Author: The Conversation

Technology companies have been pummeled by revelations about how poorly they protect their customers’ personal information, including an in-depth New York Times report detailing the ability of smartphone apps to track users’ locations. Some companies, most notably Apple, have begun promoting the fact that they sell products and services that safeguard consumer privacy. Smartphone users are never asked explicitly if they want to be tracked every moment of each day. But cellular companies, smartphone makers, app developers and social media companies all claim they have users’ permission to conduct near-constant personal surveillance. The underlying problem is that most people don’t understand how tracking really works. The technology companies…

Last February, Cadbury Chocolate fell victim to a hoax. The image below went viral in an Indonesian WhatsApp group called “Viral Media Johor”, and later in a Nigerian group. But the problem that this story and others like it pose is real. Rumours, hoaxes and misinformation find fertile breeding ground on social media. But as Google, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms increasingly crack down on misinformation, the purveyors of false stories are seeking refuge on direct messaging apps such as WhatsApp. Obviously, the post was fake news. The man in the image is Aminu Ogwuche, who was arrested on suspicion of involvement with the…

The first few days of 2019 brought remarkable news from outer space. On January 1 NASA’s New Horizons space probe made the most distant planetary flyby ever, and captured images of a small object 4 billion miles away from earth. The following day, China landed its Chang’e 4 rover, named Jade Rabbit 2, on the far side of the moon – another first. This suggests that 2019 will be a big year for all things related to space; a suggestion borne out by developments at the International Astronautical Federation’s International Astronautical Congress which I attended. The event is held each year during the first week…

Have you noticed the increasing number of pop-ups asking you to consent or “agree” when you visit a website? Do you find these annoying and tend to just click accept without reading the policies? So do most people, and here’s why that’s a problem. By “agreeing” to any of these particular policies, you are effectively allowing a website or app to collect various types of data on you that could violate some of your human rights, such as your right to privacy. To control what data the website or app can gather about you, you have to go through the tedious process…

Cast your mind back to the turn of last century. Experts predicted that by now classrooms would no longer feature human teachers, and holographic virtual entities would deliver lessons instead. This certainly hasn’t happened. The closest we have come is group video chat via apps like FaceTime, Zoom or Google Hangouts. But this doesn’t mean holograms aren’t part of our lives – they’re just marketed differently. For the past 20 years, researchers and companies have progressed with a vision of “mixed reality”, where the physical and digital blend together to create seamless, digitally enhanced experiences. Initially limited to research labs and prototypes, we…

Each time you snap a photo with your smartphone – depending on the make and model – it may perform more than a trillion operations for just that single image. Yes, you expect it to do the usual auto-focus/auto-exposure functions that are the hallmark of point-and-shoot photography. But your phone may also capture and stack multiple frames (sometimes before you even press the button), capture the brightest and darkest parts of the scene, average and merge exposures, and render your composition into a three-dimensional map to artificially blur the background. The term for this is computational photography, which basically means that image…

Your phone chimes, it’s a message from your partner. You reply instantly because that’s what you always do. Then you decide to add another message: “By the way, I love you ☺” You see the “read” status appear under the message, and you wait for her reply. An hour later you are still waiting, still checking. Has this ever happened to you? For most of us, there is an unwritten social contract that underlies our online messaging interactions. The clearest part of that contract is that certain types of messages demand a timely response. In our world of instant communications,…

Anticipation has long been building about the impending takeover of the tech world by Chinese digital giants like Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, and JD. Efforts so far, however, have been largely disappointing. The most popular messaging app in the West is WhatsApp, not WeChat; people use PayPal, not Alipay, for digital payments; Google dominates the search market, not Baidu. Indeed, Google, Facebook, Instagram, Snap, Spotify, and Amazon, have barely noticed the competitive impact of their Chinese equivalents. While China has found great success in global hardware markets, they have had much less success with software. That is, until now. You may not have…

Data breaches, widespread malware attacks and microtargeted personalized advertising were lowlights of digital life in 2018. As technologies change, so does the advice security experts give for how to best stay safe. As 2019 begins, I’ve pulled together a short list of suggestions for keeping your digital life secure and free of manipulative disinformation. 1. Set your boundaries and stick to them As part of my research, I’ve recently been speaking with a number of sex workers in Europe about their digital security and privacy. One consistent thing I’ve heard from them is, “The best way to stay safe is to set boundaries.” Decide – on your…