Before I get into my pragmatic guide for watching the election results roll in tonight, please take a moment to think about the real star of today’s historic event: The poll worker. There is so much pressure on election staff this year. There’s a deluge of mail-in ballots, there’s demands [Keep reading]
Credit: California Secretary of State’s office Voting by mail is safe – at least as safe as any other way you’ve voted in a U.S. election. It’s hardly new. I voted by mail for years when I lived in Washington State, one of five states that currently have all-mail elections. [Keep reading]
One app requires permission to disable users’ screen locks. Another claims it doesn’t collect detailed location information, but accesses GPS data anyway. Still another breaks its own privacy policy by sharing personal information with outside companies. And nearly all of them request what Google defines as “dangerous permissions.” Is this [Keep reading]
Frank Eufemia is the answer to a strange trivia question. Who did Buck Showalter announce as the opening day starter for the Yankees in 1995…but who never pitched for the Yankees? Frank’s dream — well, my dream — was squashed when everyone else’s prayers were answered, and the 1995 season [Keep reading]
Facebook’s multi-front war on misinformation apparently has a new flank. While the firm wrestles with fake news and constant claims of censorship around the coronavirus, criminals are apparently trying to take advantage of the confusion. Some Facebook Page users are being attacked by an official-looking “Policy Team Page” alert which [Keep reading]
Some Bank of America customers say they logged in Wednesday and found their accounts showed $0 balances — leading some consumers to express fear and rage at the banking giant. The bank confirmed the issue to me and said it was resolved late Wednesday night. One consumer told me his [Keep reading]
An app that tells you if you were exposed to someone with Covid? Sounds great. But, as usual, tech-as-silver-bullet ideas come full of booby-traps. There’s been a lot of scattershot discussion around smartphone contact tracing during the past several months, with privacy advocates saying the harms far outweigh the benefits, [Keep reading]
FICO admitted this week that its credit scores don’t do such a good job of predicting which consumers might not pay their bills someday soon. The credit-scoring firm rolled out a new product called the FICO Resilience Index, which theoretically will tell banks which consumers will be able to weather [Keep reading]
The United States and many venerated European democracies are well on their way to becoming “a fact-free version of Democracy Lite,” warns today’s podcast guest, Nina Jankowicz. She’s the ‘disinformation fellow’ at the Wilson Center in Washington D.C., and she has a new book out called How to Lose the [Keep reading]
The developer of a popular yoga iPhone app says Apple is forcing him to “steal” from users by requiring implementation of gotcha-style automated payments at the end of their free trial. The developer currently lets fans of the Down Dog app opt-in to monthly payments at the end of the [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan