Regardless of whether the WhatsApp messages are to blame, “the biggest takeaway from this,” writes Sheera Frenkel of the New York Times, “is that anyone, anywhere, can be hacked if the person carrying out the attack has enough time, money and patience.”
Author: Don Yarman
As a librarian, I first became aware of COPPA—the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act—when installing ebook kiosks in middle school libraries. The kiosks would send…
A few weeks ago, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted that his company would fund an outside research team, called Bluesky, to develop an “open and decentralized standard for social media.” What does that mean, exactly? The best analogy might be email: in Gmail, for example, you aren’t limited to only sending email to other Gmail users; but because of the “Simple Mail Transport Protocol,” email works regardless of your client, and companies like Superhuman can build enhancements on top of email. So what if you didn’t need a Twitter account to tweet?
OPLIN 4Cast #676: Face it: they’re watching
Posted in 4cast, and facial recognition
I was stunned last week when it was announced that airport face recognition scans would soon include US citizens. The Department of Homeland Security quickly…
This week, his Contract for the Web was unveiled. The contract documents nine core principles for a better internet future, including affordable internet access, privacy enforcement, and freedom from censorship.
As a librarian, I tend to see most problems as “information problems,” including—or maybe especially—health care. I appreciate how “Dr. Google” (when it’s not stoking…
OPLIN 4Cast #670: Kids spending more times staring at screens, but maybe that’s a good thing
Posted in 4cast
Common Sense Media is a nonprofit that researches and reviews, for parents and educators, the impact of media and technology on children. (I’ve used the…
Last week, the bill creating Ohio’s Cyber Reserve passed the legislature and headed to Governor DeWine for his signature. The Cyber Reserve will consist of…
OPLIN 4Cast #666: Social media tries (again) to clean up its act
Posted in 4cast, and Social Networks
The rise of Instagram Influencers and other social media stars does not really surprise me. I grew up aware of people who were “famous for…
A few years ago, a library was having trouble implementing Umbrella OpenDNS at a branch. The trouble, we discovered, was that the branch’s ISP was,…