Kashmir Hill

Tech NewsPrivacy and Security

This Simple Tool Will Reveal the Secret Life of Your Smart Home

We live in the glorious future that technophiles have long dreamed of. Almost everything can now connect to the internet: cameras, coffee pots, televisions, vacuums, toilets, children’s toys, sex toys. If you build it, a wireless connection will come for it. These smart devices are always on, always connected, and often up to more than … Continued

Tech NewsFacebook

Facebook Ruins Woman’s Attempt to Pin Crime on Her Sister

Last week, a sheriff’s office in South Carolina posted a pretty crazy story to its Facebook page about how Facebook’s “People You May Know” feature had foiled a woman’s attempt to hide her identity from the police. The story, which was shared thousands of times and got some pick-up in the local media, went like … Continued

Tech NewsFacebook

More Internal Facebook Documents Leak Online, Revealing How Facebook Planned to Sell User Data

At the end of 2018, in a dramatic series of events, lawmakers in England had a sergeant-at-arms storm to an American tech executive’s hotel room and insisted on the release of confidential documents from his company’s ongoing lawsuit against Facebook. Then, in the style of vigilante hackers, the lawmakers posted many of those court-sealed records, … Continued

Tech NewsAmazon

Amazon and Chase Are Still Confusingly Opaque About What They Do With Your Credit Card Data

Last month, I tried to find out what Amazon learns about people who have an Amazon Rewards Visa Signature Card from Chase. Neither Chase nor Amazon would give me a straight answer. In fact, Chase’s spokesperson, Mary Jane Rogers, gave me a wrong answer in telling me that Amazon fell into a category that it … Continued

Tech NewsGoodbye Big Five

Want to Really Block the Tech Giants? Here’s How

Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple move more money than many medium-sized nations. Their extraordinary profits are won through extraordinary reach—this is not a secret. That a few companies are afforded unprecedented and shamefully unregulated access into our homes is now an unremarkable fact of living with tiny computers everywhere. When Gizmodo reporter Kashmir Hill, … Continued

Tech NewsGoodbye Big Five

I Cut the ‘Big Five’ Tech Giants From My Life. It Was Hell

Week 6: Blocking them all A couple of months ago, I set out to answer the question of whether it’s possible to avoid the tech giants. Over the course of five weeks, I blocked Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple one at a time, to find out how to live in the modern age without … Continued

Tech NewsPrivacy and Security

Apple Is Removing ‘Do Not Track’ From Safari

Do Not Track is apparently dead, and Apple is now taking steps to shed itself of the failed privacy project. Almost every internet browser has an option in its privacy settings called “Do Not Track,” which, if you turn it on, sends an invisible request on your behalf to all the websites you visit telling … Continued

Tech NewsGoodbye Big Five

I Cut Apple Out of My Life. It Was Devastating

Week 5: Apple When I first conceived of this experiment—cutting the tech giants out of my life one-by-one—I hadn’t thought to include Microsoft (because I use very few of their products) or Apple (because I use so many of theirs). I have two MacBook Airs, one for personal use and one supplied by my work. … Continued

Tech NewsGoodbye Big Five

I Cut Microsoft Out of My Life—or So I Thought

Week 4: Microsoft When I initially planned to block all the tech giants from my life, I hadn’t thought to include Microsoft, mostly because Microsoft is—these days, at least—rarely on the receiving end of criticism for destroying civilization as we know it. Microsoft’s days as a tech supervillain are a distant memory, dating back to … Continued

Tech NewsGoodbye Big Five

I Cut Google Out Of My Life. It Screwed Up Everything

Week 3: Google Long ago, Google made the mistake of adopting the motto, “Don’t be evil,” in a jab at competitors who exploited their users. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has since demoted the phrase in its corporate code of conduct presumably because of how hard it is to live up to it. Google is no … Continued

Tech NewsGoodbye Big Five

I Cut Facebook Out of My Life. Surprisingly, I Missed It

Week 2: Facebook After Facebook’s hell-year of scandal, and its unabating erosion of our privacy—a topic I’ve been covering for over 10 years—I never thought I’d miss the social network. But here I am, staring at my screen, feeling strangely alone. In the second stage of my epic quest to thwart the world’s most powerful … Continued

Tech NewsAmazon

Amazon and Chase Will Not Give Me a Straight Answer About What They Do With My Credit Card Data

Whenever I go out to dinner with a bunch of friends, and we split the check, multiple people wind up throwing in those heavy, slate-grey credit cards bearing Amazon’s smiley arrow. Almost everyone I know has the Amazon Prime credit card because it comes with a killer rewards program, especially if you’re an Amazon Prime … Continued

Tech NewsGoodbye Big Five

Life Without the Tech Giants

Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple collectively make products that we love, products that we hate (but can’t stop using), and products that dictate how we communicate and how we are seen. Their devices and services make our lives easier than they’ve ever been before, yet more complicated in unforeseen ways. They are so ubiquitous … Continued

Tech NewsGoodbye Big Five

I Tried to Block Amazon From My Life. It Was Impossible

Week 1: Amazon Apparently, I am a masochist. I am on a mission to live without the tech giants—to discover whether such a thing is even possible. Not just through sheer willpower but technologically, with the use of a custom-built tool that would literally prevent my devices from accessing these companies, and them from accessing … Continued

Tech News

How Cartographers for the U.S. Military Inadvertently Created a House of Horrors in South Africa

The visitors started coming in 2013. The first one who came and refused to leave until he was let inside was a private investigator named Roderick. He was looking for an abducted girl, and he was convinced she was in the house. John S. and his mother Ann live in the house, which is in … Continued

Tech NewsFacebook

Amazon and Facebook Reportedly Had a Secret Data-Sharing Agreement, and It Explains So Much

Back in 2015, a woman named Imy Santiago wrote an Amazon review of a novel that she had read and liked. Amazon immediately took the review down and told Santiago she had “violated its policies.” Santiago re-read her review, didn’t see anything objectionable about it, so she tried to post it again. “You’re not eligible … Continued

Tech NewsFacebook

Turning Off Facebook Location Tracking Doesn’t Stop It From Tracking Your Location

Aleksandra Korolova has turned off Facebook’s access to her location in every way that she can. She has turned off location history in the Facebook app and told her iPhone that she “Never” wants the app to get her location. She doesn’t “check-in” to places and doesn’t list her current city on her profile. Despite … Continued

Tech NewsFacebook

How Facebook Schemed Against Its Users

Last year, I was trying to solve a mystery. Facebook’s “People You May Know” tool was outing sex workers’ real identities to their clients, and vice versa, and I was trying to figure out how. A sex worker using the pseudonym Leila told me she had gone to great lengths to hide her identity from … Continued

Tech NewsFacebook

Facebook Was Fully Aware That Tracking Who People Call and Text Is Creepy But Did It Anyway

Back in 2015, Facebook had a pickle of a problem. It was time to update the Android version of the Facebook app, and two different groups within Facebook were at odds over what the data grab should be. The business team wanted to get Bluetooth permissions so it could push ads to people’s phones when … Continued

Tech NewsPrivacy and Security

Be Warned: Customer Service Agents Can See What You’re Typing in Real Time

Next time you’re chatting with a customer service agent online, be warned that the person on the other side of your conversation might see what you’re typing in real time. A reader sent us the following transcript from a conversation he had with a mattress company after the agent responded to a message he hadn’t … Continued