> ""These results are frightening," said Hassan Khan, associate professor in the school of computer science at the University of Guelph. "It's looking through i

> ""These results are frightening," said Hassan Khan, associate professor in the school of computer science at the University of Guelph. "It's looking through information, searching for data on users' devices, copying data off the device.... it's as bad as it gets."" "It's as bad as it gets", he says, uploading his photos with GPS location data to iCloud, sync'ing his browser history to Microsoft, using keylogger-as-a-service Grammarly to write his article, having his online shopping history emailed to his GMail full of itemised shopping details and delivery addresses, leaving Google services to gather his GPS location in realtime on his trip home for live traffic data updates. "Those are personal photos!" he uploads to Facebook alongside an innocent group picture taken earlier, which Facebook does face recognition on and matches the people in the photo against the contacts list it stole from his phone. His drive home picked up on numberplate recognition cameras, and on neighbour's Ring doorbells. His phone scans the surrounding wifi SSIDs and reports them back to HQ. He enters the front door - "I had the weirdest experience just now", says his partner, "I got an advert on my laptop for something I was talking about with a friend, do you think Alexa or Facebook listen in to our conversations?". "I've been told that can't happen" he says, sitting down at his computer, which prompts him again to login with a Microsoft cloud account, then freezes momentarily as "Microsoft Compatibility Telemetry" takes all the available CPU. "Millions of personal details leaked from 23andMe" he saw in the news headlines[1]. An email arrives from a shop he walked past earlier which picked up his phone's bluetooth ID. His Kindle idles on the table, sending details of every book, every page turn, every passage highlighted, every note made. His car uploading the latest route and tracking data back to the manufacturer. His cloud password vault slowly leaking[2]. "The worst thing in the world would be if someone found out we were naked under our clothes" they both said in unison. "That's as bad as it gets". "Or if someone knew we went on holiday", she said. "Or had a bank account", he said. ---- Each of these companies told Marketplace in separate email statements that they are committed to protecting customers' privacy.". Yes, tech companies say that too. This article is a reminder that if we don't red-team, smoke-test, trial run, our business policies and regulations, we end up with words about how great they are while they aren't functioning or aren't existing. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/7/23907330/23andme-leak-hackers-selling-user-dna-data https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/7/23907330/23andme-leak-hac... [2] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=lastpass+hacked+again&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=lastpass+hacked+again&ia=we...