Here's why: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/google-and-mastercard-cut-a-secret-ad-deal-to-track-retail-sales Short version - if you buy something in a US store with your Mastercard, they tell Google about it. Google then reconciles your purchase with your advertising exposure while logged in with a Google account, and sends a report to advertisers to show how on-line ads drive offline sales. This is, of course, … Continue reading Why do we need data protection laws?
Tag: google
Meltdown, Spectre and other James Bond movie titles
Hoo boy. Here we go again. More silly codenames, more incomprehensible tech gobbledegook, more security flaws, more worry. What does it all mean? I’m not going to give a detailed technical explanation. The best one is here. The very very short version is that processor speeds have run ahead of memory speeds for some time, … Continue reading Meltdown, Spectre and other James Bond movie titles
Wetware beats hardware
Why do I bang on so much about training? If driverless cars are the future, why can't machine learning give us perfectly secure networks? Here's a quote from an interview with Steve Furber in The Register. He says it better than I can: Furber gives the example of Google's much-publicised triumph when its network, having … Continue reading Wetware beats hardware
Encryption – blessing or curse?
Encryption is shaping up to be one of the great philosophical debates of the technological era. It’s become a proxy for a wider debate about the rights of citizens, and the balance between liberty and security. The debate, and the issues, are real. But encryption is the wrong target. All we’re seeing is yet more … Continue reading Encryption – blessing or curse?
Safe Harbor is officially dead. Now what? (Where’s your data: reprise)
A few days ago, I wrote about European Court of Justice Advocate General Yves Bot. He had decided that Facebook shouldn't have transferred data about an Austrian student to its US data centres. At the time, this was just an opinion. Now it's an official ruling by the ECJ. This is where it gets interesting. … Continue reading Safe Harbor is officially dead. Now what? (Where’s your data: reprise)
Where’s your data? A French magistrate may just have killed SafeHarbor.
If your company handles personal data, you’ve just been served a wake-up call by a Frenchman. Yves Bot, who serves as an Advocate General at the European Court of Justice, has just given an opinion – which is non-binding, but usually followed by the Court – to the effect that Facebook shouldn’t have stored an … Continue reading Where’s your data? A French magistrate may just have killed SafeHarbor.
How much would you pay for privacy?
I’m a security consultant, and so a professional paranoiac. Most of the time I defend my personal information like a rabid pitbull. But I’m also a cyclist, and as a consequence I’m happy to share my location, heart rate, sleep patterns, step count, cycling habits, height, weight, body fat content and a whole range of … Continue reading How much would you pay for privacy?
Never mind data protection, this is data protectionism
So it begins. Merkel blinked first, talking about protecting European personal data by keeping it in Europe. Now Brazil is about to pass a law making it mandatory to keep Brazilian citizens’ data within the country’s borders. At first glance, this is a kneejerk reaction to the Snowden revelations, intended to punish the US for … Continue reading Never mind data protection, this is data protectionism
A bigger picture 