Connect with your neighbors. Borrow things from them or share things with them. Share skills, expertise, local knowledge and more. It’s free. o Hey Neighbor! Create your neighbor network!
o Toolzdo Connect with neighbors. Life gets easier. o Streetbank Sharing in your neighborhood
o Garage Sale Trail Find sales via your phone
•
• Unique Eperiences o Gidsy Find Unique things to do 12 o Vayable Book an experience when you travel
o Sidetour Challenge the Ordinary
• • Peer-to-Peer Travel o Airbnb Find a Place to Stay o Globetrooper Globetrooper helps you find travel partners
o Zozi Explore the Zozi Lifestyle… o Roomorama Quality accomodations for the discerning traveler
o One Fine Stay Live like a local o Bed and Fed …Be our guest!
o 9Flats The alternative to hotels o Flipkey The alternative to hotels
• • Errand/Task Networks (general and professional) o RedBeacon Trusted Pros for a Better Home
o Expert Bids Submit your bids. Get proposals and reviews. Save time and money.
o Crowdflower “The World’s Largest Workforce – large, data-heavy projects broken into small tasks, distributed to < 1.5 million on-demand global contributors” o Taskrabbit Outsource Errands or Tasks at the Touch of a Button
o Zaarly Life is short. Do what you love.
o Airrun It’s everyone’s personal assistant. o Mytaskangel An online marketplace where people connect to get everyday tasks done in their local communities o Gigwalk Gigwalk connects businesses with the best people to get work done anywhere o Airtasker Find people to help you around the home and office.
• • Social Food Networks o Gobble Personalized Dinners Delivered
o Grubwithus Never eat alone on Grubwithus
o Eatwithme Food. Photos. Writing. o Wok+Wine Wok+Wine is the world’s most effective serendipity machine
• • Storage Networks 13 o Storpod Your storage search begins here
o Spaceout Your one-stop place for space o Sharemystorage Find a place to store
• • Parking Spots o Parkatmyhouse Smarter Parking
o Parkcirca Take your parking space with you o Park on my Drive Find a parking space
• • Shared Studios/Workshops/Workspaces o 3rd Space Studios 3rd Space Studios benefit from large spaces and studio members with a range of disciplines o Techshop Build your dreams here
o Newworkcity Working for yourself doesn’t have to mean working by yourself. o Studiomates STUDIOMATES is a collaborative workspace of designers, illustrators, bloggers, writers, and developers. o Bees Office Work alongside amazing people!
o Coloft LAs startup hub o Desksnearme Need a space to work?
o Deskwanted Find your ideal working community o Opendesks OpenDesks helps you find, share, and manage places to meet and work
o Desksurfing Coworking spaces around the world
•
• Social Lending o Zopa Get a loan today o Prosper We connect people who want to borrow money with people who want to invest money o Lending Club Investors earn better returns, borrowers pay lower rates
o Enterprise Den The marketplace for success o Qifang P2P Lending for Chinese Student Loans
• • Social Currencies o Ven It’s time for a new kind of money 14 o The Liquidity Network Developing a complementary currency for Ireland
o Timebanks Building equality and caring community economies through inclusive exchange of time and talent o Letsystems Local exchange trading system
• • Taxi Sharing o Taxi2 Share. Get there.
o Taxistop More with less… o Weeels More riding, less driving, no parking
• • Bartering o Ourgoods A barter network for the creative community o Itex Connect. Trade. Save.
o Bartercard The card that works for you o Tourboarding How to stay and play in China for Free
• • Crowdfunding (investments, not loans) o Kickstarter Fund and follow creativitiy
o Startsomegood Igniting Ideas, Investment, and Impact o Pozible Crowdfunding creative projects and ideas
o Crowdcube Raising business finance through online investments o Catarse The first crowdfunding platform from Brazil
o Dodge Dart Registry New rules for buying your car
• • Gardens o Urbangardenshare Urban Garden Share pairs together eager gardeners with eager gardens o Landshare Connecting growers to people with land to share o Yardshare Front yard, side yard, & backyard landscaping ideas & garden design pictures shared by homeowners and landscape contractors. o Servicevines Cherry pick the best landscapers from your back yard
• • Skill Sharing 15 o Brooklyn Skill Share Community-based, community-led, & community-building learning events organized and taught by Brooklyn residents o Skillshare Learn differently o Tradeschool Helps people find a trade school
o Weteachme Be interesting o Floqq What do you want to learn?
o Optini Social Discovery platforms
• • Big Marketplaces o Craigslist Online bulletin board
o Gumtree UK’s #1 Classifieds site
• • Free/Gift Exchanges o Freecycle Changing the world one gift at a time o Giftflow Give what you can. Ask for what you need. Pay it forward.
o Ziilch Where good stuff goes free o Exchango Welcome to the freeconomy!
o Freally An online community that help you save money and environment.
•
• Used Electronics o Gazelle Sell you phone, iPad or Mac o Ebay Instant Sale Cash in your electronics
o Apple Recycling Program Reuse and recycling program
• • Swap Sites for Books/Media o Paperbackswap Your source for swapping and buying books online!
o Bookmooch Give books away. Get books you want. o Swap/Netcycler Swap, buy and sell kids’ items
o Swapsity Canada’s #1 Swapping Community
• • Swap Sites f0r Baby Goods/Toys o Toyswap Swap, Buy, and Sell New and Gently Used Toys o Thredup Just Like a Consignment Shop – But All Online! 16 o Kinderado (formerly Tauschteddy) Second hand children’s clother for parents. From parents. • • Clothing Swaps o The Clothing Exchange Imagine a giant clothing store where everything is free…
o 99 Dresses Gain access to an infinite closet o Poshmark A fun and simple way to buy and sell fashion
o Dig N’Swap Swap, fashionably!
•
• Pets o Rover Find your perfect dog sitter
o Dogvacay Board your dog in a real home
• • Education/Language o EduFire A social learning community o Udemy Udemy helps students make moves
o Myngle Language lessons that come to you o Glovico A social network where people from developing countries can offer their services as language teachers o Livemocha Creating a world without barriers
Summary and Next Steps This trend is just getting started. Expect many traditional business models to be disrupted as these startups and large companies adopt new methods for deploying and consuming goods and services. Don’t expect more than 20% of these startups to survive, as categories will expand and collapse in the traditional innovation environment. I’ll keep a continued focus on this market trend over the coming future. Please leave a comment with your thoughts and submissions. Filed under: Collaborative Economy, Industry Index
{{ http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2013/02/24/the-master-list-of-the-collaborative-economy-rent-and- trade-everything/ }}
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17
[ ED: Suppose you're not happy with any of the social networking sites you see on the web. Why not create your own? Use it in your own circle of friends. Use it for your neighborhood, your city. ]
OPEN SOURCE SOCIAL NETWORK USER PROFILE
PERSONAL WALL, FRIENDS LIST, PHOTO ALBUMS, PROFILE COVER, USER INFORMATION AND MUCH MORE.
Fully Featured Features like groups, photos, files, messages and many many more to makes your social network perfect! Components Add extra feature in your social network, Expand your social network with freely available components. Performance Open Source Social Network is the fastest solution out there which uses ressources extremly efficient! Multilanguage Open Source Social Network is in many languages. You can add as many languages you can.
18 983,557 Downloads 69,026 Community Members […]
We can help you to launch your social networking website. No coding skills required!. © Open Source Soical Network
{{ https://www.opensource-socialnetwork.org/ }}
• What's next?
What is managed social network? NO IT SKILLS? Then you need a managed social network. We host and manage and your private social network! We take care about changes, maintenance, backup and configuration. Let us know what you need and we will do it for you.
What is included in it?
It includes all available premium components and features listed below! In an easy to use AppStore you can select the components you need to make your social network great. Further you get the Windows Messenger and the Android Mobile App free of charge!
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You should use it because no IT Skills are required and you don't need a separate provider to host your social network. Our team will host and maintain it for you! If there is any question our team will be happy to help you.
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[ ED: This is the NEW "facebook" for a great many researchers and alternative thinkers on the Internet. There are many, many alternatives to Facebook, so you don't have to pick Mind.com, but since there are a lot of researchers openly announcing they are going to Minds.com, I think you should give it a hard look. ]
Minds.com: Encrypted, Community-Owned Social Network Emerges to Challenge FB
May 26, 2017 at 2:55 pm Written by Anti-Media Staff
(ANTIMEDIA) As concern over corporate censorship of content on social media continues to mount, an alternative to giants like Facebook and YouTube has emerged — Minds.com, an encrypted, open source, community-owned and operated social media platform.
Speaking to Observer, coder and Minds co-founder Bill Ottman said the idea is based around a highly secure network where people can freely express themselves while maintaining a level of privacy they’re comfortable with.
We're revolutionizing the news industry, but we need your help! Click here to get started.
“Minds is engineered for freedom of speech, transparency and privacy,” Ottman said. “Users may choose to be anonymous, if they wish, and free speech is limited only by U.S. law. The software is free, open sourced and encrypted end-to-end for maximum transparency and privacy, peer-reviewed at Minds.org.”
Ottman recently opened Minds to crowdfunding, and investors have already chipped in over $990,000.
20 If fact, the project broke the crowdfunding record for the most money invested in a single day.
It’s no wonder there’s so much enthusiasm for the idea. As Observer highlights, Facebook has been taking heat since last year over its handling of the “fake news” hysteria, and as recently as March, YouTube was being criticized for demonetizing the content of independent media voices on its platform — at the behest of corporate advertisers.
Ottman said companies like Facebook have it all wrong, and that machine learning software is no substitute for human judgment when it comes to deciding what content should be on a user’s page:
“They are approaching these problems completely backwards, and it’s creating unnecessary censorship. Users should determine themselves whether their news is fake or not — not a Facebook algorithm. Likewise, users should determine themselves how/if they want to be targeted with ads.” But Minds is about far more than simply posting content in the hopes of accumulating likes. It’s a platform that literally rewards its users.
“Minds believes that users should be rewarded for their efforts online and pays users points that can be redeemed for views on the network,” Ottman said. “Minds also pays bloggers for revenue earned by placing banner ads on their content, and any channel may create exclusive content viewable only via paid monthly subscription.”
The platform even has a program, Minds Wire, that allows users to monetarily “tip” other users — with Minds points, cash, or Bitcoin — if they come across content they find particularly valuable.
If the record-breaking speed at which the Minds project is gaining investment is any indicator, all this is sounding pretty good to a lot of people. Indeed, in an era when the corporate media has been put in charge of fact-checking news, perhaps it’s an idea whose time has come.
Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo
{{ http://theantimedia.org/encrypted-community-owned-minds/ }}
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21
[ ED: This is considered by many to be one of the most important articles ever written on Facebook. It has recently gone "viral". It is a long read, but if you read ALL OF IT, you will certainly change your mind about Facebook. One of the issues here is that this is about whether or not our FAMILIES ARE AT RISK !!!!! ]
Get your loved ones off Facebook.
Imagine you could learn from anyone on the planet. Hi, I'm Salim, a tech entrepreneur and educator. I write about peer-to-peer education, humanitech, AI, and technology inclusion. You can get my writing by email.
Jan 29, 2015 Privacy
I originally wrote this for my friends and family in 2015, to explain why the latest Facebook privacy policy is really harmful. It’s since been read by over a million people, and I updated it earlier thise year. External references – and steps to get off properly – at the bottom. Oh, and if you’re interested in a privacy-friendly way to stay in touch with friends, I’m looking into making a simple phone app for easy sharing.
2017 update: A lot of these concerns I had have proven true. Facebook has been consistent with its pattern of contempt for its users. I’ve updated this with a few more points and links.
“Oh yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask you why you’re getting off Facebook,” is the guilty and reluctant question I’m hearing a lot these days. Like we kinda know Facebook is bad, but don’t really want to know.
I’ve been a big Facebook supporter - one of the first users in my social group who championed what a great way it was to stay in touch, way back in 2006. I got my mum and brothers on it, and around 20 other people. I’ve even taught Facebook marketing in one of the UK’s biggest tech education projects, Digital Business Academy. I’m a techie and a marketer – so I can see the implications – and until now, they hadn’t worried me. I’ve been pretty dismissive towards people who hesitate with privacy concerns.
22
Just checking…
Over the 2014/15 holidays, I thought I’d take a few minutes to check on the upcoming privacy policy change, with a cautious “what if” attitude. With our financial and location information on top of everything else, there were some concerning possibilities. Turns out what I suspected already happened 2 years ago, starting in 2011! That few minutes of searching turned into a few days of research and reading. I dismissed a lot of claims I found that could be explained as accidents - technically plausible or technically lazy. After all, I’m a startup founder myself and know how hard tech can be. For example, the excessive permissions that Facebook Android app asks for are a technical issue to do with Android. But there was still a lot of serious privacy concerns left over, and I considered those facts with techniques that I know to be standard practice in data-driven marketing.
With this latest privacy change on January 30th, 2015 I’m scared. Facebook has always been slightly worse than all the other tech companies with dodgy privacy records, but now, it’s in its own league. Getting off isn’t just necessary to protect yourself, it’s necessary to protect your friends and family too. This could be the point of no return – but it’s not too late to take back control.
A short list of some Facebook practices
It’s not just what Facebook is saying it’ll take from you and do with your information, it’s all the things it’s not saying, and doing anyway because of the loopholes they create for themselves in their Terms of Service and how simply they go back on their word. We don’t even need to click “I agree” anymore. They just change the privacy policy and by staying on Facebook, you agree. Oopsy!
Facebook doesn’t keep any of your data safe or anonymous, no matter how much you lock down your privacy settings. Those are all a decoy. There are very serious privacy breaches, like selling your product endorsement to advertisers and politicians, tracking everything you read on the internet, or using data from your friends to learn private things about you - none of these privacy breaches have an off switch. Worse yet, Facebook does these things without ever letting you know, or revealing the damage to you if you ask.
23 Facebook gives your data to “third-parties” through your use of apps, and then say that’s you doing it, not them. Every time you use an app connected to Facebook, you’re allowing Facebook to escape its own privacy policy with you and with your friends. It’s like when my brother used to make me punch myself and ask, “why are you punching yourself?” Then he’d tell my mum it wasn’t his fault.
I dug in. I discovered all the spying Facebook does – which I double-checked with articles from big reputable news sources and academic studies that were heavily scrutinised. (Links are all in the Source section at the bottom of this post.)
It sounds nuts when you put it all together!
• Facebooks creates false endorsements for products from you to your friends - and they never reveal this to you. • When you see a like button on the web, Facebook is tracking that you’re reading that page. It scans the keywords on that page and associates them to you. It knows much time you spend on different sites and topics. • They read your private messages and the contents of the links you send privately.
• They’ve introduced features that turn your phone’s mic on without telling you. Based on their track- record changing privacy settings back without telling you, audio surveillance is likely to start happening without your knowledge. • They can use face recognition to track your location through pictures , even those that aren’t on Facebook. (Pictures taken with mobile phones have time, date and GPS data built into them.) • They track your location, and use that to discover private things about you, like if you’re sick (because you’re at the doctor or a specialist), who you sleep with (who’s beside you at night), where you work, if you’re job-searching (1-hour meetings at competitors offices), etc. • They’ve used snitching campaigns to trick people’s friends into revealing information about them that they chose to keep private. • They use the vast amount of data they have on you, from your likes, things you read, things you type but don’t post, to make highly accurate models about who you are – even if you make it a point of keeping these things secret. There are statistical techniques, which have been used in marketing for decades, that find correlating patterns between someone’s behaviour and their attributes. Even if you never posted anything, they can easily work out your age, gender, sexual orientation and political views. When you post, they work out much more. Then they reveal it to banks, insurance companies, governments, and of course, advertisers. 24 “I have nothing to hide”
A lot of people aren’t worried about this, feeling they have nothing to hide. Why would they care about little old me? Why should I worry about this when I’m not doing anything wrong?
The now famous story of the pregnant teenager being outed by the store Target, after it mined her purchase data – larger handbags, headache pills, tissues – and sent her a “congratulations” message as marketing, which her unknowing father got instead. Oops!
The same is done about you, and revealed to any company without your control. And this extrapolates into different ways your data can reveal something about you to people you don’t want to know about it.
One of the more obvious problems here is with insurance companies. The data they have on you is mined to predict your future. Would you like to be denied health insurance because an algorithm incorrectly predicted you were starting to see a heart specialist?
What about your employer or prospective employer knowing that you might be pregnant? Would you like your boss to know when you’re not really home sick, or when you’re looking for another job?
Would you like others to know if you’re having trouble paying your mortgage? If you’re selling your house, buyers will know they have the upper hand.
Don’t confuse privacy with secrecy. I know what you do in the bathroom, but you still close the door. That’s because you want privacy, not secrecy. (From I have nothing to hide. Why should I care about my privacy?
While most of us feel we have nothing to hide, we all come across situations where we need certain things to be secret, at least for a while. But we’re giving that up – and for what?
From the Terms Of Service (not the Privacy Policy – see what they did there?): You give us permission to use your name, profile picture, content and information in connection with commercial, sponsored or related content (such as a brand you like), served or enhanced by us.
25 And later:
By “information” we mean facts and other information about you, including actions taken by users and non-users who interact with Facebook.
So this includes everything they’re collecting about you but not telling you. Everything you read online, everything someone ever posts about you, all your private financial transactions.
And, your data starts to get combined with your friends data to make these models more accurate. It’s not just about you and your data but what gets done with all of it put together.
Even if the issue here isn’t what we have to hide, it’s maintaining an important right to our freedom – which is the right to privacy.
Article 12 of UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
“No one must be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation.”
We have the right to have a say in how information about us is used. But by using Facebook, we’re voluntarily giving it up, not just for us but for our friends and family!
If you’ve ever admitted to something illegal in a private Facebook message, or even mentioned your support for a political cause, this can be used against you in the future, especially by another country’s government. You may find yourself arrested for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, or just pulled aside at the airport one day, now facing jail time because you revealed you did something that government considers illegal 5 years ago. One New York comedian had a SWAT team break into his house based on a joke post. Law enforcement often acts in error, and you’re giving them more power and more chance of error. You’re loading the gun, pointing it at your head, and handing it to every trigger-happy “enforcer” who’s willing to buy your data.
There’s no need to talk hypothetically about government surveillance here. One of the first Facebook investors called Greylock has board connections to a CIA investment firm called In-Q-Tel. According to their website, it “identifies cutting-edge technologies to help the Central Intelligence Agency and 26 the broader US Intelligence Community to further their missions”. And if you haven’t heard - it was revealed that Facebook data is delivered directly to the PRISM programme.
Commercial data brokers
And as I’ll explain later, most of this information finds its way into the public anyway. No need for NSA programmes because of marketing data companies who de-anonymise all your data to sell it again and again. This is done systematically and automatically. There’s an industry around this. There are marketplaces to buy and sell consumer data, originally started around credit agencies and direct mail companies, then growing with the browser toolbar industry when Internet Explorer was big - now they’re filled with more information than ever before. A recent example is RapLeaf which collected and released personally identifiable information, including Facebook and MySpace IDs. They stopped after serious controversy, but not only was the damage done, there were other companies who escaped the bad PR and kept up the same practice. It’s not about how marketers target ads to you, it’s that your data is bought and sold to try.
Where might you travel in the future? Do you trust their law enforcement with this information about you? Because they’re buying it.
2017 Update: Facebook has announced that it’s teaming up with four of the world’s largest corporate data brokers.
Intercepting your communication
The thing is that you don’t need a conspiracy theory to be concerned. Mark Zuckerburg himself has been public and consistent to his investors about his intentions:
1) To be the middle-man in all personal communication. That’s why they made Messenger and bought WhatsApp, but don’t forget that they’ve tried worse. When they made Facebook email, they took advantage of users who were syncing their Facebook contacts. They made it so everyone’s @facebook.com address would be the default. Why? So that your friends would email you at your @facebook.com address instead of your normal email address, and they’d be able to read your emails too.
27
2) To make all personal communication public over time. That’s why they slowly changed the default privacy settings to public, made privacy settings harder and harder to use, and now are pretending that their privacy helper will change this.
In reality, there a loads of privacy breaches you can’t turn off, like allowing advertisers to use your endorsement to your friends, turning off how Facebook tracks what you read on the internet, or disallowing Facebook from collecting other information about you. You can’t turn them off!
Facebook doesn’t let you share what you want to
Even if you have nothing to hide, you have to worry about the opposite, what Facebook chooses to hide that you want to be shared. They filter you.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you why you’re getting off” usually comes after something like, “didn’t you see my post last week?”
If you’ve ever had that conversation, you’ve noticed that there’s a big disconnect between your expectations when you communicate on Facebook and what really happens. Basically, Facebook filters out your posts based on whether or not people will use Facebook more if they don’t see it. It feels like Facebook is the only way to stay in touch. Through pictures and comments. It feels like everyone’s on there and you’re getting a good feed on their life.
In reality, lots of your posts are never seen by anyone! And you miss out on their stuff too. Even if your friends’ stuff gets to you fine, it doesn’t mean your stuff gets to them.
Private messages suck too. How many Facebook messages do you send with no reply? How many Facebook messages do you think you forget to get back to, or miss altogether? Is that how you want to treat your friends?
Facebook a really unreliable way to stay in touch. In the last month, I simply stopped using Facebook. Something amazing happened. People phoned me, and we really caught up. My family was more in touch. My brother emailed me with updates. 28 Friends popped into my place to say hi.
It was, like, social.
Political censorship
Facebook’s blocks posts based on political content it doesn’t like. They blocked posts about Fergusson and other political protests. When Zuckerberg allegedly went a bit nuts and banned the word “privacy” from meetings at Facebook, it was also blocked from any Facebook post. You just got an error message about “inappropriate content”. Yeah, uh huh. Inappropriate for who?
We shouldn’t be surprised though. Facebook isn’t a neutral platform - we need be aware of the agendas of the people behind it. Zuckerberg’s been public about his intentions. So has the first board member of Facebook - the politically conservative Peter Thiel. In his younger years, he wrote a book challenging multi-culturalism at Stanford, and now promotes a theory called Memetic Desire which, among other positive things, can also use people’s social groups to manipulate their wants and intentions. (I’m a fan of Thiel when it comes to startups - but we often forget that everyone else out there doesn’t know this stuff.) Facebook goes so far as to let political organisations block your communication. It just takes a few people to mark the same news article as offensive, and it drops from everyone’s feed. This is often abused. I can block any article from Facebook by getting a few friends to mark it as offensive. Cheap and easy censorship.
2017 update: We’ve seen how this affected the US election. People’s news feeds often had opposing political views filtered, and yet fake news spread easily because those fake headlines reinforce our beliefs and we’re happy to share them.
All this points to the fact that it’s bad to rely on Facebook to communicate with people who are important to you. Your Facebook habit means other people have to rely on Facebook. It’s a vicious cycle.
It actually hurts your relationships with a lot of people because you think you’re in touch with them, but you’re not. At best, you’re in touch with a filtered version of your friends. Those relationships fade,
29 while your relationships with people who make “Facebook-friendly” posts take their place. Not only does Facebook want to read all your communication, it wants to control it too.
Ratting on your friends
Even if you’re sort of okay with this for you, by using Facebook, you’re forcing your friends and family to accept the same. Even the ones who aren’t on Facebook or go as far as to use fake names.
If you’ve ever used Facebook contact sync, or used Facebook on your mobile phone, Facebook took your complete contact list. Real names, phone numbers, addresses, emails, everything. They then use that to create “shadow profiles” of the people you know who aren’t on Facebook. Non Facebook users often see this in action, in the form of emails to them from Facebook, containing their personal information.
Facebook users can see this when they upload a picture of a non-Facebook user, and they’re automatically tagged. My friend’s not on Facebook, but since me and a few friends used Facebook on our phones, Facebook has his name and contact information, plus knows who his friends are because it sees him in their address book and calling records. A couple of pictures uploaded with his face, and presto - they can identify him in pictures – adding location data from the pictures to his shadow profile. Lots of Facebook’s other techniques work on shadow profiles too. On top of all this, they can very accurately infer a lot about him based on statistical similarities to his friends.
So basically, we’ve all inadvertently been ratting on our friends who wanted to remain private. Facebook tricked us.
But Facebook’s tricks go further.
“Privacy” doesn’t apply to what Facebook digs up
Like shadow profiles of people, Facebook can “infer a like” based on other information it has about you, like what you read all over the internet or what you do in apps where you log in with Facebook, or what’s on your credit card bill (more on that later.). Call it a “shadow like.” This allows them to sell you to more advertisers.
30
It’s already well-documented that Facebook collects this information. The “shadow like” technique is simply the standard use of statistical techniques in database marketing. If you read a lot about a topic, you probably like it. That sort of thing. These techniques have used in marketing since the 80s, and you can hire university statistics students to do them, though of course, Facebook hires the best in the field and are looking to pioneer state-of-the-art artificial intelligence for this. In Europe, Facebook is legally obliged to share exactly what information it has about you - but they refuse. So there’s yet another class action lawsuit against them.
Permission
Through its labyrinth of re-definitions of words like “information”, “content” and “data”, you’re allowing Facebook to collect all kinds of information about you and expose that to advertisers. With your permission only they say, but the definition of “permission” includes using apps and who knows what else.
And you thought those Farmville requests were annoying. Every time you saw one, that friend was revealing your information to “third parties.” See how this works? You tell Facebook this is for “friends only” but your friend can reveal it to a third-party. And most apps that they use are third-parties. So effectively, all that stuff you marked as “friends only” doesn’t matter so much. By being on Facebook, there’s way more information about you that’s collected, combined, shared, and used.
They say they “anonymise” this, but in reality, it’s a simple step to de-anonymise it. A lot of the anonymous data, like what and when you posted, pictures of you, your location at a given time, is enough for a huge number of companies to tie that anonymous data back to you – and sell it on. (That’s why it doesn’t matter if you use a fake name on Facebook, your data is like a fingerprint and will match back to your real name.)
On top of this, they allow all the Facebook apps full access to your information - with your name and everything. And even if you never use any apps on Facebook, your friends do. When they use apps, your friends share all your information for you. There’s a whole industry behind this.
Some things DO have off buttons, but keep in mind they are temporary, and as Facebook has done in the past, it will switch them back on without letting you know. When Facebook started (and probably 31 when you joined) it was clearly a safe place to share with your friends only. That was their big promise. Over time, they switched the default privacy setting to public so that if you still wanted to keep Facebook for friends only, you had to manually find over 100 settings on multiple hidden settings pages. Then, they started dropping those settings and forced information to be public anyway. Why are you still punching yourself? :)
Selling your endorsement without your consent
You might have noticed Facebook ads with your friends’ endorsement under it. Basically, Facebook gives advertisers the right to use you as an endorser, but you have no control over it. It’s not limited to when you’ve actually clicked a like button. There have been known cases of vegetarians endorsing McDonalds, a long- and happily-married woman endorsing dating sites, and even a young boy endorsing a sex club to his own mother!
Those cases were so embarrassing that the person found out. People called them up. But in most cases, these are endorsements that don’t get discovered – people assume them to be true. That’s even scarier because Facebook is used heavily for political advertising, and product endorsements. People know I raised money for kids with cancer before, so they might not be surprised if they see an ad where I’m endorsing a Christian outreach programme poor kids in Africa. But I categorically only support programmes that don’t have religious allegiances, since they’re known to bias their support to people who convert. Worse, a lot of people might assume things about my religious beliefs based on these false endorsements. Don’t even get me started on all the hypey startup stuff I don’t condone!
Abusing your friends’ trust in you
We can have no idea if our endorsement has been used to sell flakey crap in our name. I don’t want to think about my mom wasting her money on something she thought I was endorsing, or my startup founder clients seeing adverts for useless products with my face under them.
Using Facebook means this happens all the time. Advertisers can buy your endorsement on Facebook and your information from third-party data brokers. You never get to know about it, and you can’t turn it off.
32
The latest privacy change
Finally, I want to explain how this latest privacy change makes things way worse, and way more out of your control if you stay on Facebook.
Facebook is demanding to track what you buy, and your financial information like bank account and credit card numbers. You’ve already agreed to it in the new Terms Of Service. It’s already started sharing data with Mastercard. They’ll use the fact that you stayed on Facebook as “permission” to make deals with all kinds of banks and financial institutions to get your data from them. They’ll call it anonymous, but like they trick your friends to reveal your data to the third-parties with apps, they’ll create loopholes here too.
Facebook is also insisting to track your location via your phone’s GPS, everywhere and all the time. It’ll know exactly who you spend your time with. They’ll know your habits, they’ll know when you call in sick at work, but are really out bowling. “Sal likes 2pm Bowling at Secret Lanes.” They’ll know if you join an addict support group, or go to a psychiatrist, or a psychic, or a mistress. They’ll know how many times you’ve been to the doctor or hospital, and be able to share that with prospective insurers or employers. They’ll know when you’re secretly job hunting, and will sell your endorsement for job sites to your friends and colleagues – you’ll be revealed.
They’ll know everything that can be revealed by your location, and they’ll use it however they want to make a buck.
And – it’ll all be done retrospectively. If you stay on Facebook past January 30th, there’s nothing stopping all of your past location and financial data to get used. They’ll get your past location data from when your friends checked-in with you, and the GPS data stored in photos of you. They’ll pull your old financial records - that embarrassing medicine you bought with your credit card 5 years ago will be added to your profile to be used as Facebook chooses. It will be sold again and again, and likely used against you. It will be shared with governments and be freely available from loads of “third- party” companies who do nothing but sell personal data, and irreversibly eliminate your privacy.
This is irreversible now.
33
Location and financial data are not just really sensitive, they allow the “third-parties” de-anonymise information about you. This massively empowers these third-parties to collect all available information about you, including calculated information that you never revealed. This is a situation where even Facebook itself will have trouble maintaining the privacy of its data – not that they care. This is unprecedented, and just like you’d never have guessed that Facebook would sell your endorsements when you signed up in 2009, it’s too hard to predict what Facebook and those third- party data sellers will do with this new power.
This is simply a consequence of their business model. Facebook sells you out, because that’s exactly how they make money. And they’re under heavy pressure from their investors to make more. What can you do about this? Facebook gives you two options: accept all of this, or get off the Facebook bus.
To be honest, this bus is getting loud, annoying and bit smelly, isn’t it? And the ticket is way too expensive in the first place. You know, I’m not even sure it’s heading in the right direction…
How to get out of this mess
According to the FTC settlement from a few years ago, after Facebook was sued by the US government for its privacy practices, Facebook is “required to prevent anyone from accessing a user’s material more than 30 days after the user has deleted his or her account;”
There are different interpretations of this. Some say you need to delete each post separately, others say delete your account, and some say they’ll still keep your data anyway – that all you can do is stop giving them more data. Then, there are the data brokers Facebook works with, that now have our data.
So deleting your Facebook account (not deactivating) is necessary to stop this, and then there are a few other steps to try to undo the damage:
Preparation (optional)
34 1. Use Facebook’s download my archive tool 2. Grab your photos. I used this Android app since the Facebook tool doesn’t give you all your pictures or in full resolution. ( I also downloaded my friends list page - just by scrolling to the bottom to load everyone, and hitting File -> Save. Honestly, so far I haven’t needed the file yet. Turns out, I don’t need a computer to tell me who my friends are. ) 3. If you want to be extra careful delete your Facebook posts individually with this script. This is necessary under some interpretations of what Facebook is entitled to keep. 4. Then there are all the apps you’ve used. This is one of Facebook’s best loopholes because they say they can’t control what the apps do with your data once you give it to them. So, I’ve saved the settings page that shows what apps I’ve used onto my hard drive, and removed access to each of them manually. Each of those apps have their own privacy policy – most of them are a lost cause, claiming unlimited rights to my data, so I’m just shutting them down and moving on.
Deleting your account
1. Delete your Facebook account Don’t let Facebook trick you into “deactivating” it instead.
Further precautions
Facebook will still try to track you with a “shadow profile”, but this can be blocked. To stop Facebook (and others) from tracking what I read on the web, I use Firefox with Tracking Protection enabled. (Here’s how. (they do this even if you don’t have a Facebook account)
If you’re not using Firefox, the EFF have a browser plugin called Privacy Badger. (And while you’re at it, the EFF made this great plugin that automatically chooses the most secure web connection, making it more difficult for internet companies and others to snoop your web activity.)
Then there’s the data that’s been leaked to data brokers. You can request that they remove it.
What replaces Facebook?
2017 update: At first, I thought I’d try Facebook alternatives. I felt a sense of needing to replace Facebook with something similar, like Diaspora but email and phone have actually been much better! 35 After a month off Facebook, I didn’t feel the need for a direct replacement. The phone call was enough- go figure.
Everyone already has one, and we forget how super easy and convenient they are to use. I see fewer pictures, but I actually talk to people. More recently, we all got on a big chat room. I currently recommend Signal for this. You can encrypted call, chat and share pictures, and very little is stored on their servers. It’s actually better than Facebook since it’s more immediate and personal. (But since it’s a private company, there’s no reason to trust it in the long term. It can be bought and fall to the same pressures.)
Telegram is also a private company, and doesn’t encyrypt messages by default. But there are tons of people on it, so you’re likely to find enough friends there to start.
In the long run, my big hope is on Tox but it’s early days. When that’s ready for prime time, it’ll be the first messenging platform that’s fully encrypted and peer-to-peer, so no company will be able to mess with it.
An idea
I’m thinking of a little free-software phone app that just allows me to snap a pic or make a little comment, and share it with a fixed list of people over email: just close friends and family. All the convenience of Facebook sharing, to my closest friends, without the privacy cost. What do you think? Something you’d be up for? If you’d like that app, sign up for updates on the project. If you’d like to help, hit me up :)
If you have any other ideas or advice, please get in touch. This is what I see as a responsible step to prevent myself, my family and my friends from having their freedom taken from them, and their personal relationships made to suffer.
Remember, this isn’t just about the technical stuff. By staying on Facebook, you’re granting them permission to collect and use information about you, regardless of you even using the Internet. And by staying on, the data they collect on you gets used to create models about your
36 closest friends and family, even the ones who opted out.
The Internet is free and open, but that doesn’t mean we to accept being spied on
Lastly, the world is full of people who say “it’ll never happen”, and when it does, they switch to “there’s nothing we can do.” There is. The Internet was decentralised for 50 years, and is full of options, by design, that allow us to maintain privacy. We have a say in the world we want to live in – if we take action ourselves. Plus, we can help everyone understand, and help them make their own choices more informed.
This post has been read by 1,000,000 people now. It’s a positive sign that we can inform and educate ourselves!
Please share this with people who are important to you. But to be honest, even though this post is really popular, it’s clear a lot of people are assuming what’s in it. Sharing a link isn’t as good as talking to someone.
If you got this far and want to share it with someone close, I suggest you do what I did – pick up the phone.
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Sources A note on the quality of these sources: I tried to find references from major news outlets, with a range of political biases. These articles are less technically aware, but we can expect they’re more rigorous than blogs at checking their sources. For the more technical stuff, sources like The Register are known to be more credible, and Techcrunch is notoriously unreliable at fact-checking. I’ve included some of their articles though, because they’re good at explaining things.
Facebook likes reveal sensitive personal information eff.org
37 Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior pnas.org table of top likes New Facebook Policies Sell Your Face And Whatever It Infers forbes.com You are what you Facebook Like washingtonpost.com Criticism of Facebook - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org Facebook stallman.org Forcing users onto Messenger huffingtonpost.com Permissions telegraph.co.uk WhatsApp hackread Europe vs Facebook irishtimes.com slate.com europe-v-facebook.org Facebook info sharing created Zoosk.com dating profile for married woman cbc.ca @facebook.com e-mail plague chokes phone address books arstechnica.com Facebook Knows Your Friends—Even if They’re Not on Facebook - IEEE Spectrum spectrum.ieee.org Facebook Now Wants To ‘Spy’ On Android Phone Users! efytimes.com Facebook adds naggy “ask” button to profile pages arstechnica.com Facebook users unwittingly revealing intimate secrets, study finds theguardian.com Facebook’s Generation Y nightmare theguardian.com Facebook Knows Your Friends—Even if They’re Not on Facebook - IEEE Spectrum spectrum.ieee.org Facebook’s New Privacy Rules Clear the Way for Payments Push and Location-Based Ads recode.net Dutch Regulator Investigates Facebook’s Privacy Policy bits.blogs.nytimes.com Facebook prunes its privacy policy, lays groundwork for location-based ads - GeekWire geekwire.com Stalking on Facebook Is Easier Than You Think - IEEE Spectrum spectrum.ieee.org Millions Will Flow to Privacy Groups Supporting Weak Facebook Settlement | WIRED wired.com Facebook Is Recycling Your Likes To Promote Stories You’ve Never Seen To All Your Friends forbes.com Is Facebook damaging your reputation with sneaky political posts? | ZDNet zdnet.com Even Google won’t be around for ever, let alone Facebook theguardian.com Facebook reforms user settings dailyemerald.com Facebook Privacy: A Bewildering Tangle of Options - Graphic - NYTimes.com nytimes.com
38 Corrupt Personalization blogs.law.harvard.edu Facebook is not your friend theguardian.com Facebook violates German law, Hamburg data protection official says | Sci-Tech | DW.DE | 02.08.2011 dw.de The World from Berlin: ‘Every User Can Decide Alone What Facebook Knows’ - SPIEGEL ONLINE spiegel.de Q&A: Facebook privacy changes bbc.co.uk Famous Facebook Flip-Flops pcworld.com No Death, No Taxes - The New Yorker newyorker.com Facebook censors political satire after complaint from JobCentre Plus tompride.wordpress.com TED: The curly fry conundrum: Why social media “likes” say more than you might think tedtranscripts.blogspot.com With friends like these … Tom Hodgkinson on the politics of the people behind Facebook theguardian.com Facebook Must Face Lawsuit Over Scanning of Users’ Messages, Judge Says recode.net How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did forbes.com War on General Purpose Computers is the difference between utopia and dystopia boingboing.net Don’t Worry About Selling Your Privacy To Facebook. I Already Sold It For You | Just Well Mixed jasonlefkowitz.net Facebook’s Hidden “Like” Isn’t Just Good For Mobile Developers, It’s Good For Facebook techcrunch.com Mastercard to access Facebook data theage.com.au Three transactions can reveal your identity pcworld.idg.com.au Look who’s lurking around your Facebook page: Your insurance company! insure.com NSA Prism program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others theguardian.com Everything We Know About What Data Brokers Know About You propublica.org How to Stalk Someone’s Location on Facebook Messenger Trip Wire What your online friends reveal about where you are New Scientist Turn on Tracking Protection in Firefox to Make Pages Load 44% Faster Lifehacker
This is Salim Virani's blog.
• Salim Virani 39 • [email protected]
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[ ED: Yes, I know how we love our "pretty" apple products, even though they are destroying our brain at almost three times the rate of a Samsung. Is your love of apple "i" products more important than your health? ]
SAR explained: here is the radiation level of top smartphones (iPhone 6 compared with competition) Posted: 05 Oct 2014, 15:59, by Victor H.
[…] One such barely legal device is the Apple iPhone 6. Did you know that SAR levels for the iPhone 6 are merely .01 below the legal 1.6 W/kg limit? While technically it is under the threshold, we’d definitely be more reassured if Apple’s newest big thing had lower levels of SAR. Is there an explanation for this? We’d guess that it might have something to do with the iPhone 6’s record number of LTE bands, but take this as merely an educated guess.
{{ http://www.phonearena.com/news/SAR-explained-here-is-the-radiation-level-of-top-smartphones-iPhone- 6-compared-with-competition_id61381 }}
Apple iPhone 7 vs Samsung Galaxy S6 Regulatory Approval
IPhone7 Samsung Galaxy 6 FCC approval Date approved 07 Sep 2016 02 Mar 2015 FCC ID value: BCG-E3091A link FCC ID value: A3LSMG920A link FCC measured SAR Head 1.19 W/kg 0.49 W/kg Body 1.09 W/kg 0.96 W/kg Product Specific Use 1.14 W/kg 1.04 W/kg Simultaneous Transmission 1.56 W/kg 1.25 W/kg
40 {{ http://www.phonearena.com/phones/compare/Apple-iPhone-7,Samsung-Galaxy- S6/phones/9815%2C8997 }}
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