Cybercrime / Privacy

‘Meaningful consent’ — with Facebook, it’s just a click. Next, warnings that 3 billion data points are headed to Russia daily

When did you give Facebook consent to share intimate details of your life with the rest of the world?  To have your birthday shared with third-party apps, you political leanings shared with advertisers (and Russian fake news purveyors?) When you signed up, a firm executive said today during a testy [Keep reading]

Gotchas / Consumer

Facebook, Google invented digital crack, and now we’re addicted to lies. It’s a health crisis

I’ve written many times that consumers have been hacked. Corporations with billion-dollar research budgets have poked and prodded us for decades, exposing every weakness, turning your human nature against you and exploiting that systematically.  After reading this excellent Washington Post story about the spread of conspiracy theories online, I worry [Keep reading]

Bob Sullivan's podcast projects

Humidity-caused paper jams, missing power cords, even foreclosure blamed for voting failures

Across America, some citizens are waiting patiently an hour or more to vote. Their voting machines aren’t working nearly as hard for them. America’s fragile voting infrastructure is showing its warts yet again this election day. In North Carolina, state officials announced that high humidity was causing some ballot scanners [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

Georgia voters’ info exposed by security flaw, so GOP candidate opens investigation into ‘hacking’ by Democrats

The litany of confusion and missteps by Georgia’s state election officials took a bizarre turn this weekend when someone discovered a massive flaw in the state’s online voter registration system and instead of addressing the vulnerability, Secretary of State Brian Kemp — also the Republican gubernatorial candidate  — accused Democrats of [Keep reading]