How the NSA & FBI made Facebook the perfect mass surveillance tool | Blog by Bogdan Mandru. The National Security Agency and the FBI teamed up in October 2010 to develop techniques for turning Facebook into a surveillance tool. Documents released alongside security journalist Glenn Greenwald’s new book, “No Place To Hide,” reveal the NSA and FBI partnership, in which the two agencies developed techniques for exploiting Facebook chats, capturing private photos, collecting IP addresses, and gathering private profile data. According to the slides below, the agencies’ goal for such collection was to capture “a very rich source of information on targets,” including “personal details, ‘pattern of life,’ connections to associates, [and] media.” NSA documents make painfully clear how the agencies collected information “by exploiting inherent weaknesses in Facebook’s security model” through its use of the popular Akamai content delivery network.
The NSA describes its methods as “assumed authentication,” and “security through obscurity.” Does Google Control Your Destiny? Andrew Edwards | February 10, 2014 | 0 Comments inShare29 Visibility is a top goal for digital marketers, and it boils down to a very particular and very mysterious process we know as "Google Search Ranking. " Yes. Google controls your destiny, if you are a digital marketer. Digital marketers are up to all kinds of stratagems these days: omni-channel marketing, inbound marketing, content marketing, email marketing, in-app marketing, social media marketing, convergence marketing, and then whatever constitutes flavor-of-the-month.
But really, it comes down to two things: getting people to find and interact with your content, and then obtaining from them a desired action - a conversion, as we like to call it. A recent article at ClickZ strongly suggested that email works far better than social media in the achievement of the above. But for the rest of the yearning masses of marketers in the world, visibility is the essential ingredient. But Google is not fooled. NSA usaba "Angry Birds" para espiar.
La Agencia de Seguridad Nacional (NSA) utiliza aplicaciones vulnerables como el juego "Angry Birds" para acceder a información personal o datos de localización en todo el mundo, según revelan The New York Times y The Guardian. La agencias de inteligencia de Estados Unidos y Reino Unido llevan desde 2007 intentando explotar la gran cantidad de información obtenida por aplicaciones móviles y otra compartida en redes sociales, según nuevas revelaciones del ex analista externo de la NSA Edward Snowden (bit.ly/1lhtSVR).
En las diapositivas reveladas hoy, la NSA reconoce las inmensas posibilidades de espionaje que ofrecen los "smartphones" o teléfonos inteligentes por la información recopilada por las aplicaciones de estos dispositivos móviles, "Pepitas de oro", según se afirma en una de las páginas, fechadas en mayo de 2010. En una respuesta escrita, la NSA aseguró que no obtiene "perfiles del estadounidense común" en sus "misiones de inteligencia extranjera". How Much Google And Other Tech Companies Spent On D.C. Lobbyists In One Chart. Tech companies shelled out over $61 million to influence America’s political leaders in 2013, with Google leading the pack at a handsome $14 million.
From high-skilled immigration reform to regulation, tech companies have become increasingly forced to preempt limitations imposed by policymakers. The graph below is based on figures compiled by Consumer Watchdog from the House Clerks disclosure database. In some cases, lobbying is a much cheaper and more successful investment than dealing with fines and laws after the fact. Google avoided a massive antitrust fine from the Federal Trade Commission by gaining friends all over the nation’s capitol. In other cases, Google money could have been more productively spent on kale chips for their well-fed employees. Despite years of multi-million dollar, star-studded campaigns, the entire tech sector has yet to get legislation passed for high-skilled immigrants. Why You Should Fear Google's Nest Acquisition [COMIC] Google in 2014: The World Is (Almost) Its Oyster.
When I interviewed Larry Page and Sergey Brin for their first ever Time magazine story, the then 27-year-old Google founders started talking up a grandiose mission: to organize the world's information. This was at the turn of the century, when they'd just moved to an office park and could walk unknown on the street. I met them again at Burning Man 2000 when they showed up incognito in body paint at Time's RV for a drink; it took me 10 awkward minutes to recognize them. Organize all the world's information? These dorky-looking kids were geniuses of the algorithm, admittedly, but minnows compared to the might of Yahoo, the most popular search engine. Google had no revenue and a business model at which everyone else had failed: Internet advertising.
Page and Brin seemed to spend an awful lot of time building printers out of Legos, hacking hardwired screensavers and getting massages. As we enter 2014, the problem with that mission isn't that it's grandiose. Page and Brin are barely 40. New Tab. I bet every article you’ve ever read about the future of advertising has begun with a brain-shrinkingly predictable reference to Tom Cruise borefest Minority Report. Well, not this one! I’m going to use a much more sophisticated movie reference to introduce this article: Back to the Future Part II. You know that bit where old Biff steals the DeLorean and travels back in time from 2015 to 1955 to give Marty McFly’s Sports Almanac to young Biff?
Young Biff then makes millions ‘predicting’ the outcome of the sporting events listed in the almanac. As a result the entire course of history is changed - all thanks to a bunch of data that even an intellectually challenged Biff Tannen can interpret. In the US retailer Target has already figured out how to tell if women are pregnant long before they start buying nappies. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Gareth Jones is global brand and marketing director at LBi. Google Adds Estimated Total Conversions to Track Cross-Device Purchases in AdWords. Starting today and over the next few weeks, Google AdWords will roll out a major reporting update to conversion tracking called Estimated Total Conversions.
This feature provides estimates of conversions that take multiple devices to complete and adds this data to the conversion reporting we see today. Following the launch of enhanced campaigns this year, search advertisers have combined mobile and desktops with the ability to further modify bids by mobile and other targeting factors. One gap in reporting and comprehension of the campaigns effectiveness has been the limited data on how consumers are navigating and converting via multiple device options. What is a Cross-Device Conversion? Consumers constant connectivity has enabled them to browse, shop, and interact with businesses on the go and from multiple devices. How Estimated Total Conversions Works Google calculates cross-device conversions for a particular advertiser based on how their customers convert when they are logged in. 56% of Internet Users Have Searched for Themselves Online.
You might not want to admit it, but chances are you've Googled yourself. Don't be embarrassed — you're in the majority. According to a new study conducted by the Pew Research Center, 56% of Internet users have searched for themselves online, up from 22% when the question was first asked by the research firm in 2001. The news comes as Google celebrates its 15th birthday, but the statistic stems from a study conducted earlier this year between April and May. "Typing your name into a search engine to see what results come up was initially referred to as a 'vanity search' in the early days of the Internet, but increasingly, it has become an important way to check up on the most publicly accessible digital footprints that others may encounter about us online," Mary Madden, the author of the story, told Mashable. BONUS: Google+ Tips and Tricks: 10 Hints for Google Noobs Image: Adam Berry/Getty Images.