Google has handed over jounalists’ personal e-mails, IP addresses and contact data to US authorities. They did that clandestinely, and without any noticable resistance. Throughout the Western world we are seeing an onimous alliance taking shape between private data grabbers and secret services organziations doging the radar of public control. If we don’t do anything about this, it could soon be too late.
How careful are you about what you share on Facebook and other social networks? Probably not very. But in light of a new initiative Facebook is launching, you may want to give more thought to what you post on the social web.
Can you fathom the depths of big data? The word fathom is a measurement of depth of the ocean, but it has also come to mean the ability to understand something. Fathom comes from faethm, meaning ‘the two arms outstretched.’ It’s 6 feet or 1.8 meters measurement is based on a standard human scale. The length of rope dropped overboard is handily measured across the span of a sailor’s armspread. The term makes the metaphorical jump to describe concepts that we are able to get our arms around; ideas are things to be grasped. As James Geary describes in his book on metaphor, “This is the primary purpose of metaphor: to carry over existing names or descriptions to things that are either so new that they haven’t been named or so abstract that they cannot be otherwise explained.”
For years, RadioShack made a habit of collecting customers’ contact information at checkout. Now, the bankrupt retailer is putting that data on the auction block.
A list of RadioShack assets for sale includes more than 65 million customer names and physical addresses, and 13 million email addresses. Bloomberg reports that the asset sale may include phone numbers and information on shopping habits as well.
The auction is already over, with Standard General—a hedge fund and RadioShack’s largest shareholder—reportedly emerging as the victor. But a bankruptcy court still has to approve the deal, and RadioShack faces a couple legal challenges in turning over customer data.
Today, in a period characterized by financialization and globalization, where “information” is king, the idea of any commodity defining an era might seem quaint. But commodities are no less important today, and people’s relationships to them remain central to understanding society. If the automobile was fundamental to grasping the last century, the smartphone is the defining commodity of our era.
Nothing attracts news organizations like Facebook. And nothing makes them more nervous.
With 1.4 billion users, the social media site has become a vital source of traffic for publishers looking to reach an increasingly fragmented audience glued to smartphones. In recent months, Facebook has been quietly holding talks with at least half a dozen media companies about hosting their content inside Facebook rather than making users tap a link to go to an external site.
Data that shows where people live, work, and play is being sold to businesses and city planners, as mobile operators seek new sources of revenue.
Software: From retailing to counterterrorism, the ability to analyse social connections is proving increasingly usefu.
In the developed world, financial institutions use credit history in order to assess a person’s creditworthiness and subsequently issue them financial products at personalized terms. Unfortunately, that’s difficult to do in emerging markets, where mobile phones are more prevalent than traditional credit history.
Intelligence services collect metadata on the communication of all citizens. Politicians would have us believe that this data doesn’t say all that much. A reader of De Correspondent put this to the test and demonstrated otherwise: metadata reveals a lot more about your life than you think.
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