Headline, September 16 2021/ ''' '' STUDENTS' -PRIVACY- * SECURITY '' '''

''' '' STUDENTS' -PRIVACY- 

* SECURITY '' '''

 

SHARPENING THE STUDENTS PERSPECTIVE and Empowering forward thinking. The World Students Society - for every subject in the world. '! Welcome, to all the students, parents, professors and teachers joining up !'.

A NEW WORLD OF BIOMETRICS : THE STUDENTS AND THEIR VOICES are being taken for dense and growing profits.

DEVICES SUCH AS SMART SPEAKERS and smartphones are now capturing both our words and the very timbre of our voices.

Rohit Prasad - Amazon's chief Alexa scientist, told the online technology publication OneZero that ''when she Alexa recognizes you're frustrated with her, Alexa can now try to adjust, just like you or I would do.''

Soon companies may also draw conclusions about your weight, height, age, ethnicity and more - all characteristics that some scientists believe are revealed by the human voice.

Amazon and Google, the highest profile forces in voice surveillance today, are not yet using the maximum potential of these tools, seemingly because they are worried about inflaming social fears.

The technology is based on the idea that that voice is biometric - a part of the body that can be used to identify and evaluate us either instantly and permanently.

' STREAMING IN PUBLIC ' : THERE'S AN EXPRESSION ABOUT THE personal-information-grubbing practices of free digital services that sell ads - including Facebook and weather apps : If you don't pay for the product, you are the product.

But sometimes you can pay for a product and be the product.

Common Sense Media, a nonprofit advocacy group for children and families, recently published a report that found most of America's popular streaming services and TV streaming gadgets such as Netflix, Roku and Disney+ failed to meet the group's minimum requirements for privacy and security practices. The lone exception was Apple.

We've become accustomed to the corporate arms race to track our every mouse click and credit card swipe.

But what's surprising from the group's report is that streaming entertainment products for which people pay out of their pockets have some of the same data habits of sites like Facebook and Google that make their money renting our data for advertising dollars.

''This should be a wake up call to the streaming platforms,'' James P Steyer, the chief executive of Common Sense Media, told me. ''These platforms can and should do better, and I think that they will.''

The organization said streaming companies could be doing more to keep to themselves the data they collect from American households, carve out exceptions to their information practices to better to better protect children, offer more assurances that people's data won't be used to blitz customers with advertisements all over the Internet or get fed into the dossier compiled by dat middlemen.

Researchers have previously analyzed the data habits of some streaming products. What Common Sense Media did with this latest report was cleverly comprehensive. It examined the privacy policies of 10 online video services, like HBO Max, and five streaming devices, including those from Roku and Amazon's Fire TV.

The organization also set up computer systems to follow where the digital information leaving the video streaming apps or devices went.

Common Sense Media found that most of the companies in its analysis could use information about what people do on their services to tailor ads to customers all over the Internet, or allow other companies to do the same. It was able to see, for example, that many of the streaming companies piped data to Amazon and Google's advertising businesses.

Some streaming companies, including Netflix, say they don't typically permit other companies to know what we watch on a Friday night binge session. Some others in the analysis leave open the possibility that information on what we watch might be used for targeted ads or other purposes.

Data from streaming companies could also wind up with companies that compile reams of information like what brand of toothpaste you buy in the store and what you do on your phone. And Common Sense Media said some efforts to offer customers informed consent were overly complicated.

For example, the organization said that Amazon asked people on Fire streaming gadget to click through 25 policies to use the device, plus two more to use its Alexa voice assistant.

The organization said that Apple, which touts privacy principles but doesn't always deliver on its stated ideals, had stronger protections in its Apple TV + streaming video service and its TV connector gadget called Apple TV that the others examined.

The Honor and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Security and Privacy and State -of-the-World, continues. The World Students Society thanks authors, Shira Ovide and Professor Joseph Turrow, University of Pennsylvania.

With respectful dedication to the Scientists, Innovators, Students, Professors and Teachers of the World.  See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society - the exclusive ownership of every student in the world : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless