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Shorts for August 4, 2015: A Gmail track-buster, tracking you by your mouse movements, a Windows 10 mandatory-update reversal, and Jimmy Carter calls for oligarchy busting |
Fifty percent of our emails are tracked, according to Forbes' Kate Vinton in a July 28, 2015, article. A new company called Trackbuster has developed a service that promises to remove the tracking code from Gmail messages; other email systems will be supported in the future.
The trackers can also ID you based on your mousing, among other characteristics, such as how you type and even your computer's battery level. That's according to Forbes' Thomas Fox-Brewster writing in a July 29, 2015, article. Now that more people are blocking ads and third-party cookies, the trackers need new ways to spy on us. There's no indication that such tracking technologies are being used at present, but as Fox-Brewster indicates, it's only a matter of time. (Tools for blocking these types of trackers are already being developed.) Microsoft appears to be back-tracking on mandatory Windows 10 updates, according to Forbes' Antony Leather in a July 27, 2015, article (it's a Forbes trifecta!) Leather describes the process required to block updates in Windows 10, which prevents the patches from interfering with various applications and device drivers. Several early adopters of Windows 10 reported problems following some updates, which is what motivated Microsoft to make the change in policy, according to Leather. According to Jimmy Carter, our nation has seen "a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over." The solution President Carter proposes? As quoted in an August 1, 2015, article by Thom Hartmann of AlterNet, Carter claims only a "horrible, disgraceful" corruption scandal will turn the public against the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision that made the oligarchy possible. Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders has introduced a constitutional amendment that would overturn Citizens United and state unequivocally that corporations are not people and thus do not have the same rights as people. Go, Bernie! Go, Bernie! Go, Bernie! |