Newsletter Archives

• Forces shaping the future: The courts at work

  Posted on September 23, 2024 at 02:43 CDT by Max Stul Oppenheimer • Comment in the Forums

  LEGAL BRIEF

  

  By Max Stul Oppenheimer, Esq.

  Three social factors shape the path of future development of technology: government rules, litigation, and consumer actions.

  In last month’s Legal Brief, we reviewed how government rules and enforcement actions are being used to attempt to influence how technology will develop.

  This time, we’ll look at how litigation — both private and governmental — is being used in attempts to influence the path of technological development.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.39.0, 2024-09-23).

  Legal Brief AI, ByteDance, Consumers, Copyright, Facebook, Fair Use, GARM, Google, Legal, Litigation, Meta, Newsletters, NFT, TikTok

• Will Threads be the real Twitter killer?

  Posted on July 24, 2023 at 02:44 CDT by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  The parent company of Facebook and Instagram — Meta Platforms — launched this month Threads, a Twitter-like social network. It looks like the first serious contender to knock Twitter off its perch.

  Unlike other Twitter competitors — Mastodon, Bluesky, Truth Social, and many more — Threads has already attracted a gigantic audience. The Threads app for iOS and Android surpassed 100 million users in just its first five days. That makes it the fastest-growing app ever, besting ChatGPT, which required two months to hit the same mark.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.30.0, 2023-07-24).

  Public Defender Facebook, Instagram, Newsletters, Social networks, Threads, Twitter

• Will the last tech worker who is fired please turn off the server

  Posted on December 19, 2022 at 02:44 CST by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  A wave of layoffs by the world’s largest technology companies is causing widespread fears. People are afraid that the growth spurt in online commerce that occurred during the coronavirus pandemic may be over — and opportunities for tech employment may never be the same again.

  Firings and separations are certainly ripping through the Internet at a rapid pace. But the impact of all this downsizing may not be exactly what you might expect.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.51.0, 2022-12-19).

  Public Defender Amazon, Facebook, Financial, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Newsletters, Tesla, Twitter

• The new privacy policy’s here! The new privacy policy’s here!

  Posted on August 8, 2022 at 02:45 CDT by Max Stul Oppenheimer • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 19.32 • 2022-08-08

  LEGAL BRIEF

  

  By Max Stul Oppenheimer, Esq.

  On July 26, Meta (aka Facebook) changed its privacy policy.

  So this is a good time to ask two questions: what’s in the new policy, and what should you do about it?

  You can find the new privacy policy here. Settle in — it’s enormous.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.32.0, 2022-08-08).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  Legal Brief Facebook, Legal Brief, Meta, Newsletters, Privacy Policy

• Are your iPhone apps crashing this morning?

  Posted on July 10, 2020 at 08:19 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Looks like there’s a(nother) bug in the Facebook logon sequence.

  Spotify, Pinterest, Tinder and others may freeze – even if you don’t have the Facebook app installed. Why? Because those apps, and many others, use the Facebook logon code.

  There’s a solution – install a VPN, specifically Lockdown Apps.

  Details from Tom Warren at The Verge.

  The Facebook status report is here.

  Office Facebook, iOS

• Changing my mind about Facebook

  Posted on September 23, 2019 at 01:00 CDT by Tracey Capen • Comment in the Forums

  SECURITY

  Amy Babinchak

  Undoubtedly, you’ve seen the invitation to sign in to a website with your Facebook account. And you ask yourself: “How can that be safe?”

  Using one account sign-in for everything goes against a basic tenet of password security. And you’re trusting Facebook to keep your credentials secure — and not share them. (Sharing is core to Facebook.) And yet you watch as all your friends get hacked and cloned while using conventional sign-ins.

  Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 16.34.0 (2019-09-23).

  On Security AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Facebook, Passwords, Sign-in security

• Facebook admits, one hour before the Mueller report press conference, that oh golly “millions” of Instagram users had plain-text passwords exposed

  Posted on April 18, 2019 at 14:38 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Talk about Friday night news dumps…

  Iain Thomson, writing for The Reg, wasn’t distracted by today’s news. Previously, Facebook said that “tens of thousands of Instagram users” had their plain text passwords stored on company servers.

  Now the tech goliath has decided to revise that figure, and, well, let’s just say it massively underestimated that number.

  “Since this post was published, we discovered additional logs of Instagram passwords being stored in a readable format,” the amendmentreads today.

  “We now estimate that this issue impacted millions of Instagram users.”

  Other Facebook, Instagram

• Catalin Cimpanu: Over 540 million Facebook records found on exposed Amazon Web Service servers

  Posted on April 3, 2019 at 13:38 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Catalin Cimpanu has (another) amazing scoop, on ZDNet:

  The first server contained most of the data, and belonged to Cultura Colectiva, a Mexico-based online media platform operating across Spanish-speaking Latin America countries.

  At a size of 146GB, this AWS server stored over 540 million records detailing user account names, Facebook IDs, comments, likes, reactions, and other data used for analyzing social media feeds and user interactions.

  The second AWS server stored data recorded by the “At the Pool” Facebook game. This included details such as the Facebook user ID, a list of Facebook friends, likes, photos, groups, checkins, and user preferences like movies, music, books, interests, and other, along with 22,000 passwords.

  Facebook sells data to third parties, who don’t take care of it.

  Other Facebook
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