I've no sound on my work computer which looks like it's probably one of these: "Windows 7, Dell Optiplex GX620 Desktop PC, P4 HT 2.8GHz, 1GB Ram, 80GB Hard Drive, DVD".
Apart from the mild annoyance of not being able to listen to YouTube playlists as I work, I also can't listen to all sorts of useful work-related audio or audiovisual clips - Prof Harold Thimbleby (in video below) is the Swansea PI on the CHI+MED project I work on. He's talking in London tonight and I thought I'd have one of his earlier talks on in the background.
If I turn the volume and hold my foot against the headphone jack I can hear things OK, through the left headphone. Moving my foot at all means sudden silence, and the unit (which also houses a speaker) is clearly a bit wobbly.
I'd previously checked the sound settings and used the little troubleshooting programme from Microsoft (available from that link once you've gone through the first bits) which found no problem. It's definitely mechanical.
How easy is it to
a) get a new unit
b)i) plug it in
b)ii) and what safety things to I need to be aware of? For example I'm wary of poking around in the back of a television (mine's CRT) because I understand there are fearsome capacitors within it so even with unplugging it there's still a high voltage... might be wrong, but if I unplug my PC do I need to wait hours / weeks before unscrewing things?
c) is it likelier that I can fix this by just opening it up and resoldering it, in which case I'd still need an answer to b)ii ;)
Ta :)
Honestly for the last year every time I've wanted to watch / listen to a YouTube video I've either emailed the link to myself and picked it up on my iPhone, or used an URL shortener to then type a short URL into iPhone Safari, which then automatically loads the YouTube app. There's always a workaround but it would be a nice sense of achievement to fix this!
Tuesday, 11 February 2014
Thursday, 6 February 2014
How do you write a date in an email to someone so that it's easy to make it into a calendar entry, with subject?
Edit later that same day:
Well it turns out that the system manages fine - it just takes whatever subject you give the email and uses that as the event name. So that's that one fixed :-) Not sure why I'd not spotted it before, but there we are.
Edit the day later:
On reflection I'd still quite like to know if what I'm after below is possible. I don't know if everyone knows that their email subject will form the name of the event, and it's possible that you might want to title your email one thing and the event another. Don't really think it's possible though.
Email addresses usually show up in received emails as hyperlinks, so that clicking on it opens up a new email message with the To: field set to send to that person. Even if you didn't 'set' the link before sending, most email programmes know what to do with something that looks email-ish.
You can also manually tweak the link so that when the recipient clicks on the link it will open a new email editing window that has both the To: field and the Subject: field already filled.
mailto:e.mail@email.net - will launch an email to that address (with whatever you've got set up as a default mail program)
mailto:e.mail@email.net?subject=works even with spaces in - will launch an email to the same person with that subject.
Is it possible to write a time and date (in the body text of an email) so that, on smartphones, I can exploit the calendar programme which tries to turn everything into a new event?
Things like 5pm, 15 March 2008, Exciting event or Exciting event, 5pm, 15 March 2008 don't fully work sadly. See pic below.
Or is there some coding thing I can embed beneath it, conceptually similar to the ?subject= format?
Well it turns out that the system manages fine - it just takes whatever subject you give the email and uses that as the event name. So that's that one fixed :-) Not sure why I'd not spotted it before, but there we are.
Edit the day later:
On reflection I'd still quite like to know if what I'm after below is possible. I don't know if everyone knows that their email subject will form the name of the event, and it's possible that you might want to title your email one thing and the event another. Don't really think it's possible though.
Saturday, 25 January 2014
"pH miracle" Robert O Young, of live blood analysis fame, arrested and charged in January 2014
Update: 14 March 2016 - Robert O Young is currently in jail after being found guilty on two charges of practising medicine without a licnse. He was acquitted on the third charge, but will now face another six charges (include theft by fraud). He's also being sued by one of his former patients. His activities are catching up with him. Source: pH Miracle author to face new trial
---------
I first came across Robert O Young a few years ago while working at Diabetes UK. My job was to answer people's science-related enquiries and one or two had come in from people wondering about a book by ROY, for which the promotional material had claimed all sorts of weird and wonderful cures. The claims were fanciful, the biochemical information was poor and the evidence was patchy - but I could see why it was popular.
A number of my complaints to the UK's Advertising Standards Authority have been about organisations offering live blood analysis and one or two of the practitioners reference Robert O Young (he runs courses in teaching people how to offer live blood microscopy to their clients). Since these courses don't actually teach much genuine information about either microscopy or making sense of blood smears there are an awful lot of people who have been ripped off to the tune of several thousand pounds, but at least they have a microscope and plenty of willing punters, so the ripping off continues, albeit unwittingly.
Robert O Young arrested and charged on Thursday 23 January 2014
This morning I spotted on Twitter that he had been arrested at his 'avocado ranch', where he has a kind of treatment clinic, and charged with 18 counts of practising medicine (at his clinic) without a license, and also charged with theft.
According to the PDF press release (see below) two people went undercover to find out more about his practices and this led to an investigation and his arrest.
There are at least two UK live blood practitioners who've said in their publicity material that they were trained by Robert O Young, wonder if they'll amend that in light of his recent arrest.
He's been arrested before I believe, and managed to get off so possibly he won't be serving the predicted 15 years and 8 months in prison after all.
If you know anyone who's spent money being treated by 'Dr' Robert O Young then the District Attorney is keen to hear from them - 619) 531-3507.
He refers to himself as Dr Robert O. Young however his doctorate is not equivalent to the qualification of a medical doctor. He has a PhD (which does entitle him to use the Dr prefix) however he received this from Clayton College, the same unaccredited diploma mill from which Gillian McKeith received her PhD. They also gave him a masters degree, a DSc and a 'Doctor of Naturopathy'. Goodness knows why, these do not appear to be 'real' degrees. For comparison you might enjoy Wikipedia's List of Animals with Fraudulent Diplomas.
Further reading
---------
I first came across Robert O Young a few years ago while working at Diabetes UK. My job was to answer people's science-related enquiries and one or two had come in from people wondering about a book by ROY, for which the promotional material had claimed all sorts of weird and wonderful cures. The claims were fanciful, the biochemical information was poor and the evidence was patchy - but I could see why it was popular.
A number of my complaints to the UK's Advertising Standards Authority have been about organisations offering live blood analysis and one or two of the practitioners reference Robert O Young (he runs courses in teaching people how to offer live blood microscopy to their clients). Since these courses don't actually teach much genuine information about either microscopy or making sense of blood smears there are an awful lot of people who have been ripped off to the tune of several thousand pounds, but at least they have a microscope and plenty of willing punters, so the ripping off continues, albeit unwittingly.
Robert O Young arrested and charged on Thursday 23 January 2014
This morning I spotted on Twitter that he had been arrested at his 'avocado ranch', where he has a kind of treatment clinic, and charged with 18 counts of practising medicine (at his clinic) without a license, and also charged with theft.
According to the PDF press release (see below) two people went undercover to find out more about his practices and this led to an investigation and his arrest.
There are at least two UK live blood practitioners who've said in their publicity material that they were trained by Robert O Young, wonder if they'll amend that in light of his recent arrest.
He's been arrested before I believe, and managed to get off so possibly he won't be serving the predicted 15 years and 8 months in prison after all.
If you know anyone who's spent money being treated by 'Dr' Robert O Young then the District Attorney is keen to hear from them - 619) 531-3507.
He refers to himself as Dr Robert O. Young however his doctorate is not equivalent to the qualification of a medical doctor. He has a PhD (which does entitle him to use the Dr prefix) however he received this from Clayton College, the same unaccredited diploma mill from which Gillian McKeith received her PhD. They also gave him a masters degree, a DSc and a 'Doctor of Naturopathy'. Goodness knows why, these do not appear to be 'real' degrees. For comparison you might enjoy Wikipedia's List of Animals with Fraudulent Diplomas.
Further reading
- Blogger Josephine Jones' posts tagged with Robert O Young.
- Notification of release from jail on Saturday 25 Jan Robert O. Young's Facebook page (25 January 2014)
- Robert O. Young quacks not guilty to felony charges Doubtful News (25 January 2014)
- Internationally renowned naturopathic Dr Robert O. Young was ARRESTED for "practising medicine without a license" !!! Robert O Young's Facebook page (25 January 2014)
- Controversial alternative health provider pleads not guilty to charges CBS8.com (24 January 2014)
A man accused of going beyond advocating dietary changes and using intravenous treatments on "patients" he housed at his avocado ranch in Valley Center - "pH Miracle" Author Accused of Practicing Medicine Without a License NBC San Diego (24 January 2014) Robert O. Young is accused of practicing medicine without a license on his avocado ranch north of San Diego
- North County holistic care provider Robert Young pleads not guilty to multiple charges 10 News (24 January 2014) Young runs pH Miracle Center in Valley Center
- Medical Board investigation leads to arrest of a Valley Center Man for the unlicensed practice of medicine [PDF] State of California News release (24 January 2014)
- Valley Center man accused as fake doctor UT San Diego (24 January 2014) Robert Young authored “The pH Miracle” and runs the pH Miracle Center, a health treatment ranch.
"Prosecutors asked that anyone with information, including possible victims, contact the District Attorney’s Office at (619) 531-3507."
Sunday, 19 January 2014
A collection of examples of data, and metadata, giving away more information than intended
Fascinated by this sort of thing and I've written a few posts on various examples of 'leaky' information. Over the New Year I thought it might be interesting to collect some together and I've been doing so - here's what I've got so far. Please suggest others in the comments and I'll add them, thanks!
This is a continuously updated post as I come across other examples.
Page last updated: 11 October 2019.1 March 2015
Articles by date (most recent first)
10 October 2019
Stalker 'found Japanese singer through reflection in her eyes' BBC
The singer posted a selfie, presumably using a fairly high res camera. Her stalker zoomed in and found reflected in her eyes the name of the train station she was in. He found where it was via Google, lurked there waiting for her to arrive there, then followed her home and attacked her.
25 February 2015
Celebrities paid to promote new HTC One M8 “Champions League” model both prefer iPhones instead TechDigest
Although official Twitter apps mostly don't tell you which app someone else is using to send tweets from (it used to, then stopped), plenty of other apps do include this information. If you're promoting a particular phone and tweeting from another... watch out.
25 February 2015
Michelle Obama, Reese Witherspoon and other celebs are leaking location information on Instagram Fusion
Referencing the Associated Press' extraction of location data from photographs uploaded to Instagram by Rep Aaron Schock, the author had a look through the Instagram location data for a few celebs and found that they were giving away the location of where the photo was uploaded (not necessarily where the photo was taken). From the maps it appears that the pinpointing is perhaps a bit more accurate than anyone might want, so check your Instagram settings (the teardrop map pin icon). While you're at it, if you're on an iPhone do Settings > Privacy > Location Services and if you have location services on, click on it to see what apps have access and have recently used it.
5 December 2014
Tell-all telephone Zeit Online
German politician Malte Spitz sued a mobile telephone company to get hold of his data. He shared this with Zeit who mapped it and you can follow, thanks to the GPS info and internet use of the phone, where Malte was at different points throughout his working day.
25 July 2014
Cat stalker knows where your kitty lives (and it's your fault) NakedSecurity (hat tip @zeno001)
There's a site called 'I know where your cat lives' which helpfully points out that geolocation data in Flickr and Instagram can narrow down where you live quite a bit. See also the entry about John McAfee in the 4 December 2012 entry below.
11 July 2014
Met Police encourages Twitter pile-on Storify
Using . before @ when sending a tweet means that the tweet is 'surfaced' to all followers who are currently paying attention. This can be used well but in this particular case, a combination of unwise use plus a snarky response led to a complainer being exposed to unpleasantness. That this has happened on several previous occasions has called into question whether this is an appropriate way to handle complaints in public.
9 July 2014
Yo messaging app used to alert Israelis about incoming rocket attacks The Independent
(Discovered this via BBC Magazine)
"Yo users in Israel and abroad can now add the user name REDALERTISRAEL on the app to receive push notifications on their smartphones whenever a rocket is inbound.
The notifications are an example of what fans of the app call “one-bit communication” - messages that have no ‘content’ apart from the fact of their existence. These rely on both the recipient and the sender knowing the context of the message – such as using a dropped call to let someone know you’re outside their house."
As a child I and friends would give our parents 'three rings' on the telephone to let them know we'd safely arrived at another's house, as long as no-one answered the phone doing so was free.
7 May 2014
Glass Reflections in Pictures + OSINT = More Accurate Location IOActive Labs Research
"The aim of this article is to help people to be more careful when taking pictures through windows because they might reveal their location inadvertently." - a series of examples of how to use Google Maps, hotel review sites, hotel websites and other corroborating information from social media to work out where you're staying (and which floor, even which room / suite) from the photo you've just posted to Instagram about your amazing hotel view and the reflections of the room itself in the glass windows ;)
OSINT means Open Source Intelligence (Wikipedia link)
15 April 2014
The (Unintentional) Amazon guide to dealing drugs Atlantic
Amazon's "customers who bought that also bought this" algorithm conspires to link purchases of a set of weighing scales to other items one might use in the genre of drug dealing, and suggest those items to users who look interested in the scales.
25 March 2014
Taking steps to prevent re-identification in genomic research Wellcome Trust blog
"...But when data from multiple sources is available, it may, in certain circumstances, allow a more complete picture of an individual to be pieced together. This could result in some confidential information being linked to an identifiable person."
12 March 2014
Volunteers in metadata study called gun stores, strip clubs and more Ars Technica
Relatively small study (500+ participants) of mobile phone metadata which turned out to be extremely revealing.
2 February 2014
#Awesomestow has yr neighbour @ no38 recently changed their front door+extensive refurbishment? Pls RT & find culprit pic.twitter.com/Zz2c8F6teP
— St James St BigLocal (@stjamesbiglocal) February 2, 2014
Possible solutions to this one would seem to be (a) remove the 3 and the 8 from your door (though it would be easy enough to work out the numbers from the fading pattern below) or (b) don't dump in the first place. No idea if the culprit will be found and it's enitrely possible that the homeowner paid someone to clear up in good faith and the fault lies with someone else. Interesting use of Twitter anyway.
24 January 2014
Tweet exchange with @fitnessbird Twitter
This is an unconfirmed Twitter report that Colindale Metropolitan Police were able to cross-match someone's Twitter name with their name on Facebook from which they got their location, and somehow managed to narrow it down with their Tesco clubcard. I've no idea how this works but presume the Police are able to access stuff that the rest of us can't.
21 January 2014
Suspect shares Police Facebook status about him, is quickly arrested Gawker
Police published a photo of A. James L.. and must have been a bit surprised to see a Jimi L... posting it to his own Facebook timeline.
8 January 2014
Facial recognition app matches strangers to online profiles Crave - CNET
Point your cameraphone at someone, get information about them including their dating profiles (if they have any).
5 January 2014
Slide from @kurtopsahl via Twitter showing the importance of metadata, from this tweet https://twitter.com/kurtopsahl/status/419765847037452288, eg "they know you rang a phone sex service at 2.24am for 18 minutes. But they don't know what you talked about."
4 January 2014
"The audacity of Cameron and hypocrisy of ‘help to buy’ ilegal
Piecing together, through social media, the possibility that someone presented as being helped to buy a flat was already well-placed to buy it. However, further discussion on Twitter suggested that the land registry record would not have been updated in time if the property had been bought in December. See also this strong critique of the original article.
3 January 2014
David Cameron’s internet porn filter is the start of censorship creep The Guardian
Highlighting that information must presumably be collected on who has and who hasn’t signed up to what sort of internet censorship.
2 January 2014
How Netflix reverse engineered Hollywood The Atlantic
Not so much "data giving users away", more about getting a better understanding of how a company handles its information, and about tools that can be used to access info.
January 2014
Data protection Duck Out Information Commissioner’s Office
Dumb examples of “we can’t do that … because data protection”.
30 December 2013
Elastic Pathing: Your Speed is Enough to Track You arXiv
Traffic driving patterns gleaned from in-car speedometers provided by insurers can give information about the trips taken raising privacy concerns.
4 December 2012
McAfee's Rookie Mistake Gives Away His Location TechNewsDaily
From Wikipedia "Vice accidentally gave away [John McAfee] location at a Guatemalan resort in early December 2012, when a photo taken by one of its journalists accompanying McAfee was posted with the Exif geolocation metadata still attached"- hat tip @axiomsofchoice
27 November 2013
While my prof was setting up for his lecture high-blogging high-blogging
Found via this tweet https://twitter.com/MattTaylor/status/394396287648694272 “Lecturer who knows everyone reads his filenames off the projector when he's setting up”.
9 June 2013
Using metadata to find Paul Revere Kieran Healy’s blog
Nice example, written in the style of 1772, on ‘social networke analysis’ and what info might be gleaned from little more than people’s names and the groups of which they’re members.
1 June 2012
The perils of sharing URLs - beware
I entered my postcode into a volunteering site to find out about opportunities near me. I spotted something not of interest to me but possibly of interest to some of the people I know on Twitter and at the point of sharing the URL spotted that it still had my full postcode in it. Each page I clicked on 'inherited' my postcode data, so I had to remove it manually before sharing it.
16 February 2012
How Target figured out a teen girl was pregnant before her father did Forbes
People suddenly stop buying contraception and start buying vitamin pills, that sort of thing.
25 November 2011
How a friend's hacked Facebook account can compromise your privacy and security Facecrooks
If your friend can see your information, then so can the person who's broken into their account. Your privacy is only as strong as the weakest link among your friends, so to speak ;) See also Don't assume that your private Twitter account is all that private (by me, on this blog).
15 November 2011
Andy Baio: Think You Can Hide, Anonymous Blogger? Two Words: Google Analytics Wired
Given that Google Analytics codes are unique with just the suffix changing for second, third and so on websites it can be easy to link one website (with public contact info) with another website (presented as anonymous). My Google Analytics code for this blog is UA-16665982-1 (you could find this easily for any website by viewing its sourcecode - on Firefox hit Ctrl+U, or Command+U if on a Mac) - I've just managed to find another website I manage, by using this UA information...
3 July 2009
Dear Garry. I've decided to end it all: The full stop that trapped a killer Daily Mail
Forensic linguistics used to spot differences between how people who've been murdered typically express themselves and their murderers' impersonation of them in suicide notes, dissembling text messages etc.
Added 6 December 2014
9 May 2009
This is a continuously updated post as I come across other examples.
Page last updated: 11 October 2019.
Articles by date (most recent first)
10 October 2019
Stalker 'found Japanese singer through reflection in her eyes' BBC
The singer posted a selfie, presumably using a fairly high res camera. Her stalker zoomed in and found reflected in her eyes the name of the train station she was in. He found where it was via Google, lurked there waiting for her to arrive there, then followed her home and attacked her.
25 February 2015
Celebrities paid to promote new HTC One M8 “Champions League” model both prefer iPhones instead TechDigest
Although official Twitter apps mostly don't tell you which app someone else is using to send tweets from (it used to, then stopped), plenty of other apps do include this information. If you're promoting a particular phone and tweeting from another... watch out.
25 February 2015
Michelle Obama, Reese Witherspoon and other celebs are leaking location information on Instagram Fusion
Referencing the Associated Press' extraction of location data from photographs uploaded to Instagram by Rep Aaron Schock, the author had a look through the Instagram location data for a few celebs and found that they were giving away the location of where the photo was uploaded (not necessarily where the photo was taken). From the maps it appears that the pinpointing is perhaps a bit more accurate than anyone might want, so check your Instagram settings (the teardrop map pin icon). While you're at it, if you're on an iPhone do Settings > Privacy > Location Services and if you have location services on, click on it to see what apps have access and have recently used it.
5 December 2014
Fabulous stuff from Ben Goldacre about apps, medical data and what we share about ourselves unwittingly (and what others share about us).
Date unknown"At the simplest level, even the act of putting lots of data in one place – and making it searchable – can change its accessibility. As a doctor, I have been to the house of a newspaper hoarder; as a researcher, I have been to the British Library newspaper archive. The difference between the two is not the amount of information, but rather the index."
Tell-all telephone Zeit Online
German politician Malte Spitz sued a mobile telephone company to get hold of his data. He shared this with Zeit who mapped it and you can follow, thanks to the GPS info and internet use of the phone, where Malte was at different points throughout his working day.
25 July 2014
Cat stalker knows where your kitty lives (and it's your fault) NakedSecurity (hat tip @zeno001)
There's a site called 'I know where your cat lives' which helpfully points out that geolocation data in Flickr and Instagram can narrow down where you live quite a bit. See also the entry about John McAfee in the 4 December 2012 entry below.
11 July 2014
Met Police encourages Twitter pile-on Storify
Using . before @ when sending a tweet means that the tweet is 'surfaced' to all followers who are currently paying attention. This can be used well but in this particular case, a combination of unwise use plus a snarky response led to a complainer being exposed to unpleasantness. That this has happened on several previous occasions has called into question whether this is an appropriate way to handle complaints in public.
9 July 2014
Yo messaging app used to alert Israelis about incoming rocket attacks The Independent
(Discovered this via BBC Magazine)
"Yo users in Israel and abroad can now add the user name REDALERTISRAEL on the app to receive push notifications on their smartphones whenever a rocket is inbound.
The notifications are an example of what fans of the app call “one-bit communication” - messages that have no ‘content’ apart from the fact of their existence. These rely on both the recipient and the sender knowing the context of the message – such as using a dropped call to let someone know you’re outside their house."
As a child I and friends would give our parents 'three rings' on the telephone to let them know we'd safely arrived at another's house, as long as no-one answered the phone doing so was free.
7 May 2014
Glass Reflections in Pictures + OSINT = More Accurate Location IOActive Labs Research
"The aim of this article is to help people to be more careful when taking pictures through windows because they might reveal their location inadvertently." - a series of examples of how to use Google Maps, hotel review sites, hotel websites and other corroborating information from social media to work out where you're staying (and which floor, even which room / suite) from the photo you've just posted to Instagram about your amazing hotel view and the reflections of the room itself in the glass windows ;)
OSINT means Open Source Intelligence (Wikipedia link)
15 April 2014
The (Unintentional) Amazon guide to dealing drugs Atlantic
Amazon's "customers who bought that also bought this" algorithm conspires to link purchases of a set of weighing scales to other items one might use in the genre of drug dealing, and suggest those items to users who look interested in the scales.
25 March 2014
Taking steps to prevent re-identification in genomic research Wellcome Trust blog
"...But when data from multiple sources is available, it may, in certain circumstances, allow a more complete picture of an individual to be pieced together. This could result in some confidential information being linked to an identifiable person."
12 March 2014
Volunteers in metadata study called gun stores, strip clubs and more Ars Technica
Relatively small study (500+ participants) of mobile phone metadata which turned out to be extremely revealing.
"...it lays bare the fallacy of the Supreme Court’s mind-numbingly broad wording of the third-party doctrine in an age of big data: just because I reveal data for one purpose—to make a phone call—does not mean that I have no legitimate interest in that information, especially when combined with other data points about me.”"Spotted via Ben Goldacre's tweet.
2 February 2014
#Awesomestow has yr neighbour @ no38 recently changed their front door+extensive refurbishment? Pls RT & find culprit pic.twitter.com/Zz2c8F6teP
— St James St BigLocal (@stjamesbiglocal) February 2, 2014
Possible solutions to this one would seem to be (a) remove the 3 and the 8 from your door (though it would be easy enough to work out the numbers from the fading pattern below) or (b) don't dump in the first place. No idea if the culprit will be found and it's enitrely possible that the homeowner paid someone to clear up in good faith and the fault lies with someone else. Interesting use of Twitter anyway.
24 January 2014
Tweet exchange with @fitnessbird Twitter
This is an unconfirmed Twitter report that Colindale Metropolitan Police were able to cross-match someone's Twitter name with their name on Facebook from which they got their location, and somehow managed to narrow it down with their Tesco clubcard. I've no idea how this works but presume the Police are able to access stuff that the rest of us can't.
21 January 2014
Suspect shares Police Facebook status about him, is quickly arrested Gawker
Police published a photo of A. James L.. and must have been a bit surprised to see a Jimi L... posting it to his own Facebook timeline.
8 January 2014
Facial recognition app matches strangers to online profiles Crave - CNET
Point your cameraphone at someone, get information about them including their dating profiles (if they have any).
5 January 2014
Slide from @kurtopsahl via Twitter showing the importance of metadata, from this tweet https://twitter.com/kurtopsahl/status/419765847037452288, eg "they know you rang a phone sex service at 2.24am for 18 minutes. But they don't know what you talked about."
4 January 2014
"The audacity of Cameron and hypocrisy of ‘help to buy’ ilegal
Piecing together, through social media, the possibility that someone presented as being helped to buy a flat was already well-placed to buy it. However, further discussion on Twitter suggested that the land registry record would not have been updated in time if the property had been bought in December. See also this strong critique of the original article.
3 January 2014
David Cameron’s internet porn filter is the start of censorship creep The Guardian
Highlighting that information must presumably be collected on who has and who hasn’t signed up to what sort of internet censorship.
2 January 2014
How Netflix reverse engineered Hollywood The Atlantic
Not so much "data giving users away", more about getting a better understanding of how a company handles its information, and about tools that can be used to access info.
January 2014
Data protection Duck Out Information Commissioner’s Office
Dumb examples of “we can’t do that … because data protection”.
30 December 2013
Elastic Pathing: Your Speed is Enough to Track You arXiv
Traffic driving patterns gleaned from in-car speedometers provided by insurers can give information about the trips taken raising privacy concerns.
4 December 2012
McAfee's Rookie Mistake Gives Away His Location TechNewsDaily
From Wikipedia "Vice accidentally gave away [John McAfee] location at a Guatemalan resort in early December 2012, when a photo taken by one of its journalists accompanying McAfee was posted with the Exif geolocation metadata still attached"- hat tip @axiomsofchoice
27 November 2013
While my prof was setting up for his lecture high-blogging high-blogging
Found via this tweet https://twitter.com/MattTaylor/status/394396287648694272 “Lecturer who knows everyone reads his filenames off the projector when he's setting up”.
9 June 2013
Using metadata to find Paul Revere Kieran Healy’s blog
Nice example, written in the style of 1772, on ‘social networke analysis’ and what info might be gleaned from little more than people’s names and the groups of which they’re members.
1 June 2012
The perils of sharing URLs - beware
I entered my postcode into a volunteering site to find out about opportunities near me. I spotted something not of interest to me but possibly of interest to some of the people I know on Twitter and at the point of sharing the URL spotted that it still had my full postcode in it. Each page I clicked on 'inherited' my postcode data, so I had to remove it manually before sharing it.
16 February 2012
How Target figured out a teen girl was pregnant before her father did Forbes
People suddenly stop buying contraception and start buying vitamin pills, that sort of thing.
25 November 2011
How a friend's hacked Facebook account can compromise your privacy and security Facecrooks
If your friend can see your information, then so can the person who's broken into their account. Your privacy is only as strong as the weakest link among your friends, so to speak ;) See also Don't assume that your private Twitter account is all that private (by me, on this blog).
15 November 2011
Andy Baio: Think You Can Hide, Anonymous Blogger? Two Words: Google Analytics Wired
Given that Google Analytics codes are unique with just the suffix changing for second, third and so on websites it can be easy to link one website (with public contact info) with another website (presented as anonymous). My Google Analytics code for this blog is UA-16665982-1 (you could find this easily for any website by viewing its sourcecode - on Firefox hit Ctrl+U, or Command+U if on a Mac) - I've just managed to find another website I manage, by using this UA information...
3 July 2009
Dear Garry. I've decided to end it all: The full stop that trapped a killer Daily Mail
Forensic linguistics used to spot differences between how people who've been murdered typically express themselves and their murderers' impersonation of them in suicide notes, dissembling text messages etc.
Added 6 December 2014
9 May 2009
An entire legal case can hang on a paper clip The Guardian
""The paper clip serves impartially in all areas of the law," he (Jay Stein) writes, "but the record shows that it appears especially often in some. In evidence cases, the 'clipping' function has figured prominently. In one, marking with paper clips and underlining certain passages was evidence that the plaintiff had read a letter in question. In another, a page of an exhibit bore a paper clip imprint not found on the first page."
Sometimes, the paper clip was of even greater import. In one lawsuit, in 1967, "determination of the validity and intent of a will depended on attachment of a paper clip to make a letter a part of the will by incorporation"."
Saturday, 18 January 2014
Example email I sent requesting a CC-licensed image to be appropriately credited or removed
Almost all of the images I've posted to my Flickr account are licensed under the Creative Commons license that lets the image be used by anyone for any purpose (including commercially), as long as the use doesn't imply that I've endorsed a product or anything. Beyond that I don't get to determine how the image is used.
Creative Commons
The deal is that anyone using my photo needs to credit me and link back to the page on Flickr from which the image comes (ie Flickr gets a credit too, fine by me). If the image will be used in a printed publication then (a) I probably won't know about it (but people sometimes email which is nice) and (b) I'd probably be less bothered about the link back, but 'Flickr user Jodiepedia' would be a bonus. If someone makes a particular request about not crediting for some reason then it's within my 'power' to grant that (eg where it just wouldn't look right etc). People can remix my images but they have to apply the same license that I've given them (or seek extra permission from me).
My images and photos aren't great quality (I'm mostly using an old iPhone camera whose lens is scratched and my pics are getting blurrier) and I'm not a very good photographer. The reason I make them available under a CC license though is not just because they're a bit rubbish but because I've benefited hugely from the internet so this is a teeny tiny contribution back to it, I suppose.
Finding images used but uncredited
Today I found that a website has used one of my images without proper accreditation. This annoys me as it's just lazy - there's even a template code provided by Flickr that can be inserted that does all the work for you, so really no excuse. The website admin didn't need to contact me for permission or check anything, just copy and paste so... grrr.
With the newer DMCA take-down notices it's a lot easier to be very aggressive in getting images removed from a website. In fact the webhosting company typically takes down the entire site until the image is removed - it's a little bit too aggressive for me to be honest, although I imagine it gets the job done very effectively.
Initial action taken
I've gone for the amiable "I say, would you mind awfully..." approach in the first instance - I'm sure it's an error rather than someone deliberately trying to avoid crediting me / Flickr (I mean why would they, it's not like anyone can reasonably pretend the photo is theirs since it's datestamped on my Flickr page).
Feel free to pinch the text below (and no, you don't have to credit me!) if you think it might be useful in a similar situation, and good luck with getting your pics credited or removed (or paid for if you have a payment arrangement in place).
After the draft email is some background information about the image involved, and why I am keen for it to be attributed correctly.
What happened next?
Nothing for a week. I then looked up the website's registration details (DNS lookup) and found another email address. By writing to that address I was clearly 'escalating' matters, I asked them if they'd be able to help me resolve the matter as I'd not heard back after my initial request. Delightfully they were, and the image is now properly attributed and we're all best pals.
Email text
Hello
Thanks to a reverse image search I've noticed that you have used one of my images on your website, here: [URL of website]. I'm delighted that you've done so.
As my images are licensed under Creative Commons that is perfectly fine, however the terms of the license mean that you do need to credit me and Flickr (where the photo is hosted) and you also need to link back to the original image site. You do not need to pay me or Flickr to use the photo though, it's free.
My photo (original here: URL of image) appears on your website without credit.
Please credit this photo correctly (see below) or remove it.
How to credit the image
The simplest thing to do is to add a piece of text like "Photo credit: Flickr user YourName" and hyperlink to the web address given above. Alternatively, you can use the embed code found on every CC-licensed photo and add that into the text of your post (using the html edit view) and the picture will automatically appear, with the correct attribution and link back. Please let me know when you have done this.
Many thanks,
Jo
Background to the image
The image in question (above) is one that I drew myself in PowerPoint and uploaded to amuse myself. It's meant to look a bit like berries, specifically Acai berries, that are often sold in pill form to people who are trying to lose weight. They don't work (of course) and who knows what weight loss pills bought from the internet might contain, but I noticed that pill sellers often used free images. This suggested an opportunity to have a little fun.
I've created a few images that state on them things like 'diet pills do not work' and uploaded them under a CC license in the hope of finding them in use on websites (and appropriately credited of course). On many of them I also included comments about why these products don't work, in the hope that anyone seeing them might be dissuaded from wasting money on them. I'd certainly not pretend that this was a particularly successful strategy (and I've really no way of knowing if anyone decided not to buy because of the image) - but it amused me, and to me that's pretty much the most important thing ever ;)
More on sneakery in the service of skepticism.
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