Good Monday morning to you.  It’s February 10th. Valentine’s Day starts ninety hours after this arrived in your email.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,441 words and takes about 5 ½ minutes to read.

Want to chat about something you see here? Here is a contact form.

Quick scheduling note: Spotlight is off next week because of the President’s Day holiday. We’ll see you again on Monday, February 24.

1. News To Know Now

1.  An Amazon-Goldman Sachs small business lending program began capturing people’s attention early last week. Our attention is captured whenever Amazon partners with Wall Street. The retail giant is already partnering with JP Morgan on their Amazon Care program covering employee health benefits. Separately, Amazon has moved to trademark Amazon Pharmacy in the U.K., Australia, Canada, and 13 other countries according to CNBC.

2. Researchers received news of a boonvia Bloomberg News that the Trump administration is considering an executive order requiring that research papers be published online without paywalls if they were paid for with federal tax funds. Twitter has also hopped on the research bandwagon with an announcement that academic researchers can access their public data via an API. Get more info about that here.

3.  Alphabet subsidiary Waymo is partnering with UPS in Phoenix to deliver packages between UPS Stores and its area delivery hub in self-driving Chevy Pacifica minivans. The company is also providing self-driving ride hailing services in Phoenix. 

Breaking Sunday night: Facebook’s new desktop beta is rolling out to some users. Here’s what it looks like on my PC. I don’t know when non-beta users will get it, but there’s a new dark mode as well as bigger text  The best functional change: Facebook now remembers where you were in your newsfeed when you navigate away to read something else on the site.

2. Internet Manipulation

Many consumers remain leery of complete automation for tasks like driving. And while many if not most human drivers piloting their vehicles are distracted at least part of the time, there also ways that internet signals can prove troublesome.

One occurred in Berlin last week when artist Simon Wickert posted video of himself pulling a red wagon through deserted streets near Google’s local offices. The wagon was loaded with nearly one hundred Android phones, causing the Google Maps program to show the area had high traffic.  Here is the video of the benign but powerful experiment that he posted.

Teenage Instagram users are using a variant of Wickert’s one phone equals one person exploit by sharing secondary and tertiary accounts among trusted groups of users. They share accounts in a convoluted way that scrambles Instagram’s abilities to identify who interacted with content. The benefit is that nosy parents and pesky college admissions officers can’t track their Instagram use.

Images and videos are another Internet manipulation content type that people are using to confuse algorithms. Photoshopping an image is a cliché that even the president amplifies on social media while so-called deepfakes can be processed and created by hobbyists and graphics specialists. An experiment by Ars Technica resulted in a reporter creating a deepfake video for only about $500. Nearly all deepfakes published online are used to simulate female celebrities in sexual activity, but an experiment by comedian Jordan Peele using Barack Obama as a subject is a cautionary tale for what could happen during elections or critical events.

Big Tech is fighting Internet manipulation, especially doctored images. Photoshop maker Adobe announced last year that it can identify manipulated images of a person’s face. Twitter announced last week that users may not upload manipulated media “likely to cause harm” and said that it may choose to label manipulated media. Alphabet subsidiary Jigsaw also announced last week that journalists can now access a free tool they developed to help them spot doctored images.

We highly recommend the BBC article, “The Hidden Signs that Can Reveal a Fake Photo” for anyone who wants more information.

Smart links: Internet manipulation

“Teens have figured out …” at CNET
“ … How Instagram Determines Hiding Images” at Hypebeast
“I Created My Own Deepfake — it took 2 weeks and cost $552” at Ars Technica
“Deepfakes are a real political threat” at Vox
“Tool to Help Journalists” at The New York Times

3. Google Search Updates

Google’s Chrome browser released a new version last week, and users should make sure they’ve been updated because there are some great advances. The biggest changes include more restrictions on how websites can use cookies to track visitors and blocking website notifications. ZDNet runs down all the changes with all the links here.

Also new to Google search this week is a new capability for iOS users to search Google with the command “Hey Siri, Search Google for [keyword].” Search Engine Journal takes you step-by-step through the setup.

If you’re a criminal, you may want to watch out how you use Google. Miami’s Fox 7 has the story of 18-year-old Amos Shuler who stole a woman’s car. The woman’s mobile phone was inside the car. The thief was using the phone to search for stories about his past robberies. He included his name in the search queries. The fact that we now know his name should connect the rest of the dots for you.

4. Debugged: Iowa, Facebook, and Twitter

There is no shortage of criticism due after last week’s botched Iowa caucuses, but others are more concerned with the amount of misinformation about them that made its way online via Facebook and Twitter.

Wired broke down the misinformation about the caucuses that arose from sources including the president and conspiracy theory websites like Judicial Watch and Epoch Times.

And yes, New Hampshire’s primary is tomorrow.

5. Also in the Spotlight: Business Disclaimers

I attended a funeral Friday at Quantico National Cemetery and was surprised to hear an announcement after the service. “You may visit from sunup to sundown,” the staff member told the mourners. “If you look online, Facebook and others might say we’re closed, but that means the office. If our flag is flying, you can visit.”

The announcement is the sort of workaround done by conscientious employees all over the world. Here is how we really do things, says an employee. Ignore anything else published.

You need to find out if this happens in your organization and fix it. When I examined the cemetery’s Facebook listing, I found an unofficial page with nearly 25,000 visits and 1,195 likes. The official Facebook page run by the cemetery had 759 page likes and 52 visits.  Fifty-two.  

Here’s the kicker: combining the unofficial page into the official is easy. Setting your operating hours is also easy on every platform.  By the time you read this, I’ll have already called Quantico and told them how to fix things. And now I’m doing the same for your organization. 

6. Great Data: Worldwide Sprawl Map

Maps are effective when used to visualize complex data. The fantastic Global Sprawl Map measures connectivity of streets throughout the world and goes down to the street level in many instances. Well connected streets are walkable and served by public transportation. Sprawl is characterized by poor connections–a maze of cul-de-sacs and loops. 

There’s a random zoom that is a fun time-waster.

7. Protip:  Finding Old and Big Email Attachments

If you’re running low on free Gmail space, a simple search command can help you find big attachments that you may not need any more.

Lifehacker will help you do that.

8. Following Up: Clearview AI & Dot Org Domains

1. We told you two weeks ago about Clearview AI and the way that its company scrapes Google, Facebook, and other sites to capture their images of people for use in their facial recognition software. CBS News reported last week that Google, YouTube, Venmo, and Linkedin have all sent cease and desist letters to the company.

2. We’ve also been telling you about the sale of the registry that assigns dot org domain names. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra is requiring more information regarding the sale, an action that Domain Name Wire estimates will delay the sale for as long as two months.

9. ICYMI — Top links from the past 30 days

Lady Gaga fans find alleged new song name in her website’s code

How to stop Google Maps from keeping a detailed record of everywhere you go

The Jeopardy game show archive

10. Coffee Break: Explore Space with Neal

One of last year’s most popular coffee breaks was a deep sea interactive graphic by Neal Agarwal. He’s back with a feature called “The Size of Space” that is even better and certainly prettier.

Start with an astronaut and work your way up.

When you’re done, click here for a free Spotlight subscription.

Good Monday morning. It’s February 3rd.  A busy political week kicks off today with the Iowa caucuses, the continuing impeachment trial of President Trump, and tomorrow night’s State of the Union address. 

Today’s Spotlight is 1,603 words and takes about 6 minutes to read.

Want to chat about something you see here? Here is a contact form.

1. News To Know Now

1. Amazon is fighting charges that it pays no taxes. In a written statement Friday, the company said that it was subject to “over $1 billion in federal income tax” and $4 billion in payroll, property, and state taxes. The company famously avoided paying taxes last year. This year’s statement comes a day after Amazon announced record-breaking revenue of $88 billion in the fourth quarter. Amazon also announced that it now has 150 million Prime customers worldwide.

2. Some users of product management software Trello are in for an unhappy surprise. The collaborative task management software uses a default public setting that search engines index. The exposed data includes performance ratings of hundreds of Regus employees, a second board showing personal identification such as lab coat sizes and passwords, and a third company’s board that includes salary, bonus, and contract information. Naked Security has the details.

3. The coronavirus has captured the world’s attention in a way that much more deadly and commonplace influenza never does. Here is a CDC chart showing influenza in the U.S. since 2010. This year’s data is incomplete but the CDC says that 10,000 Americans have died and 180,000 been hospitalized for now-widespread influenza as of January 25.

Pro tip: you can still get a flu shot. It can’t hurt. It may help.

But if you want to see what the online world is doing about coronavirus, Google launched their SOS alert that flags searches related to coronavirus, Facebook announced it is removing false information about the coronavirus, and BlueDot, which uses an AI algorithm that checks foreign news reports and animal and plant disease networks, identified Coronarivus on December 31 — seven days before the CDC and 9 days before the WHO. Score one for us nerds.

2. Facebook Facial Recognition Suit Settled

Facial recognition continues to occupy regulators and activists. Big news erupted this week when Facebook agreed to settle a five year old class action suit for $550 million after losing on appeal. The federal suit was filed in Illinois on behalf of Illinois users whose faces were used to prompt others to tag them in photographs. Those users may now receive up to “a couple of hundred dollars each”, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Despite the large settlement, Facebook posted $7.3 billion in quarterly net income and $18.5 billion for 2019 on $71 billion in revenue. Grandpappy always used to say, “George get yourself a 26% business with a bigger economy than five states.” 

The EU was considering banning facial recognition technology use in public places, but has said that it will look for “clear criteria” when it is used. Former EU city London seemingly has no such qualms and is deploying live facial recognition throughout the city to look for “wanted individuals” regarding serious crimes. 

The incidence of misidentification especially of nonwhite people continues to be a problem for existing technology. A federal study released in December says that Native American, Asian and African American people were up to 100 times more likely to be misidentified than white males. 

The U.S. military already uses facial recognition but has at least two multimillion dollar projects developing long range facial recognition that would also work in the dark. The DoD project guidelines call for a portable device that works up to 500 yards away. Unlabeled output from MRI devices is also being successfully matched in databases of volunteers. 

Smart links: Facebook and facial recognition

“Facebook May Pay Illinois Users …” at the Chicago Tribune
“EU No Longer Considering …” at Biometric Update
“London to Deploy Live Facial Recognition …” at Ars Technica
“Federal Study Confirms Racial Bias …” at the Washington Post
“The Military is Building Long-Range Facial …” at OneZero
“ … Identify Patients from MRI Scans” at The Wall Street Journal

3. Google Search Updates

Don’t believe me. Believe Google’s new video, “Top 5 Things To Consider For Your Website.” The fifth item in that video is to hire a search engine optimization expert. I think that is terrific advice, and we happen to be looking for a new client to start in February, so forward this to someone you think that we should be working with and suggest that you introduce us. Your friend or colleague will thank you, and  I already do.

Google also updated its best practices documentation for mobile-first indexing with a significant amount of information. Some important things to note are keeping content consistent between mobile and desktop displays, using the same title tags and other meta tags behind the scenes, and a huge troubleshooting section. 

You can read all of the changes at Search Engine Journal or you can introduce yourself to a great search agency. 

4. Debugged: Coronavirus Misinformation

Remember: U.S. influenza deaths: 10,000 this flu season. Coronavirus deaths: 362, including one outside of China. 

The coronavirus has not been patented, there are many strains of coronavirus, and it wasn’t started by a comedian.

Fact Check has more debunked nonsense.

5. Also in the Spotlight: Lady Gaga

One of my favorite recent stories describes Lady Gaga’s fans sleuthing her new website to find the title of her upcoming song. They had already spotted the title on an Instagram post last October and confirmed it was hidden in the text of her website.

Daily Dot has the story about Gaga’s little monsters.

6. Great Data: Name Guesser

We’ve written before about Nathan Yau at Flowing Data. One of his recent projects involves a “name guesser” that uses the decade a person was born and their gender to begin guessing their first name.

Nathan describes how he uses publicly available first name data from the Social Security Administration to guess the name. Don’t type anything and you’ll see the most popular letters. Add the first letter, and the choices quickly narrow. Add a second letter to get even closer.

The project is a nice look behind the scenes at how something interesting can be pulled together with great data that is often free and readily available.

Check it out here. You don’t even have to buy a vowel.

7. Protip: Translating in Spreadsheets

If you work at an organization where employees use more than one language, you need to know that Google Sheets has a built-in translation function. Now when you get a spreadsheet with non-English data, you can translate close enough right inside the spreadsheet.

Here is the support page at Google Sheets.

8. Following Up: Avast and AVG Antivirus

We’ve told you countless times not to use Avast and AVG Antivirus software. You probably know the saying that you are the product when the product is free.

Motherboard Vice broke the story last week that Avast sold entire clickstream data from its users. The data was billed as “Every search. Every click. Every buy. On every site.” And the buyers were top corporate names including Pepsi and Home Depot as well as tech giants like Google and Microsoft.

Here is what Avast’s subsidiary Jumpshot delivered as part of a package that Vice examined:

Google searches, lookups of locations and GPS coordinates on Google Maps, people visiting companies’ LinkedIn pages, particular YouTube videos, and people visiting porn websites. It is possible to determine from the collected data what date and time the anonymized user visited YouPorn and PornHub, and in some cases what search term they entered into the porn site and which specific video they watched.

There are good uses for this data. Tools used by marketing firms rely on some of this information to see what search results people click on. Ad Age called the company ” … a place to get unparalleled insights into online behavior.” Search marketer Rand Fishkin accurately said that the data helped businesses of all sizes understand what Amazon, Facebook, and Google were actually doing. 

All of this is fair, but only when someone agrees to use the free software in exchange for their information being stripped of obvious identifiers and sold. 

Here is Vice’s story. 

9. ICYMI — Top links from the past 30 days

How to Stop Google Maps from Tracking You at CNBC

Coronavirus Mapping by Johns Hopkins University

Microsoft Launches Tool to Identify Child Sex Predators at NBC News

10. Coffee Break: The Jeopardy Archive

Lady Gaga’s fans have nothing on fans of the Big J. 

A crowd sourced site has an archive of Jeopardy clues of this iteration of the show dating back to Alex Trebek’s pilot in 1983 and 44 of the show’s first episodes the next year.

They’re arranged exactly as they appear on the clue board. It’s … overwhelming.

385,000 and counting clues.

When you’re done, click here for a free Spotlight subscription.

photo by Axel Bueckert

Good Monday morning. It’s January 27th. This is tech earnings week. Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple  all announce earnings this week so expect some news to filter out during their calls.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,725 words and takes about 7 minutes to read.

Want to chat about something you see here? Here is a contact form.

1. News To Know Now

1. Google has launched a new data set search engine. The special search was in beta and is now a full-fledged Google product that lets people learn to get data from 25 million different data sets. Put any term into the search bar to get a list of databases. I tried random terms from this weekend’s news (Grammys, basketball, influenza) and found more than one hundred data sets for each. Visit: https://datasetsearch.research.google.com/ to search.

2. Byte, a video-sharing app similar to Vine and TikTok, officially launched Friday. Vine was a similar service acquired by Twitter and then killed. Videos are no more than six seconds in length. In an aspirational move, the company categorized the app as “Teen.” 

3. New Jersey’s Attorney General has banned police from using the Clearview facial recognition app. This follows a week of exposes about the company that has reportedly built a database of more than three billion face images. Company executives told one reporter that they scrape websites like Facebook for images despite rules against that behavior. Facebook says it is looking into the claim. Twitter has sent a cease and desist letter.

Clearview smart links
The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It — at NYT
Twitter tells facial-recognition app maker to stop collecting its data — at The Hill
New Jersey cops told to halt all use of controversial facial-recognition technology — at NJ.com
Scraping the Web Is a Powerful Tool. Clearview AI Abused It — at Wired
Class-action lawsuit filed against controversial Clearview AI startup — at ZDNET

2. Fighting Disinformation

The internet is filled with misinformation that people publish without knowing the information is inaccurate. By definition, the people who publish disinformation do so to deceive. Oxford doctoral candidate Samantha Bradshaw has published the results of a study showing how people publishing disinformation use search engine optimization techniques to improve its visibility.

Disinformation is highly virulent in the audiences it targets. Often presented with false or no supporting claims, the messaging is amplified by people whose confirmation bias allows them to ignore the lack of research or supporting information.

Bradshaw received search tactic information from twenty-nine firms she classifies as “junk news” sites. She used the same tools good search marketers use and concluded that growing distrust of mainstream media is pushing readers to fringe and partisan news sources. There is a bigger issue, she posits, around news and digital literacy. But the very tactics all organizations use to improve search visibility and advertise online are also used for propaganda such as denying the effects of climate change or that the Holocaust occurred.

This trend is prevalent on social media. Lawfare noted last week that a pattern existed in tweets about former FBI attorney Lisa Page.  Lawfare worked with BotSentinel to show that more than 28% of the replies to tweets about Page appear to be automated disinformation. The fact that there is a product named BotSentinel to discover disinformation campaigns is indicative of the trend’s prevalence.

Fake or mislabeled images and amplification by others enhances the effect and makes it difficult to fight disinformation. For example, tweets and Facebook posts showing past military action were posted minutes after Iran attacked U.S. bases in Iraq on January 7 with labels claiming the information was new. 

This week is filled with uncertainty. The U.S. Senate is considering whether to remove Donald Trump following his impeachment, there is a scary new virus in China, Brexit occurs on Friday, and the U.S. Embassy in Iraq was reportedly hit by a rocket late Sunday. As news unfolds, please check a second source and read the information with a critical eye — especially if it is news you like.

Disinformation Smart links
Disinformation Optimized — at Internet Policy Review
How to Spot 2020 Election Disinformation — NPR
Is There A Targeted Troll Campaign Against Lisa Page — Lawfare
False and Unverified Information Spreads — BuzzFeed

3. Google Search Updates

On the subject of disinformation, Google and Microsoft mucked around in the search pond last week and both came off looking terrible.

The ugly parade began when some Microsoft Office subscribers noticed that their default search engine was changed to Bing when they used the Google Chrome browser. The culprit? Microsoft’s own guide said this: “Starting with Version 2002 of Office 365 ProPlus, an extension for Microsoft Search in Bing will be installed that makes Bing the default search engine for the Google Chrome web browser.”

Since every user always reads the guide, there was absolutely no confusion and all of the users approved of Microsoft changing their default search settings without permission.

Meanwhile we had previously told you about Google encouraging website owners to ensure their sites published a favicon so that Google could publish the cute little icon next to search results. Everyone thought that was nifty until Google took its own advice and further stripped down the indicator showing ads to match the regular organic results. 

Here is what their gambit looked like. If you’re playing along at home, the first item is the ad.

We would reprint search exec Danny Sullivan’s full statement retracting that move, but it’s long and many digital marketers don’t believe it especially coming from an advertising company currently threatened with additional regulatory actions. Suffice it to say that this treatment will not appear on desktop search.

4. Debugged: The Case for Microdots. What about Encryption?

If you ever toured FBI Headquarters, you probably saw labs that could duplicate typewriter impressions. The federal government was no slouch when printers caught on and got the industry to add microdot technology that identifies the date and time of all printouts as well as a coded serial number on every printer.

Advocacy groups like the Electronics Frontier Foundation (EFF) loathe the use of microdot technology.  And we adore the EFF and its many fights for civil liberties. But as news about the FBI insisting that Apple help unlock the phone of an alleged gunman in Florida, we’re reminded that the government does not have full visibility into mobile devices.

Here’s the BBC’s article about how your printer includes this technology for comparative purposes.

5. Also in the Spotlight: Security

Here is what happened in digital security last week:

• The world’s richest man had his phone hacked (allegedly) by the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. The prince is also implicated in the death of a journalist who worked for the other rich man’s newspaper.
• The FBI took down a website that was selling data records from previous breaches.
• The Tampa Bay Times was hit with a ransomware attack.
• Political campaigns in the U.S. are getting additional free help to secure their information after multiple reports of campaign hacking.
• Microsoft inadvertently left a tranche of customer service data exposed.
• Experts warned about a Citi financial phishing scheme sent via a convincing looking email.
• The Justice Department lobbied Apple to keep computer backups unencrypted.

Anyone reading all of that might throw their hands in the air, suggest they can’t protect themselves, and stop trying. But don’t. Many of the issues here are fixed by following a few simple rules:

1. Don’t open anything ever from anyone unless you were expecting it. If you receive an unexpected attachment, yes, even at work, confirm first.
2. Have a trusted source of reliable, regular backups.
3. Use password management software (many good ones are free) and don’t reuse passwords. 

6. Great Data: Coronavirus Map

Johns Hopkins University is publishing a coronavirus map that may be the single most informative map I’ve seen. The CAL FIRE maps are usually excellent, but this map has a whole series of important data facts surrounding it on all four sides.

JHU map tracking coronavirus

7. Protip: Stop Google From Tracking Your Location

Google Maps tracks everywhere you go using data from your iPhone or Android phone. It displays the information in a feature called Timeline. Some folks might find it creepy.

When I look at mine, I see an entry from when I recently met a college friend for lunch. I left at 12:03 p.m., drove 10.4 miles, arrived at 12:24 p.m., stayed until 2:07 p.m. then drove 17.6 miles after running an errand before arriving at my desk at 2:54 p.m. All of the data is supported with a map showing the roads I traveled and where we ate.

You know what? That is creepy because it is a part of your Google history.

CNBC shows you how to delete it and stop future tracking.

8. Following Up: Selling Dot Org Domains

Back in December we told you that the entity that sells the dot org domains used by most nonprofit organizations was selling the registry to a venture capitalist. Organizations have been protesting the sale for weeks and won a temporary reprieve when the existing registrar agreed to delay the sale for 30 days to allow an Internet regulatory body to review the terms. 

Read more at Domain News Wire.

9. ICYMI — Top links from the past 30 days

Amazon Tells Shoppers that PayPal’s Honey is a Security Risk – Bloomberg

How to Create a Google Sheets Template – How-To Geek

How to help the victims of Australia’s Wildfires – PBS NewsHour

10. Coffee Break: Target Tori

You may have heard Tori Perrotti’s story. She works for Target and refused to sell a $90 toothbrush for 1 cent because of a signage error. The shopper demanding the extreme discount posted a couple of photos and tried to shame her on Twitter.

Everything backfired on him, and supporters put up a GoFundMe account to send Tori on a vacation. It raised $34,000.

The Boston-area retail manager’s story on NBC Boston.

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