DuckDuckGo Caught Giving Microsoft Permission for Trackers
Users of DuckDuckGo’s Android, iOS, and macOS browsers are promised anonymity. However, the company permits certain data to flow from third-party websites to Microsoft-owned services.
In a recent examination of DuckDuckGo’s mobile browsers, security researcher Zach Edwards discovered that, contrary to expectations, they do not prevent Meta’s Workplace domain from transferring information to Microsoft’s Bing and LinkedIn domains.
DuckDuckGo’s software, in particular, did not prevent Microsoft’s trackers on the Workplace website from sending information about the user to Bing and LinkedIn for targeted advertising purposes. Google’s tracker, for example, is prohibited.
“I tested the DuckDuckGo ostensibly private browser for iOS and Android, but neither version prevented data transfers to Microsoft’s Linkedin + Bing advertisements while browsing Facebook’s workplace[.]com site,” Edwards wrote.
Source: https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/25/duckduckgo_browser_microsoft_privacy/
Internet Drama in Canada. (Really.)
What’s going on in Canada demonstrates why we need a good internet policy mixed with robust government control to ensure that everyone has access to better and more affordable internet — and what happens when we don’t.
For years, the United States has messed up, which is one reason why America’s internet service is so bad. Canada could be a real-world example of confusing government regulation undermining largely good internet policy.
Please bear with me as I give you a Canadian home internet service crash course. The final line is that Canadians have something that Americans don’t have: the ability to choose a home internet provider that they don’t despise.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/26/technology/canada-internet-service.html
Why Chinese Sellers Are Quitting Amazon
Chinese merchants are fleeing Amazon, as you may have seen in the news over the last year. Since early 2021, the e-commerce giant claims to have deleted 3,000 Chinese accounts for “brushing,” or the use of paid reviewers to artificially inflate ratings. Isn’t the plot very straightforward? Dishonest Chinese vendors take advantage of the system! They should, without a doubt, be punished.
Amazon claims that the bans were imposed after repeated warnings about fake ratings and that no seller was singled out because of their nationality. On the other hand, the vendors have different accounts in Chinese media, and they talk about paying ever-increasing prices and dealing with limitations on how they sell on the site.
Sellers informed Chinese tech publication Pingwest that they have improved their ratings because of Amazon’s strict requirements.
Source: https://restofworld.org/2022/why-china-sellers-are-quitting-amazon/
The Semi-secret List of Techs Beijing Really Really Wishes It Didn’t Have to Import
China has identified “chokepoints” that make it reliant on foreign countries for crucial technology, and the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) in the United States claims to have translated and published a key document naming the technologies that Beijing is most concerned about.
From April to July 2018, CSET looked at 35 items from Science and Technology Daily. Each piece focused on a distinct “chokepoint” or China’s reliance on technology imports. Insights from Chinese academics, industry insiders, and other professionals are included in the pieces.
The products, according to CSET, have gone “mostly undetected in the non-Chinese speaking world” because they constitute a rare admission of economic and technological vulnerability.
“State-run media coverage in the People’s Republic of China rarely goes into depth regarding which ‘essential and fundamental technologies’ are ‘controlled.'”
Source: https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/27/chinas_semisecret_list_of_techs/