Until then, here's the story. Thanks much to
@thezedwards
and
@seanodiggity
for checking into this and walking me through all of the technical aspects. And thanks very much to Alejandro who found it all in the first place.
A story about an accidental WhatsApp account hijacking and how to prevent it (and other phone number-based account security issues) from happening to you.
in case you were wondering why
@RonWyden
and
@SteveDaines
were fighting so hard for that Patriot Act provision forbidding warrantless collection of browsing history and searches:
"In short, those who stormed the Capitol didn’t leave social media breadcrumbs for law enforcement to follow to their front doors — they left entire loaves of bread."
I got laid off. Proud of the work I did, don't have it in me right now to put a bunch of links to my favorite pieces here. Maybe later. idk.
If you're looking for a tech reporter hit me up: sara
@saramorrison
.email
(also open to non-journalism work bc this industry is brutal)
A couple weeks ago, someone named Alejandro Ruiz sent me an email. He'd heard me on
@onthemedia
and thought I might be able to help with an issue he discovered on Walgreens' covid testing platform.
I wrote about how people with narcolepsy can't get the meds that keep them awake (and working, and driving, and taking care of their families ... ). The Adderall shortage isn't just Adderall and it isn't just about ADHD.
such a power move by Bari to get lots of publicity and plugs for her new thing and then get out of having to do any more work reading boring internal company documents because she wouldn't respond to her boss's tweets at her.
Zuck said that there are 140 billion Reels plays on Facebook and Instagram each day, a 50% increase from six months ago.
FB/Insta are heavily promoting Reels on ppl's feeds, not clear how much is organic growth v. this content being pushed on ppl.
🟡 SCOOP: X, Elon Musk’s social media platform formerly known as Twitter, appears to be attempting to limit its users’ access to The New York Times,
@maxwelltani
reports.
Online privacy and Big Tech antitrust laws are so last session. Protecting children from the internet is the hot (not so) new thing in this new Congress:
We went to Walgreens with this information and gave them time to fix it before publishing. I assumed they would. They didn't. I'm hoping they will now.
T-Mobile/Sprint customers have to opt OUT of having their web browsing and app usage data collected by their mobile phone for targeted ads starting today.
Here's how to do it (and why you should):
Incredible that both the FTC and the FCC still lack a fifth commissioner and remain deadlocked on issues that the Biden administration claimed were a priority.
Sen. Ted Cruz to Sen. Richard Blumenthal after he held up his iPhone and entered in the pass code on live TV: “Senator Blumenthal, I would note you put out on CSPAN the code on your iPhone, so you might want to change that now.“
One such student, Diego, has been shunned in the hallways and classrooms of his high school ever since word got out that he’d shown off a nude photo of his girlfriend while drunk at a party
AWS, Amazon's cloud computing service, is suffering a major outage, leaving users unable to access huge portions of the internet — including Netflix, Venmo, Fidelity and even some of NPR's own apps.
I confirmed his findings with several other people. Yes, Walgreens didn't hide the patient testing link behind any kind of log-in. If you have the link, you can see it. Yes, behind that page was a ton of their data, including home address, email, phone, DOB.
🎺let it be known that today is my first day
@recode
/
@voxdotcom
! I'm reporting on all things digital privacy 🔎📲.
Send tips/say hello: sara.morrison
@recode
.net
He sent me one of the most thorough and well-explained emails I've ever received walking me through the issues he found there, and how Walgreens had exposed a ton of covid testing patient information on the open internet and to ad trackers.
In this post I also share the thrilling story of how I ended up in a vacant section of the New York Islanders game last night that had been reserved for Juneteenth community outreach
Yes, the page was full of ad trackers and many of them were getting the patient ID number, which could then be used to get the page URL with all of that information on it.
I wrote about what it's like to get the first Gmail address for a common name and the access to other people's lives it grants you, because email itself is used for a lot of sensitive things it probably shouldn't be!
if you still have a job in journalism, this is your reminder to periodically download your contacts and emails so you'll still have them when you're inevitably laid off. Good places will give you time to take them with you. A lot of places are not good.
The fact people only have minutes sometimes to download contacts and such from their email before being booted off of the system is just wild given that it’s one of the most crucial parts of their job and they deserve to take those contacts with them.
@Jason
@davecatanese
@DavidSacks
which stats? Because crime stats always say that people are far more likely to be killed by someone they know than by a stranger. Or a "psychotic homeless person," as I believe Sacks phrased it.
every time you tweet about how it's wrong to push hydroxychloroquine because we don't know for sure it'll help and it could have side effects but don't mention the shortage this is creating for people who actually need it, you are effectively erasing us.
@Bobby4Brooklyn
@amazon
@FedEx
@UPS
@jessicaramos
Can’t wait to tell my 90 year old neighbor who is afraid to leave her house and lives on a very fixed income that she’ll be paying $3 more per delivery of everything that isn’t food or medicine.
this is how articles about Twitter should be framed, I think. Linda Yaccarino took this job for the sole purpose of elevating her own profile, so do that. Put her name and face on what her company is actually doing. Stop letting her pretend it's a safe platform for brands.
A coffee shop recently asked me to leave an 80% tip for a chocolate croissant, so here's a story about all the things we're asked to tip for now, which is everything:
@minervas_muse
@rmc031
Except the college application and process starts before you’re 18. I was 17 when I entered college, 12 when I took the SAT practice test, and 16 when I went to my school’s college fair and started getting unsolicited brochures in the mail from colleges.
Introducing Open Sourced, a year-long project from
@recode
on the hidden consequences of tech.
We’ll focus on the most controversial and least understood: AI, algorithms, personal data, and privacy — and we’ll need your help.
new job alert! Thrilled to announce that I will be a correspondent for
@Capitol_Forum
starting February 12. Feeling very lucky to be able to continue to work in journalism these days and looking forward to getting even more into the antitrust weeds.
@OHGovTeach
@shorewalker1
@B5254T3
And many Europeans have witless beliefs about the squalor and misery of ordinary American lives. Like many American expats, I enjoyed getting asked by a foreign doc whether I didn't feel lucky to be somewhere I could get treatment.
"Oh, we treat strep in the US too"
Why can’t members of the military unionize? You know why. It’s obvious. Yet teachers can form unions, and they have similar importance to homeland security.
A year ago today I was unemployed and unconscious while a tumor the size of a grapefruit was removed from my body. This year all grapefruits and objects of equivalent size are external and I love my job and the work I get to do. 😊
We get a lot of questions at Open Sourced about how Facebook knows what you buy offline. Here are a few possible reasons (none are that it listens to your phone conversations):
I have an issue with "cultural" worker protections that seem to only think men who jack off at work deserve to be protected while the employees who had to see said jacking off should just have to ~deal~ with it I guess.
Aside from this being a stupid decision (even though I don’t often align with Toobin politically, he’s obviously very good at what he does), worker protections are such shit in this country, and that’s not just legally but culturally too.
Has Signal taken advantage of the Bad Art Friend discourse yet? (Signal: for when you need your friend group chats to stay PRIVATE. Signal: Because you can set your messages to vanish in 24 hours, and no subpoena will ever get them back. Signal: because we’re all a little petty.)
Published this yesterday about how platforms are more about pushing content on us than letting us find it for ourselves.
Threads came out 12 hours later. It doesn't let you choose who appears in your feed.
remember when there was a pandemic everyone needed the internet to basically survive and all the FCC could do was beg companies to lower their broadband prices/not shut off services for non-payment? I remember.
Net Neutrality panic was the most insane panic. What does it do to the credibility of the media when people are told over and over that a policy poses a grave danger and in fact it turns out to have been basically unimportant?
When you have a mission like Twitter -- you need to make big moves to keep strengthening the platform. This work is meaningful and on-going. Here’s more insight on our work to ensure the authenticity of our user base. 👇
me, a New Yorker: my god how could this happen to us
me, an antitrust reporter: once again we see the inevitable result of unchecked corporate consolidation on small businesses and consumers
Google banned an SDK that was caught (indirectly) selling location data to the government. Researchers keep finding it in Google Play Store apps anyway.
Are you working remotely now because of
#coronavirus
?
Is your employer making you use activity tracking software?
What do you think about it? I want to hear from you for a story!
Email opensourced
@vox
.com or DM me here (from your personal device).
“I was thirsty for news that wasn’t being censored. I listened to Tim Pool, Disaffected Liberal, Dave Reuben… Gateway, the Federalist, Zero Hedge, and Gray Zone. I was reading them for balance. They were willing to cover things that were more taboo.”
I'm still looking for people who are now working from home and whose employers have installed tracking software on their computers to see what they're doing at all times.
Want to talk to me for a story? Email opensourced
@vox
.com or DM me here (from your personal device).
update on the Walgreens covid test data leak story! The confirmation pages are now behind an authentication screen, even though Walgreens initially said that wasn't necessary.