Try these 4 advanced facebook ad strategies to target people (not cookies) and reach the exact target audience you want.

Cybersecurity expert Bruce Schneier, a fellow with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, discusses what consumers can do to protect themselves from government and corporate surveillance.

The AccuWeather application for iOS requests location access under the premise of providing users localized severe weather alerts, critical…

A security researcher has found that the popular weather app sends private location data without the user's explicit permission to a firm designed to monetize user locations.

DID you know that Google has been recording you without your knowledge?

Porn browsing habits and confidential documents are found in supposedly anonymised data.

New Annenberg survey results indicate that marketers are misrepresenting a large majority of Americans by claiming that Americans give out information about themselves as a tradeoff for benefits they receive. To the contrary, the survey reveals most Americans do not believe that ‘data for discounts’ is a square deal. The findings also suggest, in contrast to other academics’ claims, that Americans’ willingness to provide personal information to marketers cannot be explained by the public’s poor knowledge of the ins and outs of digital commerce.Our findings, instead, support a new explanation: a majority of Americans are resigned to giving up their data — and that is why many appear to be engaging in tradeoffs. Resignation occurs when a person believes an ndesirable outcome is inevitable and feels powerless to stop it. Rather than feeling able to make choices, Americans believe it is futile to manage what companies can learn about them. Our study reveals that more than half do not want to lose control over their information but also believe this loss of
control has already happened.

By misrepresenting the American people and championing the tradeoff argument, marketers give policymakers false justifications for allowing the collection and use of all kinds of consumer data often in ways that the public find objectionable. Moreover, the futility we found, combined with a broad public fear about what companies can do with the data, portends serious difficulties not just for individuals but also — over time — for the institution of consumer commerce.

Take the company’s decision this week to stop personalizing Gmail ads based on its scanning of words in email messages. It may sound like substantial change, but it’s really mostly a smokescreen. First, it’s important to note that it came about after businesses voiced concern that Google would sweep up sensitive information from their correspondences—not because of consumer outcry.

Second, ads will remain, but “in line with how we personalize ads for other Google products.” That’s a cover-up for saying that heavy-duty data gathering will continue on all the Google products you use that are not Gmail. Google Analytics, for example, is one of the ways Google follows virtually everyone everywhere. Google’s apps allow it to learn your phone number and physical location, and your searches help it to create sophisticated data profiles about you. This then helps marketers target you with specific advertisements.

After being an early adopter of Facebook and using it for over a decade, I decided to delete my account. Here’s why.

The search giant is massive in size, and there is a good chance you tap into Googleverse in some way:

Global market penetration for Android is 61-81%.
Google has a 78.8% market share for online search.
The company generates $67.4 billion in annual ad revenue.
Google processes two trillion searches annually.
30-50 million websites use Google Analytics to for tracking.
There are 700,000 apps available in the Google Play store.
82% of videos watched online come from YouTube.
In total, Google has at least 79 products and services.

According to Google’s documentation, it uses these services to pull out information on the “things you do”, “things you create”, and the things that make you unique.

In a crime case, investigators don't have access to "the truth"—the data, if you will. All they have are clues which can be put together to make as perfect a guess as possible as to what the nature

We show that the MEMS gyroscopes found on modern smart phones are sufficiently sensitive to measure acoustic signals in the vicinity of the phone. The resulting signals contain only very low-frequency information (< 200 Hz). Nevertheless we show, using signal processing and machine learning, that this information is sufficient to identify speaker information and even parse speech. Since iOS and Android require no special permissions to access the gyro, our results show that apps and active web content that cannot access the microphone can nevertheless eavesdrop on speech in the vicinity of the phone.

This is why.

Not Google specific, but some good reading on this topic came out in January - The Aisles Have Eyes: How Retailers Track Your Shopping, Strip Your Privacy, and Define Your Power