Entries tagged with security

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MIT students should absolutely not use this article to create the perfect fake id

Kes: I do feel a weird sort of pride that it's a bouncer from Boston who has raised the stakes a little bit higher, but every time the writer states that students don't have access to some particular tech or material, I just chortle.

How to spot a good fake ID
https://trevorklee.com/how-to-spot-a-good-fake-id/

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Surveillance and facial recognition is everywhere, including the stores you shop in

You may have heard about webcams on public streets, but surveillance and facial recognition is also now used by many of the stores you shop in, and some of these stores also use wi-fi to track where you go in the store and what you buy.

From Macy’s to Ace Hardware, facial recognition is already everywhere
https://www.vox.com/2021/7/15/22577876/macys-ace-hardware-fight-for-the-future-facial-recognition-artificial-intelligence-stores

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How Advertisers Serve Ads While You Sleep: Dream Implantation

Kes: A couple of days ago, I made what I thought was a joke about this when I posted how Facebook and Oculis were going to be delivering advertising to users's XR headset, but it turns out that yes, advertisers are actually planning on delivering ads to people in their sleep.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a36719140/sleep-ads-dream-implantation/

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I just deleted my Facebook account

I just deleted my Facebook account. Facebook has never been as accessible as I thought it should be, and it's always been a pain in the ass to use. In addition, this recent deal to sell advertising to Oculis so it appears on people XR headsets is really creepy: seriously, sighted people, advertisers are not going to be happy until they can feed advertising to you in your sleep.

I signed up for many of these social media accounts when I was in the media studies program at MIT, when social media seemed all shiny and new and full of promise, but the accessibility hasn't improved all that much since then, while the privacy and security risks have increased exponentially, especially over the past year. It's past time to sign off.

My next step is to delete my Twitter account.

So don't panic: I'm not dead, I'm just not on Facebook or Twitter anymore.

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If you really want security on your personal computer...

Yesterday our household upgraded to FiOS and one of our housemates (the one who develops software for phone companies and thus has the highest awareness of security) declared we're getting new passwords for the house network.

I turned to Alexx and said that I used to be really hyper-aware of computer security and hiding my computer passwords until one day I realized that the chances of someone attempting to hack my computer by reading the passwords I had transcribed *in braille* was really slim, and then I realized that sighted people couldn't figure out my screen reader, and that was the best security system, and from a distant room, the voice of the software developer proclaimed, "The *highest* level of security."