March 19, 2021 • 22 mins
From Google to TikTok to car companies, we look at stories that show how tech is tracking people in real time. How might that data be used for (or against) you? And is there anything we can do about it?
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to text Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and
a love of all things tech. And today's episode requires
a bit of an explanation. You see, this is going
(00:24):
to be the episode I recorded for yesterday, Thursday, March one.
It's a news oriented episode, but I did that forgetting
that I had already agreed to run the trailer for
the next season of Smart Talks, hosted by Malcolm Gladwell,
and so I didn't want to get rid of the
(00:46):
episode I had researched and written and recorded because I
felt like there was a lot of good information there.
Even though the news is a little less fresh than
it would have been yesterday, it's still an important stuff
because it's really focusing on a lot of stories about
how tech and governments and companies are using technology to
(01:10):
track us and to mass huge amounts of data, sometimes
without our knowledge, sometimes explicitly without our knowledge, and what
does that mean and is there anything we can do
about it? I feel like this is an important thing
to know about, even if you don't really have any
plans to change things. It's good to at least be
(01:32):
aware that it's going on. So with that in mind,
I hope you enjoy this slightly stale tech News episode.
I mean, it's only a day late, and that means
no classic episode this week. But next week we should
be pretty much back to normal. And in the coming
weeks tech stuff is going to change up a little
(01:52):
bit and that occasionally we will run an episode of
smart Talks in the tech Stuff feed. And again that's
going to be hosted by Malcolm Gladwell, not by me.
That is a big level up, but that's only going
to be occasionally. Most of the time, it's gonna be
the regular old tech stuff, so you're stuck with me. Anyway.
(02:13):
Let's listen to a slightly less fresh tech News episode.
Take it away, Jonathan from the past. Wikipedia the online
resource that you're not supposed to cite in your term papers,
and for good reason. But I won't get off track here.
I'll just say Wikipedia is a great resource to use
(02:33):
as a starting point. It just isn't a primary resource
and was never intended to be anyway. It will soon
launch a paid for service, but don't worry. This won't
mean you'll have to cough up cash the next time
you want to read up on, you know, Michael Bay
Transformer movie, or you want to learn about medieval villages
(02:54):
in the Netherlands, or you want to skim articles about
quantum entanglement or whatever. The paid for service customers will
actually be really big companies like Google and Amazon and Facebook.
The service will offer up developer tools, so these companies
can use those to republish database information on other platforms,
(03:15):
you know, to repurpose the info that's on Wikipedia for
their own you know uses, and presumably these customers will
have access to tools and data that aren't necessarily available
to the average Wikipedia user. According to Lane Becker, Senior
director of the Wikimedia Foundation, some companies have been repurposing
(03:36):
Wikipedia articles on their own sites for years, and often
they employ people to clean and reformat articles to better
fit the owned and operated sites design. I see this
all the time, where I'll be doing research and it
will send me to a page that looks like it's
an owned and operated page. But as I read, I
realized this is literally pulling the article from Wikipedia into
(04:00):
this page. That's the kind of thing that this paid
for service will cover. Wikimedia has formed a division called
Wikimedia Enterprises to develop this tool and to negotiate agreements
with various customers. Now the company is still working out
the finer details, and I could see this being used
in lots of ways, including with Google Smart Home products.
(04:21):
Asking a Google Home device a question could lead it
to pull from data that originated from Wikipedia, and it
would be enabled by this sort of licensing agreement. It's
also good to remember that the Wikimedia Foundation is a
nonprofit organization. The money from these projects would presumably go
back into supporting the hosting and continued development of Wikimedia itself.
(04:46):
Now cast your memory back to the summer of twenty twenty, which,
by my reckoning, was approximately a lifetime ago. One of
the many news stories that summer is how the Twitter
accounts for several prominent people, including Bill Gates, Elon Musk,
and Joe Biden all got hijacked by hackers, and they
(05:10):
used those accounts to perpetuate a scam. Now, basically, the
scam promised a big return on investments in a supposed
money making strategy. In fact, that scam claimed that participants
would double their money. They would give a certain amount
in bitcoin, and they would get twice that back, and
of course some folks fell for it and handed their
(05:32):
hard earned cryptocurrency cash over to the hackers to the
tune of more than a hundred fifteen thousand dollars. Well.
One of those hackers, Graham Ivan Clark, was caught and
charged and he pled guilty to charge as a fraud.
In return, he received a sentence of three years in
prison or a junile boot camp type thing, followed by
(05:56):
three years of probation. And during that probation he's not
supposed to use a computer without actual permission and supervision.
At the time of the crime, Clark was seventeen. He
has since turned eighteen, so he was sentenced as a
youthful offender. Otherwise he would be looking at a mandatory
sentence of ten years in prison. He and the other
(06:17):
two hackers used social engineering to get administrative access to
various Twitter handles. So, according to investigators, what they did
was they scoured linked in to find profiles of Twitter
employees who could have you know, like administrative access to
the back end. Then they did deep dives to find
how to contact their marks, typically by phone, and then
(06:39):
convinced those Twitter employees that the hackers were in fact
authorized to access Twitter systems for the purposes of maintenance.
They tricked the Twitter employees to go to a mocked
up log in page, which was really just a means
to fish those login credentials in order to get access
to the back end of Twitter, and then they moved
on from there. The two of or hackers, Nema Fazelli
(07:02):
and Mason Shepherd, are older than Clark and will likely
face more serious sentences for their part in the crime.
And I just want to point out social engineering is
a major tool in the hacker tool set. It's one
of those things where you know, you don't have to
figure out how to crack a security system or find
(07:22):
a vulnerability if in fact you just leverage the people
who have access to that system and you go into
it through there. That's a very effective means. And you know,
with COVID nineteen making a lot of people have to
work from home, it created a lot of and still
does creates a lot of opportunities for hackers to go
after that social engineering point of attack. So just be
(07:45):
aware of that, and you know, use critical thinking whenever
you get requests to perhaps sign into something that you
know you didn't anticipate. It's not to say that every
case of that is, you know, not legit, but it's something.
It's a red flag, so you know, just be wary.
(08:07):
Another big tech story in twenty twenty was how companies
like Uber campaigned really hard to defeat a proposition in
California that would have forced the company like Uber in
this case, but also companies like Lift to classify drivers
as employees rather than as contract workers as as sort
(08:27):
of independent contractors. Such a classification would require Uber to
provide additional compensation and benefits to drivers, and that's something
that the company is not too keen on doing. While
Uber was successful in convincing enough voters to oppose the
proposition in California, things are different across the pond. The
courts in the United Kingdom, after five year legal battle,
(08:50):
ruled that Uber drivers are effectively employees, and Uber says
now that drivers will earn at least the UK's national
living wage, which is currently set at eight pounds seventy
two pence per hour. It will also offer holiday pay
and pensions to drivers. Uber already offered free insurance to
cover cases of sickness or injury. Those will remain in place.
(09:14):
The change only applies to those who are driving passengers around. However,
Uber drivers who are delivering food as part of Uber
Eats still classified as being self employed. Also, that hourly
rate only applies to the times when Uber drivers are
actually transporting customers. Once someone has dropped off, that clock
effectively stops until another fare enters the car. That's something
(09:38):
that unions say is inadequate. But still this may mark
a change in direction for the gig economy in general,
and possibly will see further measures in the future. Meanwhile,
over here in the United States, the Washington Post had
a pretty critical piece about Uber, saying that while the
company was seeing huge boosts to its stock, you so,
(10:00):
the value of the company was going through the stratosphere
back in especially after it helped get that California proposition
off the table. It also wasn't really helping out when
it came to things like unemployment benefits for drivers. That
left a lot of drivers in a very tough economic position.
So those drivers instead largely depended upon government assistance. Around
(10:24):
eighty million dollars of it all told, they received funds
from the Economic Injury Disaster Loans Program. Now, as the
name suggests, that program gives out loans and grants two
small businesses in times of economic upheaval to help those
businesses survive as well as you know, the people who
run those businesses. That's really what's important here. So you've
(10:46):
got a multibillion dollar company with Uber, which I should
add has never once turned a profit by the end
of a fiscal year in its entire existence, and meanwhile
it has workers who have qualified for a small business
government assistance program. Again, because Uber was able to maintain
that arrangement that these workers are independent contractors, they're they're
(11:10):
self employed, they're not employees according to the law. So
Uber saw its value increase while the US government took
over the job of helping Uber's drivers make ends meet. Now,
this experience really points to how people in the gig
economy are particularly vulnerable to economic disruption, which I know
is kind of like me telling you that water is wet.
(11:30):
These are people who have to hustle constantly just to
make ends meet. So if you are someone who works
in the gig economy, my hat is off to you,
and I really hope things are going well for you
right now and that they just keep getting better. Joseph
cox Over at Vice Media has written a piece titled
cars Have Your Location. This spy firm wants to sell
(11:52):
it to the US military, which is a heck of
a headline. I mean it made me click on the story.
So what's going on here? Well, it really kind of
boils down to telematics. Telematics is a kind of portmanteau
of telecommunications and informatics. So modern cars have numerous sensors
to monitor car performance and safety parameters. You know, that's
(12:14):
when you get that check engine light or whatever. Someone
always has to plug your car up to a computer
to read what is actually going on. Well, that's kind
of what I'm talking about here, But these sensors are
doing more than just keeping an eye on how things
are handling while you're driving the vehicle. Many of these
systems pair with communications devices essentially like a simcard and
(12:35):
a modem, and it sends data back to automotive companies.
So what do these companies do with that data? Well,
they do a lot of things. They might use that
information to help design the next generation of vehicles based
on how people are using their cars today, or they
might have deals with major insurance companies which then use
those telematics to figure out what kind of driver you are,
(12:58):
how big a risk you pose, and that in turn
affects the rates you pay for car insurance. Or they
might sell data to other parties, which is probably where
the company mentioned in the Vice article comes in. That
company is called the Ulysses Group. It's a company that
has worked in various surveillance related products and services for
several years. Ulysses has proposed a deal with US government
(13:20):
to provide data that could give real time location information
about more than fifteen billion vehicles around the world in
pretty much every country except North Korea and Cuba Gali. Now,
according to ulysses own document about this proposal, quote, the
data can be used to geolocate, track and target time
(13:41):
sensitive mobile targets, tip and que sensors, developed patterns of life,
identified networks and relationships, and enhance situational awareness, among many
other applications end quote. See this is the kind of
thing that makes me long for the old days of cars,
where the systems were really more just like mechanical devices
(14:03):
and they were less like computers. Now I should add
that Ulysses doesn't have some sort of magic bug or
tracker that's installed in every car. The company would be
relying on data provided by those telematics systems. It's just
a question of how they get hold of that data.
So in a way, ulysses could be sort of a
resale business in that regard. Now, I presume the company
(14:24):
would first purchase the data from some other party and
then package it specifically for the US government, should the
government want to pursue this opportunity. I should also add
that not every vehicle out there actually has onboard telematics systems.
They are really common in the commercial vehicle markets, so
play you know, businesses that have fleets of cars frequently
(14:46):
have this just so that they can keep an eye
on how all those cars are doing in order to
you know, maintain the proper efficiencies. And some automakers have
embraced telematics more passionately I suppose than others like BMED
you and GM are are leaders in the space. Now,
there's not a whole lot you can do about this
as a as a driver, apart from maybe buying and
(15:09):
maintaining older vehicles that don't have onboard telematic systems. But
those have their own issues. For example, they might not
be terribly efficient, they could have some emissions problems. Getting
them repaired can sometimes be a bigger bit of a
pain because it may be hard to find parts for them,
So there is definitely a trade off there. But I
(15:29):
did want to cover the story because it's one of
those things that people just should be aware of. Ours
technical reports that TikTok parent company Bite dances investigating ways
to track iPhone users with the intent of serving those
users targeted advertisements. But see that happens to be against
Apple's privacy rules, which now state that apps have to
(15:52):
alert users before they can track those users, and they
have to give users the option to opt out of tracking.
But that's something that companies in general aren't too keen
on because targeted advertising is really a cash cow in
revenue terms. It's an incredibly valuable tool for companies like Facebook,
(16:12):
for example. It's very valuable to sell that capability to advertisers. However,
these companies worry that if you give people the choice,
they're gonna opt out of being tracked, because hey, you
know what, most folks aren't super keen on feeling like
they're in a song by the police. You know that song.
Every little thing she does is magic. Wait, no, no, no, no,
(16:34):
I'm sorry. I'm sorry man, every breath you take. Anyway.
The China Advertising Association, which I'm sure you will not
be surprised to hear, is a state backed institution in China,
is now trying an alternative way to track iPhone users
that bypasses the methods that apps are using right now now. Essentially,
(16:54):
this group is looking to sidestep the process and keep
tracking people without having to them know about it and
potentially opt out of it. Apple says it is going
to ban any app that tries to circumvent the privacy rules.
But on the flip side, if most of China's apps
are actually using this alternative method, it would be very
(17:15):
weird to see Apple actually take advance action against all
of them, because doing so would essentially open up the
opportunity for the Chinese government to just outright ban Apple
from operating in the country. They could say, hey, you
need us more than we need you. You're out of here,
And you know, China's got a lot of people over there. Anyway.
While TikTok tries to downplay its connection to its Chinese
(17:38):
parent company, it is worth remembering Byte Dance is definitely
one of the companies that is pursuing this, and we're
not done with stories about companies and governments tracking people.
Apple's new privacy rules also meant that companies had to
disclose more information about how they track and use personal
data from users, and that includes Google, a company that
(18:01):
has built its entire empire around the aggregation and exploitation
of data, personal and otherwise. Google took a long time
to comply with Apple's new rules, but once it did,
it became clear that the company collects a lot of
data for lots of different reasons. Uh. Sometimes it's to
provide a personalized experience through an app. Sometimes it's just
(18:24):
a monitor app functionality. Make sure that if an app
keeps crashing, figure out why it's doing that. Sometimes it's
general analytics. But it prompted duct duct Go, a web
browser and search engine, to take to Twitter and fire
a few shots at Google. The company posted quote. After
months of stalling, Google finally revealed how much personal data
(18:44):
they collect in Chrome and the Google App. No wonder
they wanted to hide it. Spying on users has nothing
to do with building a great web browser research engine.
We should know our app is both. In one end, quote,
some serious shade there, duc duct go. Meanwhile, Google is
also facing a class action lawsuit brought against the company
by users who allege the Google violated their privacy by
(19:08):
collecting data while the users were using Chrome in in
incognito mode. The claim is that Google was collecting info
on browser history even when people are in private mode.
Google has moved to have the case dismissed, but a
judge then denied that request, so it's going to go
to court. Google representatives have pointed out that when you
open an incognito window and Chrome, you're greeted with a
(19:30):
page that says Chrome doesn't say browsing history, but the
activity could still be visible to other websites that you
visit and moral on those lines. So I suppose this
case we'll try to determine if Google is being a
bit coy about that whole browser history thing or not.
And finally, do y'all remember the Apple commercials in which
(19:51):
Justin Long would come on screen he announced that he's
a Mac, and then John Hodgman would come on screen
and announced that he's a PC. And Austin Long was
always portrayed as kind of a hip, young, cool guy
with a lot of creative ideas, and Hodgment always came
across as outdated and out of touch and a bit
of a fuddy duddy. Well, now how the turns have
(20:13):
tabled or whatever, because Justin Long is now appearing in
a series of commercials for Intel in which he's kind
of slagging off on his old Mac buddies. The ads
show Long comparing Max, which now sport the Apple designed CPUs,
not the Intel processors, and he compares them against PCs
(20:34):
that do have Intel chips inside them. And I guess
you can figure out where this is going over and
over in each of these ads. Justin Long's job is
to suggest that Apple is really a hassle and that
Max limit what users can do with their machines, and
he's particularly brutal when it comes to gaming. Now, I
normally wouldn't report on ads, but this was just one
(20:55):
of those things I found kind of amusing for those
of us who have been subjected to tech company adver
tisements for a few decades. So if you remember the
I'm a Mac, I'm a PC ads, maybe you watch
a couple of the new Intel ones just to see
how they are leaning hard on that history. And it
just makes me think, as someone who has read plenty
of ads himself, how awkward that initial conversation must have been. Um.
(21:20):
I mean, granted, Apple's very different company now than it
was when Justin Long was doing ads for it, but
even so awkward. That wraps up the news for Thursday,
March one. If you have any suggestions for topics I
should tackle in future episodes of tech Stuff, let me know.
The Best way to get in touch with me is
(21:41):
over on Twitter. The handle for the show is text
Stuff H. S W and I'll talk to you again
really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(22:03):
your favorite shows. H.
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to text Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and
a love of all things tech. And today's episode requires
a bit of an explanation. You see, this is going
(00:24):
to be the episode I recorded for yesterday, Thursday, March one.
It's a news oriented episode, but I did that forgetting
that I had already agreed to run the trailer for
the next season of Smart Talks, hosted by Malcolm Gladwell,
and so I didn't want to get rid of the
(00:46):
episode I had researched and written and recorded because I
felt like there was a lot of good information there.
Even though the news is a little less fresh than
it would have been yesterday, it's still an important stuff
because it's really focusing on a lot of stories about
how tech and governments and companies are using technology to
(01:10):
track us and to mass huge amounts of data, sometimes
without our knowledge, sometimes explicitly without our knowledge, and what
does that mean and is there anything we can do
about it? I feel like this is an important thing
to know about, even if you don't really have any
plans to change things. It's good to at least be
(01:32):
aware that it's going on. So with that in mind,
I hope you enjoy this slightly stale tech News episode.
I mean, it's only a day late, and that means
no classic episode this week. But next week we should
be pretty much back to normal. And in the coming
weeks tech stuff is going to change up a little
(01:52):
bit and that occasionally we will run an episode of
smart Talks in the tech Stuff feed. And again that's
going to be hosted by Malcolm Gladwell, not by me.
That is a big level up, but that's only going
to be occasionally. Most of the time, it's gonna be
the regular old tech stuff, so you're stuck with me. Anyway.
(02:13):
Let's listen to a slightly less fresh tech News episode.
Take it away, Jonathan from the past. Wikipedia the online
resource that you're not supposed to cite in your term papers,
and for good reason. But I won't get off track here.
I'll just say Wikipedia is a great resource to use
(02:33):
as a starting point. It just isn't a primary resource
and was never intended to be anyway. It will soon
launch a paid for service, but don't worry. This won't
mean you'll have to cough up cash the next time
you want to read up on, you know, Michael Bay
Transformer movie, or you want to learn about medieval villages
(02:54):
in the Netherlands, or you want to skim articles about
quantum entanglement or whatever. The paid for service customers will
actually be really big companies like Google and Amazon and Facebook.
The service will offer up developer tools, so these companies
can use those to republish database information on other platforms,
(03:15):
you know, to repurpose the info that's on Wikipedia for
their own you know uses, and presumably these customers will
have access to tools and data that aren't necessarily available
to the average Wikipedia user. According to Lane Becker, Senior
director of the Wikimedia Foundation, some companies have been repurposing
(03:36):
Wikipedia articles on their own sites for years, and often
they employ people to clean and reformat articles to better
fit the owned and operated sites design. I see this
all the time, where I'll be doing research and it
will send me to a page that looks like it's
an owned and operated page. But as I read, I
realized this is literally pulling the article from Wikipedia into
(04:00):
this page. That's the kind of thing that this paid
for service will cover. Wikimedia has formed a division called
Wikimedia Enterprises to develop this tool and to negotiate agreements
with various customers. Now the company is still working out
the finer details, and I could see this being used
in lots of ways, including with Google Smart Home products.
(04:21):
Asking a Google Home device a question could lead it
to pull from data that originated from Wikipedia, and it
would be enabled by this sort of licensing agreement. It's
also good to remember that the Wikimedia Foundation is a
nonprofit organization. The money from these projects would presumably go
back into supporting the hosting and continued development of Wikimedia itself.
(04:46):
Now cast your memory back to the summer of twenty twenty, which,
by my reckoning, was approximately a lifetime ago. One of
the many news stories that summer is how the Twitter
accounts for several prominent people, including Bill Gates, Elon Musk,
and Joe Biden all got hijacked by hackers, and they
(05:10):
used those accounts to perpetuate a scam. Now, basically, the
scam promised a big return on investments in a supposed
money making strategy. In fact, that scam claimed that participants
would double their money. They would give a certain amount
in bitcoin, and they would get twice that back, and
of course some folks fell for it and handed their
(05:32):
hard earned cryptocurrency cash over to the hackers to the
tune of more than a hundred fifteen thousand dollars. Well.
One of those hackers, Graham Ivan Clark, was caught and
charged and he pled guilty to charge as a fraud.
In return, he received a sentence of three years in
prison or a junile boot camp type thing, followed by
(05:56):
three years of probation. And during that probation he's not
supposed to use a computer without actual permission and supervision.
At the time of the crime, Clark was seventeen. He
has since turned eighteen, so he was sentenced as a
youthful offender. Otherwise he would be looking at a mandatory
sentence of ten years in prison. He and the other
(06:17):
two hackers used social engineering to get administrative access to
various Twitter handles. So, according to investigators, what they did
was they scoured linked in to find profiles of Twitter
employees who could have you know, like administrative access to
the back end. Then they did deep dives to find
how to contact their marks, typically by phone, and then
(06:39):
convinced those Twitter employees that the hackers were in fact
authorized to access Twitter systems for the purposes of maintenance.
They tricked the Twitter employees to go to a mocked
up log in page, which was really just a means
to fish those login credentials in order to get access
to the back end of Twitter, and then they moved
on from there. The two of or hackers, Nema Fazelli
(07:02):
and Mason Shepherd, are older than Clark and will likely
face more serious sentences for their part in the crime.
And I just want to point out social engineering is
a major tool in the hacker tool set. It's one
of those things where you know, you don't have to
figure out how to crack a security system or find
(07:22):
a vulnerability if in fact you just leverage the people
who have access to that system and you go into
it through there. That's a very effective means. And you know,
with COVID nineteen making a lot of people have to
work from home, it created a lot of and still
does creates a lot of opportunities for hackers to go
after that social engineering point of attack. So just be
(07:45):
aware of that, and you know, use critical thinking whenever
you get requests to perhaps sign into something that you
know you didn't anticipate. It's not to say that every
case of that is, you know, not legit, but it's something.
It's a red flag, so you know, just be wary.
(08:07):
Another big tech story in twenty twenty was how companies
like Uber campaigned really hard to defeat a proposition in
California that would have forced the company like Uber in
this case, but also companies like Lift to classify drivers
as employees rather than as contract workers as as sort
(08:27):
of independent contractors. Such a classification would require Uber to
provide additional compensation and benefits to drivers, and that's something
that the company is not too keen on doing. While
Uber was successful in convincing enough voters to oppose the
proposition in California, things are different across the pond. The
courts in the United Kingdom, after five year legal battle,
(08:50):
ruled that Uber drivers are effectively employees, and Uber says
now that drivers will earn at least the UK's national
living wage, which is currently set at eight pounds seventy
two pence per hour. It will also offer holiday pay
and pensions to drivers. Uber already offered free insurance to
cover cases of sickness or injury. Those will remain in place.
(09:14):
The change only applies to those who are driving passengers around. However,
Uber drivers who are delivering food as part of Uber
Eats still classified as being self employed. Also, that hourly
rate only applies to the times when Uber drivers are
actually transporting customers. Once someone has dropped off, that clock
effectively stops until another fare enters the car. That's something
(09:38):
that unions say is inadequate. But still this may mark
a change in direction for the gig economy in general,
and possibly will see further measures in the future. Meanwhile,
over here in the United States, the Washington Post had
a pretty critical piece about Uber, saying that while the
company was seeing huge boosts to its stock, you so,
(10:00):
the value of the company was going through the stratosphere
back in especially after it helped get that California proposition
off the table. It also wasn't really helping out when
it came to things like unemployment benefits for drivers. That
left a lot of drivers in a very tough economic position.
So those drivers instead largely depended upon government assistance. Around
(10:24):
eighty million dollars of it all told, they received funds
from the Economic Injury Disaster Loans Program. Now, as the
name suggests, that program gives out loans and grants two
small businesses in times of economic upheaval to help those
businesses survive as well as you know, the people who
run those businesses. That's really what's important here. So you've
(10:46):
got a multibillion dollar company with Uber, which I should
add has never once turned a profit by the end
of a fiscal year in its entire existence, and meanwhile
it has workers who have qualified for a small business
government assistance program. Again, because Uber was able to maintain
that arrangement that these workers are independent contractors, they're they're
(11:10):
self employed, they're not employees according to the law. So
Uber saw its value increase while the US government took
over the job of helping Uber's drivers make ends meet. Now,
this experience really points to how people in the gig
economy are particularly vulnerable to economic disruption, which I know
is kind of like me telling you that water is wet.
(11:30):
These are people who have to hustle constantly just to
make ends meet. So if you are someone who works
in the gig economy, my hat is off to you,
and I really hope things are going well for you
right now and that they just keep getting better. Joseph
cox Over at Vice Media has written a piece titled
cars Have Your Location. This spy firm wants to sell
(11:52):
it to the US military, which is a heck of
a headline. I mean it made me click on the story.
So what's going on here? Well, it really kind of
boils down to telematics. Telematics is a kind of portmanteau
of telecommunications and informatics. So modern cars have numerous sensors
to monitor car performance and safety parameters. You know, that's
(12:14):
when you get that check engine light or whatever. Someone
always has to plug your car up to a computer
to read what is actually going on. Well, that's kind
of what I'm talking about here, But these sensors are
doing more than just keeping an eye on how things
are handling while you're driving the vehicle. Many of these
systems pair with communications devices essentially like a simcard and
(12:35):
a modem, and it sends data back to automotive companies.
So what do these companies do with that data? Well,
they do a lot of things. They might use that
information to help design the next generation of vehicles based
on how people are using their cars today, or they
might have deals with major insurance companies which then use
those telematics to figure out what kind of driver you are,
(12:58):
how big a risk you pose, and that in turn
affects the rates you pay for car insurance. Or they
might sell data to other parties, which is probably where
the company mentioned in the Vice article comes in. That
company is called the Ulysses Group. It's a company that
has worked in various surveillance related products and services for
several years. Ulysses has proposed a deal with US government
(13:20):
to provide data that could give real time location information
about more than fifteen billion vehicles around the world in
pretty much every country except North Korea and Cuba Gali. Now,
according to ulysses own document about this proposal, quote, the
data can be used to geolocate, track and target time
(13:41):
sensitive mobile targets, tip and que sensors, developed patterns of life,
identified networks and relationships, and enhance situational awareness, among many
other applications end quote. See this is the kind of
thing that makes me long for the old days of cars,
where the systems were really more just like mechanical devices
(14:03):
and they were less like computers. Now I should add
that Ulysses doesn't have some sort of magic bug or
tracker that's installed in every car. The company would be
relying on data provided by those telematics systems. It's just
a question of how they get hold of that data.
So in a way, ulysses could be sort of a
resale business in that regard. Now, I presume the company
(14:24):
would first purchase the data from some other party and
then package it specifically for the US government, should the
government want to pursue this opportunity. I should also add
that not every vehicle out there actually has onboard telematics systems.
They are really common in the commercial vehicle markets, so
play you know, businesses that have fleets of cars frequently
(14:46):
have this just so that they can keep an eye
on how all those cars are doing in order to
you know, maintain the proper efficiencies. And some automakers have
embraced telematics more passionately I suppose than others like BMED
you and GM are are leaders in the space. Now,
there's not a whole lot you can do about this
as a as a driver, apart from maybe buying and
(15:09):
maintaining older vehicles that don't have onboard telematic systems. But
those have their own issues. For example, they might not
be terribly efficient, they could have some emissions problems. Getting
them repaired can sometimes be a bigger bit of a
pain because it may be hard to find parts for them,
So there is definitely a trade off there. But I
(15:29):
did want to cover the story because it's one of
those things that people just should be aware of. Ours
technical reports that TikTok parent company Bite dances investigating ways
to track iPhone users with the intent of serving those
users targeted advertisements. But see that happens to be against
Apple's privacy rules, which now state that apps have to
(15:52):
alert users before they can track those users, and they
have to give users the option to opt out of tracking.
But that's something that companies in general aren't too keen
on because targeted advertising is really a cash cow in
revenue terms. It's an incredibly valuable tool for companies like Facebook,
(16:12):
for example. It's very valuable to sell that capability to advertisers. However,
these companies worry that if you give people the choice,
they're gonna opt out of being tracked, because hey, you
know what, most folks aren't super keen on feeling like
they're in a song by the police. You know that song.
Every little thing she does is magic. Wait, no, no, no, no,
(16:34):
I'm sorry. I'm sorry man, every breath you take. Anyway.
The China Advertising Association, which I'm sure you will not
be surprised to hear, is a state backed institution in China,
is now trying an alternative way to track iPhone users
that bypasses the methods that apps are using right now now. Essentially,
(16:54):
this group is looking to sidestep the process and keep
tracking people without having to them know about it and
potentially opt out of it. Apple says it is going
to ban any app that tries to circumvent the privacy rules.
But on the flip side, if most of China's apps
are actually using this alternative method, it would be very
(17:15):
weird to see Apple actually take advance action against all
of them, because doing so would essentially open up the
opportunity for the Chinese government to just outright ban Apple
from operating in the country. They could say, hey, you
need us more than we need you. You're out of here,
And you know, China's got a lot of people over there. Anyway.
While TikTok tries to downplay its connection to its Chinese
(17:38):
parent company, it is worth remembering Byte Dance is definitely
one of the companies that is pursuing this, and we're
not done with stories about companies and governments tracking people.
Apple's new privacy rules also meant that companies had to
disclose more information about how they track and use personal
data from users, and that includes Google, a company that
(18:01):
has built its entire empire around the aggregation and exploitation
of data, personal and otherwise. Google took a long time
to comply with Apple's new rules, but once it did,
it became clear that the company collects a lot of
data for lots of different reasons. Uh. Sometimes it's to
provide a personalized experience through an app. Sometimes it's just
(18:24):
a monitor app functionality. Make sure that if an app
keeps crashing, figure out why it's doing that. Sometimes it's
general analytics. But it prompted duct duct Go, a web
browser and search engine, to take to Twitter and fire
a few shots at Google. The company posted quote. After
months of stalling, Google finally revealed how much personal data
(18:44):
they collect in Chrome and the Google App. No wonder
they wanted to hide it. Spying on users has nothing
to do with building a great web browser research engine.
We should know our app is both. In one end, quote,
some serious shade there, duc duct go. Meanwhile, Google is
also facing a class action lawsuit brought against the company
by users who allege the Google violated their privacy by
(19:08):
collecting data while the users were using Chrome in in
incognito mode. The claim is that Google was collecting info
on browser history even when people are in private mode.
Google has moved to have the case dismissed, but a
judge then denied that request, so it's going to go
to court. Google representatives have pointed out that when you
open an incognito window and Chrome, you're greeted with a
(19:30):
page that says Chrome doesn't say browsing history, but the
activity could still be visible to other websites that you
visit and moral on those lines. So I suppose this
case we'll try to determine if Google is being a
bit coy about that whole browser history thing or not.
And finally, do y'all remember the Apple commercials in which
(19:51):
Justin Long would come on screen he announced that he's
a Mac, and then John Hodgman would come on screen
and announced that he's a PC. And Austin Long was
always portrayed as kind of a hip, young, cool guy
with a lot of creative ideas, and Hodgment always came
across as outdated and out of touch and a bit
of a fuddy duddy. Well, now how the turns have
(20:13):
tabled or whatever, because Justin Long is now appearing in
a series of commercials for Intel in which he's kind
of slagging off on his old Mac buddies. The ads
show Long comparing Max, which now sport the Apple designed CPUs,
not the Intel processors, and he compares them against PCs
(20:34):
that do have Intel chips inside them. And I guess
you can figure out where this is going over and
over in each of these ads. Justin Long's job is
to suggest that Apple is really a hassle and that
Max limit what users can do with their machines, and
he's particularly brutal when it comes to gaming. Now, I
normally wouldn't report on ads, but this was just one
(20:55):
of those things I found kind of amusing for those
of us who have been subjected to tech company adver
tisements for a few decades. So if you remember the
I'm a Mac, I'm a PC ads, maybe you watch
a couple of the new Intel ones just to see
how they are leaning hard on that history. And it
just makes me think, as someone who has read plenty
of ads himself, how awkward that initial conversation must have been. Um.
(21:20):
I mean, granted, Apple's very different company now than it
was when Justin Long was doing ads for it, but
even so awkward. That wraps up the news for Thursday,
March one. If you have any suggestions for topics I
should tackle in future episodes of tech Stuff, let me know.
The Best way to get in touch with me is
(21:41):
over on Twitter. The handle for the show is text
Stuff H. S W and I'll talk to you again
really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(22:03):
your favorite shows. H.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.