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Comment What about fingerprinting sites visited? (Score 1) 24

They only anonymise at the user level most likely. They know full well that site visits can be fingerprinted. Which groups of sites a user visits, especially together can be used to fingerprint many users, especially if there's more niche or specialised sites they visit (hobbies, interests etc). Match up a user's traffic fingerprint (from ad tracking on sites the ad company covers) against the 'anonymised' data and you now have full details of the individual's web browsing. The only anonymised data I'd trist is where every site visit is assigned its own anonymised ID, breaking the link to the individual. That kinda defeats the purpose of the data though and most likely breaks the business case for such data ..... doh!

Comment If they don't start now it'll be harder later..... (Score 1) 40

The telcos have repeatedly shown they don't like information published that can be used for national benefit or that might show gaps in what they're actually claiming to be delivering (and are sometimes receiving money or tax breaks for). If they don't start reporting 5G coverage from the beginning, then it will be another few rounds of years of lobbying before they might be convinced to do so at a later date. Everything has to start somewhere!

Submission + - Google made large contributions to climate change deniers (theguardian.com)

McGruber writes: The Guardian is reporting that Google has made “substantial” contributions to some of the most notorious climate deniers in Washington despite its insistence that it supports political action on the climate crisis.

Among hundreds of groups the company has listed on its website as beneficiaries of its political giving are more than a dozen organisations that have campaigned against climate legislation, questioned the need for action, or actively sought to roll back Obama-era environmental protections.

The list includes the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a conservative policy group that was instrumental in convincing the Trump administration to abandon the Paris agreement and has criticised the White House for not dismantling more environmental rules.

Google is also listed as a sponsor for an upcoming annual meeting of the State Policy Network (SPN), an umbrella organisation that supports conservative groups including the Heartland Institute, a radical anti-science group that has chided the teenage activist Greta Thunberg for “climate delusion hysterics”.

SPN members recently created a “climate pledge” website that falsely states “our natural environment is getting better” and “there is no climate crisis”.

Google has defended its contributions, saying that its “collaboration” with organisations such as CEI “does not mean we endorse the organisations’ entire agenda”.

Comment Status was NOT divulged, only email identities (Score 2) 65

As I understand it, this was your usual failure to use blind copy (BCC) when sending a bulk email. The HIV status of people was not divulged, only the email addresses of other recipients (not sure if this included the recipient account names as well as the address). The recipients were people who had used the clinic for some services.

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