Short Answer: No. Using QRcodes, and installing unknown software on your phone is an obvious way to have your information taken. Recall that when you do these things, you implicitly accept their terms of service. IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) reports that there has been a sharp increase in the use of QRcodes, which allow a virtual exchange of information, since the rise…
Typical TOS Clauses
Takeaway Points Using online services, grants those services rights to inspect, read, replay, perform, copy, sub-license, monetize, and store YOUR intellectual property, anywhere in the world, subject to laws in other countries. That should be chilling to any media/content producer. While still reasonably unlikely, consider some edge cases here. There are slight variations in legal language, but you are granting copyrights to your service providers.…
What you agreed to
User Generated Content A new source of monetizable renewable raw material is called User Generated Content or UGC. This is an excerpt from YouTube’s TOS, same as Google, Apple, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, etc. Any variations are small, the substance remains the same from provider to provider: … by submitting Content to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to…
Kiddie Korner
Collecting data about children under the age of 13 without parental consent is against the law — but that law isn’t very well enforced. More than two-thirds of the 1,000 most popular iPhone apps likely to be used by children send data to the ad industry, according to a recent study. Are iPhones spying on kids? Do Not Track Kids, made by an ex-National Security…
Privacy Levels
Level 0: No VPN on unmodified commercial cell phone, tablet, or computer. By default, everything you do is captured, shared, and monetized, with no benefits back to you. You are literally giving away everything. Level 1: Offramp VPN on unmodified commercial cell phone, tablet, or computer. Using the Offramp VPN you will prevent your DNS lookups from leaking and stop any snooping by your service…
What is Privacy?
Default control over your data, is privacy. Your personal metrics, financial data, geographic data, biometric data, and data that you generate, should be considered private. In most terms of service that you have agreed to, there is egregious overreach in their interpretation of data ownership, claiming nearly complete copyrights over anything you transmit over their network. “Private” means the default amount of information you give…
Post Quantum Resistance
Quantum computers will be here soon, and it is expected that the first major application that will be developed will be for the cracking of encryption keys. Using Zenfoil PQR means that a second strong ed25519 key has been *pre* shared between both your device and the server, at installation time. Adding a second equally strong key that will NOT be transmitted over the internet…
Social Media Fraud
coming soon – primary source research showing how Facebook/Instagram charges customers for advertising to unqualified target audiences. Evidence is presented. Conclusions are drawn. Analysis by industry insiders regarding how these techniques could be be applied and estimated value of fraud are made. This should be fun.
What is Software?
By definition, Software gets between you and what you want. Originally, software was a tool to accomplish a task. However, once the internet was commercialized, software became a way to funnel users into creating and giving up information. The invention of the “smartphone”, basically the iPhone, and the rise in popularity of Facebook are the key inflection points when hardware (phones) and software (apps) shifted…
Cryptocurrency
Incomprehensibility is a feature The complexity of cryptocurrencies, blockchain, NFT’s, is a wonderful way to confuse people. When people are confused by technology, they look for service providers to reduce that cognitive load and do the work for them for a “small fee”. Fortunately, there is someone to take your money, the crypto exchanges. Read this excerpt from Coindesk.com, and ask yourself what it means.…