Heart wrenching letter confronts tech companies' accidental cruelty

"Didn't you see me Googling 'baby not moving?'" Gillian Brockell wrote a heartbreaking open letter to big tech companies imploring them to change the ways they target ads to users.

Gillian Brockell's letter posted on Twitter (Twitter)
  • Advertisers are increasingly using hyper-specific information on users, collected by big tech companies, to sell products.
  • An open letter published Tuesday outlines how this kind of ad targeting can be not only creepy, but also inadvertently cruel and distressing.
  • Also on Tuesday, the House questioned Google's CEO, partly on issues related to data privacy.
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Smart dress groped 157 times in under 4 hours

Technology proves what women know and men may not want to hear

(Ogilvy)
  • Schweppes commissioned research into how often women are touched by strangers
  • A sensor-equipped dress designed by Ogilvy captured the party experience of three women
  • The experiment confirms for men what women have known all along
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Amazon might have a Cambridge Analytica-size problem

Amazon could be the next big tech firm to find itself in the eye of a data privacy storm.

  • This year the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, implicating Facebook and creating mass data privacy concern.
  • Concerns have been raised of Amazon user information being leaked to third parties on a regular basis.
  • With the amount of sensitive information and huge number of users on the Amazon platform, this is no small concern.
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Marriott data breach hits 500 million guests. Here’s what to do if you’re one of them.

It's likely one of the biggest data breaches in corporate history.

Sheraton
  • The breach dates back to 2014 and potentially affected 500 million customers.
  • Millions of guests potentially had credit card information stolen.
  • It's likely the second largest data breach in corporate history.
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'The Journal of Controversial Ideas' will launch in 2019. Is it dangerous?

Should all ideas see daylight?

Ahmed zayan on Unsplash
  • A trio of respected philosophers have decided to launch a peer reviewed journal that would allow for anonymous submissions.
  • If successful, the journal could allow for important ideas that might lead to threats or harm to the author to join the debate and promote discussion.
  • Critics ask if this is needed, and warn of giving dangerous people a safe space to publish horrific ideas.
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