Notices by Marcus Adams (gerowen@mastodon.social)

Headline: #Amazon annihilates #Alexa #privacy settings, turns on continuous, nonconsensual audio uploading

Snippet: starting March 28, each Amazon Echo device will cease processing audio on-device and instead upload all the audio it captures to Amazon's cloud for processing, even if you have previously opted out of cloud-based processing:

Source: https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/15/altering-the-deal/#telescreen

@Gargron This is awesome. I'll often see something but want to give my own take on it so I'll have to manually copy and paste the link into a new post, which seems duplicative. Really looking forward to this, 🙂

@repeattofade Surprised they don't have it hard wired to the battery with a sense wire connected to accessory power. That way it could sense when the bus is off and go to sleep under normal conditions, with the option of staying powered on long enough to finish updates in a situation like this.

@arstechnica This seems like something that would be handy for hauling things around locally. That driving range though, oof. I've got stores I frequent that are 50 miles away; that's 100 miles round trip. Add a thousand pounds of cargo and 5 years of wear on those batteries and could I even use it as a truck?

Headline: Top US Election Security Watchdog Forced to Stop #Election Security Work

Subtitle: The US #Cybersecurity and Infrastructure #Security Agency has frozen efforts to aid states in securing #elections, according to an internal memo viewed by WIRED.

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/cisa-election-security-freeze-memo/

#CISA

I haven't adopted #PassKeys for my accounts because, as far as I can tell, there aren't really any options that let me own my private key and store it myself; they all depend on trusting somebody like Google, Meta or Apple to handle it for you, which completely defeats the purpose in my opinion. Like #PGP / #GPG, I want to own the private key so I can manage it myself. Trusting your PassKey to a third party app that's only on your phone introduces a single point of failure.

#Security #Privacy

Headline: RedNote Scrambles to Hire English-Speaking Content Moderators

Subtitle: Job listings posted in China this week indicate that #Xiaohongshu, also known as #RedNote, is struggling to handle an influx of new users joining the platform from #TikTok.

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/xiaohongshu-english-moderators-red-note/

If you have to have a #Meta account, in some capacity, like many of us do, then there's some good information here on how to minimize the extent to which they can invade your #privacy.

Headline: Mad at Meta? Don't Let Them Collect and Monetize Your Personal Data

Link: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/mad-meta-dont-let-them-collect-and-monetize-your-personal-data

Now that #Signal is in the #GuardianProject #FDroid repo, I did a clean reinstall to switch to that version and noticed this while setting it up fresh for the first time in literal years. Some of the custom icon options are obviously aimed at obscuring the fact that you have Signal installed. Handy for those with abusive spouses, dissidents or travelers whose phones might get inspected, etc.

#Privacy

Random thought, but since #DivestOS has shut down, what happens to #Hypatia antivirus? Did it have other contributors outside of that project? Will they keep developing it? All the "donate" links on its GitHub go to the Divest page, but I'm not sure how independent Hypatia is or isn't. I use #CalyxOS and Hypatia is included or endorsed by them, so I'm sort of curious.

#Security

Headline: Cellebrite Unlocked This Journalist’s Phone. Cops Then Infected it With Malware

Subtitle: A new report from Amnesty International reveals multiple cases where Serbian authorities used #Cellebrite devices to access targets' mobile phones before loading them with spyware.

Source: https://www.404media.co/email/fd1f9d06-6eaa-4c51-95ff-4cd660b79689/?ref=daily-stories-newsletter

#Security #CyberSecurity #Privacy

@Gargron I recently had to ask a friend of mine to just stop copying and pasting rebuttals from ChatGPT when we would have political debates. I just had to tell him that I wanted to talk to "him", not a glorified chatbot and forwarded him to a little opinion page on my personal website where I explain that AI is just a big scam that steals content from other people without attribution.

@Gargron I just got mine and I actually think it's pretty darn cool. I shared a screenshot of it on my timeline. Thanks for all the hard work you do in continually improving the platform, 🙂

So apparently Andrew Tate tried to join Bluesky and didn't last a day before getting himself banned, so maybe there's hope for the little blue butterfly after all, 😛

@GossiTheDog You have the Amazon app installed? Gross, lol. I just use their mobile web page.

@Gargron I'm on mastodon.social so I've seen a few of the new features as they were tested here. The notification grouping is really nice because it keeps me from being swamped by individual notifications. I also noticed the little popup for journalists who are on the fediverse a while back and it felt really nice to see Mastodon embracing credible journalists in this way.

Keep up the solid work. Mastodon is officially my only social media platform and I'm happy to watch it grow, 🙂

@Gargron I would open it and just tell people there may be a delay for us here in the US. No reason the others should have to wait for something that doesn't affect them and isn't their fault.

The #InternetArchive is an invaluable resource for all kinds of reasons and is available free of charge. It has even been used to catch companies silently changing their terms of service.

Headline: Internet Archive Breach Exposes 31 Million Users

Subtitle: The hack exposed the data of 31 million users as the embattled Wayback Machine maker scrambles to stay online and contain the fallout of digital—and legal—attacks.

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/internet-archive-hacked/

#Security #Cybersecurity

This also lines up with our observation that Conversations is generally more reliable for calls in weak service areas or while driving. It seems generally more reliable and for a while was the only one that wouldn't say "ringing" unless it had actually made contact with the other person's device. If it just sat on "calling" but never switched to "ringing", you knew the call didn't go thru, for one reason or another. Signal did eventually add this, but it still feels generally less reliable.

I've noticed that, for me and my wife at least, #Signal isn't always reliable for time sensitive messages. Even after exempting it from the Android power saving and everything it's almost like it goes to sleep sometimes and notifications don't pop until we open it up. The #XMPP app Conversations.im however is very reliable. Running a packet capture on my phone shows that when switching networks #Conversations immediately reconnects, but Signal doesn't, sometimes for several minutes.