Hey Siri, how many people are listening to me?
Does anyone listen when we talk to Alexa, Cortana, Siri and the Google Assistant? That's what tech companies don't want to reveal. The scandal is that they can actually afford it.
There are obviously people who spend nine hours a day doing nothing but eavesdropping on conversations with Alexa. On behalf of Amazon, they are to evaluate hundreds of shots of users every day, as the news agency Bloomberg reported in mid-April. Seven of these employees have spoken to Bloomberg despite their secrecy agreement. They are part of a team of thousands who work and listen professionally in the USA, Costa Rica, India and Romania. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-10/is-anyone-listening-to-you-on-alexa-a-global-team-reviews-audio
It is quite possible that this report triggers a tired shrug of the shoulders. After all, after dozens of privacy scandals on Facebook, huge password leaks and of course the NSA revelations, we are used to the fact that privacy on the Internet is complicated anyway. But if a tech company actually overhears and evaluates what we language assistants say with offices full of employees, it has another dimension.
Language assistants like Alexa, Siri, Cortana and the Google Assistant present themselves as trustworthy helpers in everyday life, who you can chat to spontaneously. Alexa lives in smart loudspeakers that users are supposed to distribute in their homes. Siri can be activated at lightning speed by pressing the home button. All assistants have funny sayings ready - chatting with them should simply be fun.
How Google, Apple and Microsoft avoid a simple question
Those who use the assistants out of habit will sooner or later also speak private or intimate things into the microphone. Maybe one day we'll ask Siri sobbing for love-sick tips, search for blueberry porn with the Google Assistant, or rummage through Amazon for advice on how to finally get clean. And then there's all the accidentally started recordings because someone said a word that sounds like "Alexa. Do we have to assume that somewhere in the world hundreds of supervisors are hanging on our lips and are busy taking notes?
The shortest answer to this question at the moment is: perhaps. VICE has asked press spokespersons from Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon a simple question: How many people listen to audio from users? Not a single company was willing to answer that question clearly.
The most accurate answer came from Google: "At Google, some employees can access some audio clips from the Assistant to train and improve the product. It remains to be seen whether the word "some" is just a handful of developers or office complexes full of eavesdroppers.
Read more (German) at:
https://www.vice.com/de/article/9kxwev/hey-siri-wie-viele-menschen-horen-mich-ab-alexa-cortana-google-assistant
👉 Read as well:
Amazon's Alexa Team Can Access Users' Home Addresses
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-24/amazon-s-alexa-reviewers-can-access-customers-home-addresses
📡 @NoGoolag
#siri #alexa #cortana #google #microsoft #amazon #DeleteAmazon #scandal #why
Does anyone listen when we talk to Alexa, Cortana, Siri and the Google Assistant? That's what tech companies don't want to reveal. The scandal is that they can actually afford it.
There are obviously people who spend nine hours a day doing nothing but eavesdropping on conversations with Alexa. On behalf of Amazon, they are to evaluate hundreds of shots of users every day, as the news agency Bloomberg reported in mid-April. Seven of these employees have spoken to Bloomberg despite their secrecy agreement. They are part of a team of thousands who work and listen professionally in the USA, Costa Rica, India and Romania. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-10/is-anyone-listening-to-you-on-alexa-a-global-team-reviews-audio
It is quite possible that this report triggers a tired shrug of the shoulders. After all, after dozens of privacy scandals on Facebook, huge password leaks and of course the NSA revelations, we are used to the fact that privacy on the Internet is complicated anyway. But if a tech company actually overhears and evaluates what we language assistants say with offices full of employees, it has another dimension.
Language assistants like Alexa, Siri, Cortana and the Google Assistant present themselves as trustworthy helpers in everyday life, who you can chat to spontaneously. Alexa lives in smart loudspeakers that users are supposed to distribute in their homes. Siri can be activated at lightning speed by pressing the home button. All assistants have funny sayings ready - chatting with them should simply be fun.
How Google, Apple and Microsoft avoid a simple question
Those who use the assistants out of habit will sooner or later also speak private or intimate things into the microphone. Maybe one day we'll ask Siri sobbing for love-sick tips, search for blueberry porn with the Google Assistant, or rummage through Amazon for advice on how to finally get clean. And then there's all the accidentally started recordings because someone said a word that sounds like "Alexa. Do we have to assume that somewhere in the world hundreds of supervisors are hanging on our lips and are busy taking notes?
The shortest answer to this question at the moment is: perhaps. VICE has asked press spokespersons from Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon a simple question: How many people listen to audio from users? Not a single company was willing to answer that question clearly.
The most accurate answer came from Google: "At Google, some employees can access some audio clips from the Assistant to train and improve the product. It remains to be seen whether the word "some" is just a handful of developers or office complexes full of eavesdroppers.
Read more (German) at:
https://www.vice.com/de/article/9kxwev/hey-siri-wie-viele-menschen-horen-mich-ab-alexa-cortana-google-assistant
👉 Read as well:
Amazon's Alexa Team Can Access Users' Home Addresses
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-24/amazon-s-alexa-reviewers-can-access-customers-home-addresses
📡 @NoGoolag
#siri #alexa #cortana #google #microsoft #amazon #DeleteAmazon #scandal #why
The CIA secretly bought a company that sold encryption devices across the world. Then its spies sat back and listened.
via www.washingtonpost.com
#cia #encryption #cryptoag #spionage #scandal #usa #why
via www.washingtonpost.com
#cia #encryption #cryptoag #spionage #scandal #usa #why
www.washingtonpost.com via ctreaderbot
The CIA secretly bought a company that sold encryption devices across the world. Then its spies sat back and listened.
National Security
Forwarded from BlackBox (Security) Archiv
Media is too big
VIEW IN TELEGRAM
The Great Hack
The #Cambridge #Analytica #scandal is examined through the roles of several affected persons.
#docu #video #thinkabout
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_DE
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_EN
📡@BlackBox_Archiv
The #Cambridge #Analytica #scandal is examined through the roles of several affected persons.
#docu #video #thinkabout
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_DE
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_EN
📡@BlackBox_Archiv
Forwarded from BlackBox (Security) Archiv
Inside eBay’s Cockroach Cult: The Ghastly Story of a Stalking Scandal
“People are basically good” was eBay’s founding principle. But in the deranged summer of 2019, prosecutors say, a campaign to terrorize a blogger crawled out of a dark place in the corporate soul.
1. Dad stabs a chair
Veronica Zea is pretty sure that before showing up to work at eBay in the spring of 2017, she used the site only once. She bought a surfing poster. It ended up in her closet.
Although Ms. Zea grew up in Santa Clara, Calif., in the heart of Silicon Valley, she cared little for the dazzlements of technology. In college, she studied criminology. After graduating, and a year spent recovering from knee surgery, she surprised herself by answering a classified ad and ending up at the e-commerce pioneer.
Ms. Zea’s first job at eBay was intelligence operator. In a windowless room at corporate headquarters in San Jose, she watched closed-circuit cameras and helped people who were locked out of their offices. Ms. Zea (pronounced ZAY) was 23, with no special skills, but she worked hard. Soon she was promoted to intelligence analyst, charged with staying ahead of geopolitical and individual threats.
Her division, Global Security and Resiliency, consisted of dozens of people, including retired police captains and former security consultants. But it was surprisingly intimate. “We’re a family,” James Baugh, the boss, and Stephanie Popp, her immediate supervisor, would say to the analysts. “We’re Mom and Dad.”
True, Dad could be kind of scary. Mr. Baugh was a stocky, middle-aged guy with thinning hair who loved to talk and did not like to be questioned. He would often say he used to work for the C.I.A. Sometimes he said his wife was working for the C.I.A. right now. Once, he found a knife on a barbecue grill on campus. A deranged person could have used it to hurt someone, he told the analysts, and proceeded to stab a chair. It was never removed, a warning for the timid. (Through his lawyer, Mr. Baugh declined to comment.)
Ms. Zea had never worked in an office. Her only real job before this was on the Grizzly roller coaster at California’s Great America amusement park. So she just accepted things. Like the way eBay was a regular film festival. Mr. Baugh would bring the analysts into a conference room and show the scene from “American Gangster” where Denzel Washington coolly executes a man in front of a crowd to make a point. Or a clip from “The Wolf of Wall Street,” where the feds are investigating shady deeds but none of the perpetrators can recall a thing. Or the bit from “Meet the Fockers” about a retired C.I.A. agent’s “circle of trust.”
That one came up frequently. “No one is supposed to know this,” Mr. Baugh would tell the analysts about some piece of office gossip. “We’ll keep it in the circle of trust.”
👀 👉🏼 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/26/technology/ebay-cockroaches-stalking-scandal.html
#ebay #cockroaches #stalking #scandal #thinkabout
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_DE
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_EN
📡@BlackBox_Archiv
📡@NoGoolag
“People are basically good” was eBay’s founding principle. But in the deranged summer of 2019, prosecutors say, a campaign to terrorize a blogger crawled out of a dark place in the corporate soul.
1. Dad stabs a chair
Veronica Zea is pretty sure that before showing up to work at eBay in the spring of 2017, she used the site only once. She bought a surfing poster. It ended up in her closet.
Although Ms. Zea grew up in Santa Clara, Calif., in the heart of Silicon Valley, she cared little for the dazzlements of technology. In college, she studied criminology. After graduating, and a year spent recovering from knee surgery, she surprised herself by answering a classified ad and ending up at the e-commerce pioneer.
Ms. Zea’s first job at eBay was intelligence operator. In a windowless room at corporate headquarters in San Jose, she watched closed-circuit cameras and helped people who were locked out of their offices. Ms. Zea (pronounced ZAY) was 23, with no special skills, but she worked hard. Soon she was promoted to intelligence analyst, charged with staying ahead of geopolitical and individual threats.
Her division, Global Security and Resiliency, consisted of dozens of people, including retired police captains and former security consultants. But it was surprisingly intimate. “We’re a family,” James Baugh, the boss, and Stephanie Popp, her immediate supervisor, would say to the analysts. “We’re Mom and Dad.”
True, Dad could be kind of scary. Mr. Baugh was a stocky, middle-aged guy with thinning hair who loved to talk and did not like to be questioned. He would often say he used to work for the C.I.A. Sometimes he said his wife was working for the C.I.A. right now. Once, he found a knife on a barbecue grill on campus. A deranged person could have used it to hurt someone, he told the analysts, and proceeded to stab a chair. It was never removed, a warning for the timid. (Through his lawyer, Mr. Baugh declined to comment.)
Ms. Zea had never worked in an office. Her only real job before this was on the Grizzly roller coaster at California’s Great America amusement park. So she just accepted things. Like the way eBay was a regular film festival. Mr. Baugh would bring the analysts into a conference room and show the scene from “American Gangster” where Denzel Washington coolly executes a man in front of a crowd to make a point. Or a clip from “The Wolf of Wall Street,” where the feds are investigating shady deeds but none of the perpetrators can recall a thing. Or the bit from “Meet the Fockers” about a retired C.I.A. agent’s “circle of trust.”
That one came up frequently. “No one is supposed to know this,” Mr. Baugh would tell the analysts about some piece of office gossip. “We’ll keep it in the circle of trust.”
👀 👉🏼 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/26/technology/ebay-cockroaches-stalking-scandal.html
#ebay #cockroaches #stalking #scandal #thinkabout
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_DE
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_EN
📡@BlackBox_Archiv
📡@NoGoolag
NY Times
Inside eBay’s Cockroach Cult: The Ghastly Story of a Stalking Scandal (Published 2020)
“People are basically good” was eBay’s founding principle. But in the deranged summer of 2019, prosecutors say, a campaign to terrorize a blogger crawled out of a dark place in the corporate soul.