Spying on Children: Dino, the Stool Pigeon Dinosaur

Dino is a plush toy recommended for children ages 4-9. They play with it. It plays back, as only an AI chatbot can. It answers questions, creates interactive stories, can handle jokes, and even help with math homework. Pretty clever, and only $249.00, if you can get one. Production is currently not mass. 

Cute idea. Innovative, but not totally original. Toy companies have been offering "interactive" dolls for a long time. I am guessing we are all too young to have had a Thomas A. Edison talking doll, introduced in 1887. Zipping into the early 1960's there was Chatty Cathy, by Mattel. Still drawing a blank? How about Furby from the late 1990's. All these toys were "interactive" in that the child made them speak, and these responses were limited.

Welcome to the 21st Century! Interactivity is really here. Dino supposedly can "AI think" and answer. Since I have never seen a Dino in the wild, supposedly will have to do based on the website's claims.

"So, Kevin, how is this Spy News?!?!"

Dino has another talent. It can squeal. Its interactions zap to an app faster than you can say, "You dirty rat." 

• Tell Dino you raided the cookie jar, your parents will know. 
• Ask Dino where to hide the [fill in the blank] you stole, they will know. 
• Tell Dino you hate your parents and are plotting revenge, they will know. 

The gotchas are infinite, kid. Keep your knees loose. (JS)

Using a Device to Track medical data?

Are you using a device to track medical data? Here’s who else might be watching...
Wearable technology—smartwatches, smart rings, fitness trackers and the like—monitors body-centric data such as your heart rate, steps taken and calories burned, and may record where you go along the way. Like Santa Claus, it knows when you are sleeping (and how well), it knows when you're awake, it knows when you've been idle or exercising, and it keeps track of all of it...

Health information has become a prime target for hackers seeking to extort health care agencies and individuals after accessing sensitive patient data...

The report "From Skin to Screen: Bodily Integrity in the Digital Age" recommends that existing data protection laws be clarified to encompass all forms of bodily data. It also calls for expanding national health privacy laws to cover health-related information collected from health apps and fitness trackers and making it easier for users to opt out of body-centric data collections. more

PrivacyLens Can Turn You into a Stick Figure

A new camera could prevent companies from collecting embarrassing and identifiable photos and videos from devices like smart home cameras and robotic vacuums. It’s called PrivacyLens and was made by University of Michigan engineers.

PrivacyLens uses both a standard video camera and a heat-sensing camera to spot people in images from their body temperature. The person’s likeness is then completely replaced by a generic stick figure, whose movements mirror those of the person it stands in for. The accurately animated stick figure allows a device relying on the camera to continue to function without revealing the identity of the person in view of the camera.

That extra anonymity could prevent private moments from leaking onto the internet, which is increasingly common in today’s world. more

Increase Your Spy Resistance - Dumb Down Your Mobile Phone

The MP02 4G phone from Punkt .... It's a 'dumbphone' in the true sense of the word – it can make calls and send messages (though SMS or Pigeon), and offers a calendar too. 

But the Punk MP02's secret weapon is its 4G hotspot. This means when I want to switch off, I can stick my sim card in the Punkt phone and 'disconnect'. But if I'm carrying, say, my iPad mini in my bag, I can tether the 4G connection to it at the press of a button, giving my access to the likes of music and maps when needed.

But perhaps the best thing about the Punkt MP02 is the aesthetic. Conceived by industrial designer Jasper Morrison, the phone has a delightful retro and somewhat brutalist 1970s-inspired look. I've been asked whether it's a calculator, which just about sums it up. In a world of 'Y2K' dumbphone designs, it's refreshing to see something that stands out. more

Bonus: The MP02 is the first voicephone to offer a downloadable privacy feature that uses the Signal protocol to provide free, encrypted Internet-based calls and texts worldwide via Wi Fi or mobile data (subject to data charges).

FutureWatch: The AI Polygraph, or Who's Zoomin' You

PolygrAI - A Technology That Provides Real-Time Risk Assessment And Sentiment Analysis

How it Works
PolygrAI is a fusion of advanced computer vision algorithms and extensive psychological research designed to discern the validity of human expressions. The software meticulously analyzes a spectrum of physiological and behavioral indicators correlated with deceit. For instance, when a person tells a lie, they might unconsciously exhibit decreased blinking or an erratic gaze—these are the tell-tale signs that PolygrAI detects.

The system vigilantly computes a ‘trustfulness score’ by monitoring and interpreting subtle changes in facial expressions, heart rate variability, and eye movement patterns. This score is adjusted in real-time, offering a dynamic gauge of credibility.

Furthermore, PolygrAI assesses the voice for sudden shifts in tone and pitch—parameters that could betray an individual’s composure or reveal underlying stress. more Lifetime access ($100) for beta testers.

Click to enlarge.

App Slammed for Spying at Popular Nightclubs Using 'Hidden Cameras'

A new app has sparked extreme blowback after enabling users to use cameras to watch partiers at trendy nightclubs and bars across San Francisco.

2night, the startup behind the app, had hoped that the service would promote nightlife in the area, allowing users to check livestreams of the bars and clubs to determine if they had the right vibe.

But bargoers were quick to lash out after they learned that they were being recorded without their permission, with some going so far as to liken the service to 'Big Brother.' more

Signal App - New Usernames Keeps Cops Out of Your Data

Ephemeral usernames instead of phone numbers safeguard privacy — and makes Signal even harder to subpoena...

Signal is the gold standard for secure messaging apps because not only are messages encrypted, but so is pretty much everything else. Signal doesn’t know your name or profile photo, who any of your contacts are, which Signal groups you’re in, or who you talk to and when...

With the long-awaited announcement that usernames are coming to Signal — over four years in the making — Signal employed the same careful cryptography engineering it’s famous for, ensuring that the service continues to learn as little information about its users as possible. more

Your Doctor’s Office Might Be Bugged

It used to be safe to assume your doctor’s visit was a completely private affair between you and your physician. This is changing with ambient artificial intelligence, a new technology that listens to your conversation and processes information. Think Amazon’s Alexa, but in your doctor’s office. 

An early use case is ambient AI scribing: it listens, then writes a clinical note summarizing your visit. Clinical notes are used to communicate diagnostic and treatment plans within electronic health records, and as a basis to generate your bill...

Okay, your conversation just got recorded. But where does it go? Is it stored somewhere? How is it used beyond writing my note? The AI technology companies need to address these questions and comply with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act laws. Additionally, new regulations may be needed as the technology evolves. more

Intel Patent Addresses Privacy Issues with Voice Assistants

Intel wants to give you peace of mind when talking to your digital assistant.
The company filed a patent application for a “privacy preserving digital personal assistant.” Rather than sending your raw voice data to the cloud for processing, Intel’s tech encrypts that data to keep your personal information and identity from being shared in that environment.

“Existing digital personal assistant technologies force users to surrender the content of their voice commands to their digital personal assistance provider, and most actions of the available digital personal assistants are performed in the cloud,” Intel said in the filing. “This presents a large privacy and security concern that will only grow (over time) with increased adoption.” more

Ford has a better idea?

Ford is seeking to patent a system for “anonymizing speech data” that’s collected by a voice recognition system in a vehicle. (wait, what?!?!)

This system removes “speaker-identifying characteristics” from speech data collected from in-car voice commands. It then uses machine learning to generate a “random vector,” or randomized data in place of the previously identifiable characteristics, to apply to the speech data.

...While Ford may be keeping your road rage anonymous, the company may also want to use your voice to sell you stuff. The company filed a patent application for a system for “providing targeted content to users.”  more

The First Digital Security Rule of Traveling

(We know our clients already know this, but reminders help.)

The first digital security rule of traveling is to leave your usual personal devices at home. Go on your trip with “burner” travel devices instead.

Aside from the potential for compromise or seizure by authorities, you also run the gamut of risks ranging from having your devices lost or stolen during your trip. It’s typically way less dangerous to just leave your usual devices behind, and to bring along devices you only use when traveling. This doesn’t need to be cost prohibitive: You can buy cheap laptops and either inexpensive new phones or refurbished versions of pricier models. (And also get privacy screens for your new phones and laptops, to reduce the information that’s visible to any onlookers.)

Your travel devices should not have anything sensitive on them. If you’re ever coerced to provide passwords or at risk of otherwise having the devices be taken away from you, you can readily hand over the credentials without compromising anything important. more

Arizona Bill to Make Drone Spying a Crime Moves Forward

AZ - State lawmakers are moving to ensure people don’t get too nosy with their new drones.

In a party-line vote on Wednesday, members of the House Commerce Committee approved legislation that would make it a criminal offense to intentionally photograph, tape or otherwise observe someone else in a private place where that person has a “reasonable expectation of privacy.”

The only thing is that there hasn’t been a consensus as to when exactly someone crosses that line. more

Non-Disclosure Agreements That End Up in the Toilet

The need for a Non-Disclosure Agreement used to be a hard pill to swallow. Not anymore. NDA is an edible confidentiality agreement that protects all information exchanged within 30 minutes of ingestion.

Contract Summary
NDA is an edible non-disclosure agreement that protects in perpetuity all information exchanged within 30 minutes of ingestion. Every NDA is comprised of a size 00 gelatin capsule imprinted with a QR code leading to this website and filled with powder made from copies of this agreement printed onto rice paper with ingestible ink. NDA can be executed by any number of people at once. Simply provide every party with their own capsule before executing the agreement. Parties can extend the duration of effect by consuming additional NDA. more

"Well, shut my mouth!"

In the name of protecting your conversations...

Shiftall's Mutalk believes it can help.

The device looks like an eerie tech version of a mouth gag, but it's actually meant to help you talk more easily in the virtual and work worlds you may be interacting with. It calls itself a "soundproof Bluetooth microphone that makes it difficult for others to hear your voice and at the same time, makes it difficult for ambient noise to enter the microphone."

French startup Skyted created a similarly sound-absorbing mask to ensure privacy on calls while in crowded and noisy places. It looks more like a bulky version of the reusable masks we've all grown accustomed to during the pandemic, but Skyted says it absorbs 80% of voice vibration and directs it instead through a wireless Bluetooth connection to our phones or computers.

"My original concept was from a transportation perspective, as I focused on how we could keep the human voice from traveling to keep calls private, silent and confidential," Skyted CEO Stéphane Hersen said in a statement when announcing his device. more

EXTRA CREDIT

Covenant Eyes: God isn't the only one watching you...

Churches are using invasive phone-monitoring tech to discourage “sinful” behavior. Some software is seeing more than congregants realize.

GRACEPOINT is (an) evangelical Southern Baptist church... when Grant Hao-Wei Lin came out to a Gracepoint church leader during their weekly one-on-one session, he was surprised to learn that he wasn’t going to be kicked out. According to his church leader, Hao-Wei Lin says, God still loved him in spite of his “struggle with same-sex attraction.”

But Gracepoint did not leave the matter in God’s hands alone. At their next one-on-one the following week, Hao-Wei Lin says the church leader asked him to install an app called Covenant Eyes on his phone...

Covenant Eyes is part of a multimillion-dollar ecosystem of so-called accountability apps that are marketed to both churches and parents as tools to police online activity. For a monthly fee, some of these apps monitor everything their users see and do on their devices, even taking screenshots (at least one per minute, in the case of Covenant Eyes) and eavesdropping on web traffic, WIRED found. The apps then report a feed of all of the users’ online activity directly to a chaperone—an “accountability partner,” in the apps’ parlance. When WIRED presented its findings to Google, however, the company determined that two of the top accountability apps—Covenant Eyes and Accountable2You—violate its policies. more

Researchers Develop Anti-Eavesdropping Algorithm for Smartphone Mics

At Columbia University, a team of researchers has successfully created a program that can block out audio spying through microphones found in smartphones and connected audio devices that require voice use.

This algorithm works by using predictive voice technology: that is, it can recognize human speech and instinctively generate audible background noise like muffling or whispers in order to camouflage the user’s words.

The technology works in real-time as the algorithm is able to create the obstruction while a person is speaking to a voice-controlled device or conversing with a friend.

But why create such an algorithm in the first place?

The problem stems from advertiser eavesdropping. While this is an issue that has not been proved or disproved, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that backs it up. more

Personal Security: Remove Your House from Apple Maps, Google Maps & Bing Maps

If you’d like to opt out of a property you own or rent appearing in one of these street-level views, you can use a reporting or request method in each service:

• Apple: Apple requires that you email them “to request that a face, license plate, or your own house be censored.” The address is MapsImageCollection@apple.com.
• Google: Visit maps.google.com and go to the address of concern. Expand the side panel on the left, then click the photo in the side panel to have it enlarge in your browser. Look for an info box in the upper left of the photo and click on the icon of the three vertical dots. In the pop-up that appears, click “Report a problem” and select what you would like to have blurred from the “Request blurring” list of options. You can also submit via the Google Maps app.
• Microsoft: Visit Bing Maps, click “Report a privacy concern with this image” at the lower-left corner of the page, and select House (or another option) from “What kind of concern do you have?” You can describe in the text box below that you want to have your house blurred. more

Tips for Closing Hard-to-Delete Online Accounts

 via Consumer Reports

Tips for Deleting Old Accounts

Deleting your old accounts can be a time-consuming and sometimes frustrating process. Some guidelines to speed things along...

• Check to see if anyone has figured out the steps. Google “how to delete [company name] account” and you’ll often find instructions. (A step-by-step guide to deleting two dozen common accounts.)
  
• Go to the Settings page first. Companies sometimes put the delete button in settings, account menus, or pages to edit your profile; it varies by company.
• Try the privacy policy. Privacy policies often include instructions, and you can search for words like “account,” “delete,” “close,” or “deletion.”
• Explore the Help menus. If there’s a Help menu or an FAQ section on a website, you can often find deletion instructions there.
• Try customer service. When available, text chats are usually faster than phone calls in my experience.
• Take advantage of privacy laws. California’s privacy law, the CCPA, requires most businesses to let state residents delete data collected from them. Companies don’t have to fulfill a deletion request if you’re not a resident, but some honor requests from anyone. Look for “California” or “CCPA” in privacy policies for details.
• Don’t forget the accounts you’ve forgotten. You may have registered for accounts years ago that have slipped your mind. A whole article with detailed instructions on how to find them. Some tips to get started: Google your email address and old usernames; check for saved log-ins in your web browser or password manager; search your email inbox for old “welcome” messages. Try variations on phrases like “welcome to,” “new account,” “password,” or “confirm your email.” more
  

FutureWatch - Super Microphones Coming to Eavesdropping Devices and...

... more mundane items like smart speakers and cell phones...  

 A KAIST research team ... has developed a bioinspired flexible piezoelectric acoustic sensor with multi-resonant ultrathin piezoelectric membrane mimicking the basilar membrane of the human cochlea. The flexible acoustic sensor has been miniaturized ... is ready for accurate and far-distant voice detection. more

PimEyes: Cool New PI Tool or Privacy Alert - You Decide

You probably haven't seen PimEyes, a mysterious facial-recognition search engine, but it may have spotted you... Anyone can use this powerful facial-recognition tool — and that's a problem.

If you upload a picture of your face to PimEyes' website, it will immediately show you any pictures of yourself that the company has found around the internet. You might recognize all of them, or be surprised (or, perhaps, even horrified) by some; these images may include anything from wedding or vacation snapshots to pornographic images.

PimEyes is open to anyone with internet access. more