The idea of smartphones and smart speakers listening to everything you say and then sending you targeted advertisements has been around for years, and has largely been debunked by privacy experts. But the marketing unit of Cox Media Group, which owns newspapers and local radio and TV stations around the country, says it can do […]
    • Septimaeus@infosec.pub
      2·
      1 year ago

      Yeah those push token systems need an overhaul. IIRC tokens are specific to app-device combinations, so invalidation that isn’t automatic should be push-button revocation. Users should have control of it like any other API on their device, if only to get apps to stop spamming coupons or whatever.

      It’s funny though: when I first saw those headlines, my first reaction was that it was a positive sign, since this was apparently news worthy even though the magnitude of impact for this sort of systemic breach is demonstrably low. (In particular, it pertains to (1) incidental high-noise data (2) associated with devices and (3) available only by request to (4) governments, who are weak compared to even the smallest data brokers WRT capacity for data mining inference and redistribution, to put it mildly.)

      Regardless, those systems need attention.