Articles Archives

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Does Facebook Use Sensitive Data for Advertising Purposes?

Citizens worldwide have demonstrated serious concerns regarding the management of personal information by online services. Policymakers have reacted to this situation by passing or proposing new regulations in the area of privacy and/or data protection. In a recent work, we demonstrated that Facebook (FB) labels 73% of users within the EU with potentially sensitive interests (referred to as ad preferences as well), which may contravene the GDPR. First, this article extends the scope of our analysis from the EU to 197 countries worldwide in February 2019. Second, we analyze whether the enactment of the GDPR on May 28, 2018 had some impact on the FB practices regarding the use of sensitive ad preferences. Third, we discuss privacy and ethics risks that may be derived from the exploitation of sensitive FB ad preferences. Finally, we present a technical solution that allows users to remove in a simple way the sensitive interests FB has assigned them.

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Computing & Technology / Articles

Excessive Use of Technology: Can Tech Providers be the Culprits?

Almost certainly, tech companies attempt to develop ways in which participants remain engaged, although the degree to which such mechanisms are harmful remain hotly contested.

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Computing & Technology / Articles

Coalition of the Willing Takes Aim at COVID-19

Though privacy concerns limit the quantity of information they will be able to use, as the pandemic gradually clears, researchers will have data from the most closely tracked outbreak of its kind to gauge the effectiveness of the many strategies countries have used to tackle Covid-19. But the pandemic has reinforced the notion that there are limits to what data science can achieve, despite the clear cost-savings and efficiency that technology promises.

Articles / CyberSecurity

Spoofing the Spoofers

Essentially, the software enables a security professional or system administrator to study and react to, hacker activity with much greater sophistication…

Articles / CyberSecurity

Cybersecurity Research for the Future

Nonetheless, while the dark side is daunting, emerging research, development, and education across interdisciplinary topics addressing cybersecurity and privacy are yielding promising results. The shift from R&D on siloed add-on security, to new fundamental research that is interdisciplinary, and positions privacy, security, and trustworthiness as principal defining objectives, offer opportunities to achieve a shift in the asymmetric playing field.

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Computing & Technology / Articles

Content Moderation Modulation

Near-constant controversies about social media’s impact on everything from political ads to violent extremism and from data protection to hate speech have led to various attempts at government regulation—some more successful than others.

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Computing & Technology / Articles

Insights for AI from the Human Mind

Much work in evolutionary and developmental psychology points in the same direction; the mind is not one thing, but many.
To build AIs able to comprehend open text or power general-purpose domestic robots, we need to go further. A good place to start is by looking at the human mind, which still far outstrips machines in comprehension and flexible thinking.

Articles / CyberSecurity

A moment of reckoning: the need for a strong and global cybersecurity response

It requires that we look with clear eyes at the growing threats we face and commit to more effective and collaborative leadership by the government and the tech sector in the United States to spearhead a strong and coordinated global cybersecurity response.

Computing & Technology / Articles

Digital Humans on the Big Screen

The power of AI being applied to visual effects is relatively new and there are huge potentials for that.

Articles / CyberSecurity

Telework and Mobile Security Guidance

End User Telework and Network Security Guides

Articles / CyberSecurity

Cybersecurity Advisories & Technical Guidance

Browse or search our [NSA] repository of advisories, info sheets, tech reports, and operational risk notices.

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Computing & Technology / Articles

The New Startup: No Code, No Problem

Now you don’t need to know any programming to launch a company. We’ve been approaching this moment for years.

Articles / CyberSecurity

Presidential Policy Directive 41 – United States Cyber Incident Coordination

While the vast majority of cyber incidents can be handled through existing policies, certain cyber incidents that have significant impacts on an entity, our national security, or the broader economy require a unique approach to response efforts. These significant cyber incidents demand unity of effort within the Federal Government and especially close coordination between the public and private sectors.

photo illustration of Paul Nakasone - Illustrations: Geoff Kim; Getty Images

Articles / CyberSecurity

The Man Who Speaks Softly—and Commands a Big Cyber Army

Meet General Paul Nakasone. He reined in chaos at the NSA and taught the US military how to launch pervasive cyberattacks. And he did it all without you noticing.

Nakasone testifying in Washington, D.C., February 2019 - U.S. Cyber Command

Articles / CyberSecurity

How to Compete in Cyberspace

We learned that we cannot afford to wait for cyber attacks to affect our military networks. We learned that defending our military networks requires executing operations outside our military networks. The threat evolved, and we evolved to meet it.

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Articles / CyberSecurity

Cyber Warranties: Market Fix or Marketing Trick?

Will cyber warranties better align incentives in the market for information security products? Or are they marketing tricks riddled with coverage exclusions hidden in the fine print of the terms and conditions?

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Articles / CyberSecurity

Why Is Cybersecurity Not a Human-Scale Problem Anymore?

In this Viewpoint, we show why cybersecurity is a very difficult problem. The enterprise attack surface is massive and growing rapidly. There are practically unlimited permutations and combinations of methods by which an adversary can attack and compromise our networks. There is a big gap between our current tools and methods, and what is needed to get ahead of cyber-adversaries.

Computing & Technology / Articles

Why Great Programmers Pull Back the Curtain While Programming

I certainly don’t know everything. Yet as often as possible, I try to discover the ghost in the machine, so to speak, and how everything functions.

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Computing & Technology / Articles

The Temptation of Data-Enabled Surveillance

Current learning analytics practices may be inconsistent with higher education institutions’ fiduciary responsibilities. Institutional interests and student interests are not identical, and we should not assume they align.

Computing & Technology / Articles

Stopping Tyranny

Is there a natural law that says that if a country consists of mostly non-violent people and a small group willing to use force, then the brutes will win? Is there any way for the decent people to stop the brutes?