Privacy: Your Family Has Likely Sold You Out to DNA and Location Harvesters

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Wed Sep 9 01:19:21 PDT 2020


https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/08/07/1955218/a-private-equity-firm-bought-ancestry-and-its-trove-of-dna-for-47b

Save your privacy, Know that you are Human and Future,
all other silly things Past are moot.


 The genealogy company Ancestry has been acquired by investment firm
Blackstone for $4.7 billion, changing ownership of the company and its
trove of user-submitted DNA from a set of investment firms to another
private equity firm. From a report: The announcement was made in a
press release published earlier this week by Blackstone, which shared
it had "reached a definitive agreement to acquire Ancestry from Silver
Lake, GIC, Spectrum Equity, Permira, and other equity holders for a
total enterprise value of $4.7 billion." Ancestry is known for its
genealogy and home DNA testing services. According to its website, the
company has 3 million paying subscribers, 27 billion records, and 100
million family trees. The website also says that over 18 million
people have been DNA tested through the company.
"To be crystal clear, Blackstone will not have access to user data and
we are deeply committed to ensuring strong consumer privacy
protections at the company," a spokesperson for Blackstone told
Motherboard in an email. "We will not be sharing user DNA and family
tree records with our portfolio companies." A spokesperson from
Ancestry also said the company's relationship with its users would
remain the same.



https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/09/02/1750221/private-intel-firm-buys-location-data-to-track-people-to-their-doorstep

 A threat intelligence firm called HYAS, a private company that tries
to prevent or investigates hacks against its clients, is buying
location data harvested from ordinary apps installed on peoples'
phones around the world, and using it to unmask hackers. The company
is a business, not a law enforcement agency, and claims to be able to
track people to their "doorstep." From a report: The news highlights
the complex supply chain and sale of location data, traveling from
apps whose users are in some cases unaware that the software is
selling their location, through to data brokers, and finally to end
clients who use the data itself. The news also shows that while some
location firms repeatedly reassure the public that their data is
focused on the high level, aggregated, pseudonymous tracking of groups
of people, some companies do buy and use location data from a largely
unregulated market explicitly for the purpose of identifying specific
individuals. HYAS' location data comes from X-Mode, a company that
started with an app named "Drunk Mode," designed to prevent college
students from making drunk phone calls and has since pivoted to
selling user data from a wide swath of apps. Apps that mention X-Mode
in their privacy policies include Perfect365, a beauty app, and other
innocuous looking apps such as an MP3 file converter. "As a TI [threat
intelligence] tool it's incredible, but ethically it stinks," a source
in the threat intelligence industry who received a demo of HYAS'
product told Motherboard.




https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/18/0040216/secret-service-paid-to-get-americans-location-data-without-a-warrant-documents-show

 An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: A newly released
document shows the U.S. Secret Service went through a controversial
social media surveillance company to purchase the location information
on American's movements, no warrant necessary. Babel Street is a
shadowy organization that offers a product called Locate X that is
reportedly used to gather anonymized location data from a host of
popular apps that users have unwittingly installed on their phones.
When we say "unwittingly," we mean that not everyone is aware that
random innocuous apps are often bundling and anonymizing their data to
be sold off to the highest bidder.
Back in March, Protocol reported that U.S. Customs and Border
Protection had a contract to use Locate X and that sources inside the
secretive company described the system's capabilities as allowing a
user "to draw a digital fence around an address or area, pinpoint
mobile devices that were within that area, and see where else those
devices have traveled, going back months." Protocol's sources also
said that the Secret Service had used the Locate X system in the
course of investigating a large credit card skimming operation. On
Monday, Motherboard confirmed the investigation when it published an
internal Secret Service document it acquired through a Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) request. (You can view the full document here.)
The document covers a relationship between Secret Service and Babel
Street from September 28, 2017, to September 27, 2018. In the past,
the Secret Service has reportedly used a separate social media
surveillance product from Babel Street, and the newly-released
document totals fees paid after the addition of the Locate X license
as $1,999,394.



https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/12/2039220/homeland-security-details-new-tools-for-extracting-device-data-at-us-borders

 Travelers heading to the US have many reasons to be cautious about
their devices when it comes to privacy. A report released Thursday
from the Department of Homeland Security provides even more cause for
concern about how much data border patrol agents can pull from your
phones and computers. From a report: In a Privacy Impact Assessment
dated July 30, the DHS detailed its US Border Patrol Digital Forensics
program, specifically for its development of tools to collect data
from electronic devices. For years, DHS and border agents were allowed
to search devices without a warrant, until a court found the practice
unconstitutional in November 2019. In 2018, the agency searched more
than 33,000 devices, compared to 30,200 searches in 2017 and just
4,764 searches in 2015. Civil rights advocates have argued against
this kind of surveillance, saying it violates people's privacy rights.
The report highlights the DHS' capabilities, and shows that agents can
create an exact copy of data on devices when travelers cross the
border. According to the DHS, extracted data from devices can include:
Contacts, call logs/details, IP addresses used by the device, calendar
events, GPS locations used by the device, emails, social media
information, cell site information, phone numbers, videos and
pictures, account information (user names and aliases), text/chat
messages, financial accounts and transactions, location history,
browser bookmarks, notes, network information, and tasks list. The
policy to retain this data for 75 years still remains, according to
the report.



Another month full of Privacy Fuckery Against You,
month after month after year after year,
when you gonna revolt...

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/01/0050234/google-victory-in-german-top-court-over-right-to-be-forgotten
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/02/039242/will-chinas-ai-surveillance-state-go-global
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/03/0410259/after-5-years-australia-finally-cracked-a-drug-kingpins-blackberry
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/04/2115222/twitter-faces-ftc-probe-likely-fine-over-use-of-phone-numbers-for-ads
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/05/1728253/twitter-says-android-security-bug-gave-access-to-direct-messages
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/06/223252/lawmakers-ask-california-dmv-how-it-makes-50-million-a-year-selling-drivers-data
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/07/1650242/us-government-contractor-embedded-software-in-apps-to-track-phones
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/09/000209/china-is-now-blocking-all-encrypted-https-traffic-that-uses-tls-13-and-esni
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/11/1659249/zoom-sued-by-consumer-group-for-misrepresenting-its-encryption-protections
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/11/2247254/police-use-of-facial-recognition-violates-human-rights-uk-court-rules
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/12/2039220/homeland-security-details-new-tools-for-extracting-device-data-at-us-borders
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/15/0118251/san-diegos-police-are-using-video-from-smart-streetlights
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/17/2129202/an-alexa-bug-could-have-exposed-your-voice-history-to-hackers
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/18/0040216/secret-service-paid-to-get-americans-location-data-without-a-warrant-documents-show
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/18/1955209/landlord-tech-watch-site-lets-you-report-landlords-using-tech-to-screw-over-tenants
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/19/212230/235-million-instagram-tiktok-and-youtube-user-profiles-exposed-in-massive-data-leak
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/20/1420227/fearing-coronavirus-a-michigan-college-is-tracking-its-students-with-a-flawed-app
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/21/2151223/microsoft-plans-cloud-contract-push-with-foreign-governments-after-10-million-jedi-win
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/21/2331235/palantir-techs-next-big-ipo-lost-580-million-in-2019
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/23/016244/police-in-several-us-cities-used-facial-recognition-to-hunt-down-and-arrest-protesters
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/24/145218/people-in-the-developing-world-thought-they-were-buying-cheap-cellphones-they-were-also-getting-robbed
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/24/2228219/bridgefy-the-messenger-promoted-for-mass-protests-is-a-privacy-disaster
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/26/2345205/clearview-ai-ceo-says-over-2400-police-agencies-are-using-its-facial-recognition-software
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/27/1918250/amazon-announces-halo-a-fitness-band-and-app-that-scans-your-body-and-voice
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/28/1954206/ftc-probes-huge-financial-data-broker-yodlee
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/29/0412247/your-browsing-history-can-uniquely-identify-you
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/31/2151231/fbi-worried-ring-and-other-doorbell-cameras-could-tip-owners-off-to-police-searches
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/09/02/1750221/private-intel-firm-buys-location-data-to-track-people-to-their-doorstep
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/09/02/1915216/court-rules-nsa-phone-snooping-illegal----after-seven-year-delay
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/09/02/1942251/cbp-does-not-make-it-clear-americans-can-opt-out-of-airport-face-scanning-watchdog-says


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