Schneier - Manipulative Social Media Practices

The Norwegian Consumer Council just published an excellent report on the deceptive practices tech companies use to trick people into giving up their privacy.

From the executive summary:

Facebook and Google have privacy intrusive defaults, where users who want the privacy friendly option have to go through a significantly longer process. They even obscure some of these settings so that the user cannot know that the more privacy intrusive option was preselected.

The popups from Facebook, Google and Windows 10 have design, symbols and wording that nudge users away from the privacy friendly choices. Choices are worded to compel users to make certain choices, while key information is omitted or downplayed. None of them lets the user freely postpone decisions. Also, Facebook and Google threaten users with loss of functionality or deletion of the user account if the user does not choose the privacy intrusive option.

[...]

The combination of privacy intrusive defaults and the use of dark patterns, nudge users of Facebook and Google, and to a lesser degree Windows 10, toward the least privacy friendly options to a degree that we consider unethical. We question whether this is in accordance with the principles of data protection by default and data protection by design, and if consent given under these circumstances can be said to be explicit, informed and freely given.

I am a big fan of the Norwegian Consumer Council. They've published some excellent research.



from Schneier on Security https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/06/manipulative_so.html

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Krebs - NY Charges First American Financial for Massive Data Leak

Image
In May 2019, KrebsOnSecurity broke the news that the website of mortgage title insurance giant First American Financial Corp. had exposed approximately 885 million records related to mortgage deals going back to 2003. On Wednesday, regulators in New York announced that First American was the target of their first ever cybersecurity enforcement action in connection with the incident, charges that could bring steep financial penalties. First American Financial Corp. Santa Ana, Calif.-based  First American [ NYSE:FAF ] is a leading provider of title insurance and settlement services to the real estate and mortgage industries. It employs some 18,000 people and brought in $6.2 billion in 2019 . As first reported here last year , First American’s website exposed 16 years worth of digitized mortgage title insurance records — including bank account numbers and statements, mortgage and tax records, Social Security numbers, wire transaction receipts, and drivers license images. The d...
Read more

KnowBe4 - Scam Of The Week: "When Users Add Their Names to a Wall of Shame"

Image
Eric Howes , KnowBe4 Principal Lab Researcher, found out about another insidious bad guy trick: " If you work in IT there has undoubtedly come a dark moment when you wondered to yourself just who among your employee users would be gullible enough to click through a phishing email and potentially bring down your organization. from KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training Blog https://blog.knowbe4.com/when-users-add-their-names-to-a-wall-of-shame
Read more