Amazon today announced an upcoming hiring spree set to bring 3,500 jobs to a half-dozen U.S. cities. The news is, of course, particularly notable amid a pandemic that has cause many industries to freeze hiring, while unemployment claims have soared across the country. It also finds the company doing that hiring in cities -- many of which have seen citizens looking to move to less densely populated areas. From a report While many businesses have suffered the knock-on effects of COVID-19-related lockdowns, however, Amazon has found continued success. The company's massive e-commerce platform has been deemed an essential service and its AWS platform has taken on an outsized role as the push for businesses to go all online has further accelerated. The new jobs are "corporate and tech" per the company's description, across a number of divisions, including AWS, Alexa, Amazon Advertising, Amazon Fashion, OpsTech and Amazon Fresh. The list of cities includes Dallas, Detroit, Denver, New York Phoenix and San Diego, accounting for around 900,000 square feet of office space in all.

American's National Security Agency (NSA) "has shared new guidance with U.S. military and intelligence personnel, suggesting they take additional precautions to safeguard their location data," reports Engadget. "The agency argues the information devices and apps collect can pose a national security threat."

Ars Technica reports: The National Security Agency is recommending that some government workers and people generally concerned about privacy turn off find-my-phone, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth whenever those services are not needed, as well as limit location data usage by apps. "Location data can be extremely valuable and must be protected," an advisory stated. "It can reveal details about the number of users in a location, user and supply movements, daily routines (user and organizational), and can expose otherwise unknown associations between users and locations."

NSA officials acknowledged that geolocation functions are enabled by design and are essential to mobile communications. The officials also admit that the recommended safeguards are impractical for most users. Mapping, location tracking of lost or stolen phones, automatically connecting to Wi-Fi networks, and fitness trackers and apps are just a few of the things that require fine-grained locations to work at all. But these features come at a cost. Adversaries may be able to tap into location data that app developers, advertising services, and other third parties receive from apps and then store in massive databases. Adversaries may also subscribe to services such as those offered by Securus and LocationSmart, two services that The New York Times and KrebsOnSecurity documented, respectively. Both companies either tracked or sold locations of customers collected by the cell towers of major cellular carriers.

Not only did LocationSmart leak this data to anyone who knew a simple trick for exploiting a common class of website bug, but a Vice reporter was able to obtain the real-time location of a phone by paying $300 to a different service. The New York Times also published this sobering feature outlining services that use mobile location data to track the histories of millions of people over extended periods.

The advisory also warns that tracking often happens even when cellular service is turned off, since both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth can also track locations and beam them to third parties connected to the Internet or with a sensor that's within radio range.
Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares some of the agency's other recommendations:

• Enter airplane mode when not using the device
• Minimize web browsing on your device and do not allow browsers to access location services
• Use an anonymous VPN
• Minimize location information stored in the cloud

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Several companies offering phone-spying apps -- known as "stalkerware" -- are still advertising in Google search results, despite the search giant's ban that took effect today, TechCrunch has found. These controversial apps are often pitched to help parents snoop on their child's calls, messages, apps and other private data under the guise of helping to protect against online predators. But some repurpose these apps to spy on their spouses -- often without their permission. It's a problem that the wider tech industry has worked to tackle. Security firms and antivirus makers are working to combat the rise of stalkerware, and federal authorities have taken action when app makers have violated the law.

One of the biggest actions to date came last month when Google announced an updated ads policy, effectively banning companies from advertising phone-snooping apps "with the express purpose of tracking or monitoring another person or their activities without their authorization." Google gave these companies until August 11 to remove these ads. But TechCrunch found seven companies known to provide stalkerware -- including FlexiSpy, mSpy, WebWatcher and KidsGuard -- were still advertising in Google search results after the ban took effect. Google did not say explicitly say if the stalkerware apps violated its policy, but told TechCrunch that it removed ads for WebWatcher. Despite the deadline, Google said that enforcement is not always immediate. "We recently updated our policies to prohibit ads promoting spyware for partner surveillance while still allowing ads for technology that helps parents monitor their underage children," said a Google spokesperson. "To prevent deceitful actors who try to disguise the product's intent and evade our enforcement, we look at several signals like the ad text, creative and landing page, among others, for policy compliance. When we find that an ad or advertiser is violating our policies, we take immediate action."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MarketWatch: TikTok skirted a privacy safeguard in Google's Android operating system to collect unique identifiers from millions of mobile devices, data that allows the app to track users online without allowing them to opt out, a Wall Street Journal analysis has found. The tactic, which experts in mobile-phone security said was concealed through an unusual added layer of encryption, appears to have violated Google policies limiting how apps track people and wasn't disclosed to TikTok users. TikTok ended the practice in November, the Journal's testing showed.

The identifiers collected by TikTok, called MAC addresses, are most commonly used for advertising purposes. The White House has said it is worried that users' data could be obtained by the Chinese government and used to build detailed dossiers on individuals for blackmail or espionage. In a statement, a spokesperson said the company is "committed to protecting the privacy and safety of the TikTok community. Like our peers, we constantly update our app to keep up with evolving security challenges." The company said "the current version of TikTok does not collect MAC addresses."

An anonymous reader quotes long-time technology pundit Robert Cringely: Forty-five days from now, we're told, President Trump will shut down TikTok and WeChat. TikTok, maybe, but WeChat? Impossible...

Trump has a chance of taking down TikTok, the short form video sharing site, because that service is dependent on advertising. He can force the app out of U.S. app stores (though not out of foreign ones) and he can cut off the flow of ad dollars... at least those dollars that flow through American pockets. But there are workarounds, I'm sure, even for TikTok and 45 days is a lot of time to come up with them. So maybe the service will be sold to Microsoft or maybe not. In either case I'm sure TikTok will survive in some form.

WeChat, on the other hand, will thrive.

WeChat, if you haven't used it, is the mobile operating system for China. It's an app platform in its own right that is used for communication, entertainment, and commerce. Imagine Facebook, LinkedIn, PayPal, Venmo, Skype, Uber, Gmail and eBay all in a single application. That's WeChat. It's even a third-party application platform, so while U.S. banks operate on the Internet, Chinese banks operate on WeChat. Shutting WeChat down in the U.S. would be a huge blow to WeChat's parent company, TenCent, and a huge blow to the Chinese diaspora. Except it won't work.

To defeat President Trump, all WeChat users need is a Virtual Private Network and any WeChat users already in the U.S. already have a VPN to defeat the much more formidable Great Firewall of China.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to ban dealings with ByteDance, owner of video-sharing sensation TikTok, appears to codify what his administration has already been warning. A second edict targeting messaging app WeChat and its parent, Tencent, seems weirdly overdue. The executive orders issued by the White House go beyond stopping average Americans from becoming unwitting spies for the Communist Party through their postings and data. The implications could hurt not only the Chinese targets, but the U.S. companies they work with, including Apple and Alphabet's Google.

Though TikTok and WeChat have been getting all the recent attention, the orders state that American companies cannot work with ByteDance or Tencent (though an unnamed U.S. official later stated that Tencent transactions were still OK). That clarification notwithstanding, the wording of the orders does imply that regardless of intention such bans could extend further, to include Americans advertising on dozens of products offered by either Chinese company, or to selling them cloud-storage services, or perhaps the most nuclear option: distributing their apps, even within China. [...] Even though Chinese smartphone brands dominate their domestic market, iOS and Android remain the dominant platforms and Apple and Google cover almost the entire global ecosystem with their respective app stores. If they can't do business with ByteDance, for example, even after a TikTok spin off, then the Beijing company might be unable to distribute its own apps, even within China.

A small U.S. company with ties to the U.S. defense and intelligence communities has embedded its software in numerous mobile apps, allowing it to track the movements of hundreds of millions of mobile phones world-wide, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter and documents it reviewed. From the report: Anomaly Six, a Virginia-based company founded by two U.S. military veterans with a background in intelligence, said in marketing material it is able to draw location data from more than 500 mobile applications, in part through its own software development kit, or SDK, that is embedded directly in some of the apps. An SDK allows the company to obtain the phone's location if consumers have allowed the app containing the software to access the phone's GPS coordinates. App publishers often allow third-party companies, for a fee, to insert SDKs into their apps. The SDK maker then sells the consumer data harvested from the app, and the app publisher gets a chunk of revenue. But consumers have no way to know whether SDKs are embedded in apps; most privacy policies don't disclose that information.

Anomaly Six says it embeds its own SDK in some apps, and in other cases gets location data from other partners. Anomaly Six is a federal contractor that provides global-location-data products to branches of the U.S. government and private-sector clients. The company told The Wall Street Journal it restricts the sale of U.S. mobile phone movement data only to nongovernmental, private-sector clients. Numerous agencies of the U.S. government have concluded that mobile data acquired by federal agencies from advertising is lawful. Several law-enforcement agencies are using such data for criminal-law enforcement, the Journal has reported, while numerous U.S. military and intelligence agencies also acquire this kind of data.

It was rumored last week and now it's official: the European Commission announced it is launching an in-depth antitrust investigation into Google's $2.1 billion bid for Fitbit. CNN reports: The European Union's top antitrust regulator said it is concerned that the takeover would further strengthen Google's market position in online advertising by "increasing the already vast amount of data that Google could use for personalization of the ads it serves and displays." Google announced it was buying Fitbit, the world's leading maker of wearable fitness activity trackers, in November. The deal, worth about $2.1 billion, is one of Google's largest acquisitions and represents an important step for the company into smartwatches and other wearable devices.

The Commission had already launched a preliminary investigation into the transaction. It said a commitment by Google not to use Fitbit data for advertising purposes was insufficient to address the concerns identified in the initial probe. The Commission's top antitrust official, Margrethe Vestager, said in a statement that the use of wearable devices by European consumers, as well as the data generated by them, is expected to grow significantly. "Our investigation aims to ensure that control by Google over data collected through wearable devices as a result of the transaction does not distort competition," Vestager said. In a blog post, Google Senior Vice President for Devices and Services Rick Osterloh said the deal "is about devices, not data," a market he said is full of competition. "We've been clear from the beginning that we will not use Fitbit health and wellness data for Google ads," Osterloh said. "We recently offered to make a legally binding commitment to the European Commission regarding our use of Fitbit data. As we do with all our products, we will give Fitbit users the choice to review, move or delete their data."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Twitter is facing a Federal Trade Commission probe and believes it will likely owe a fine of up to $250 million after being caught using phone numbers intended for two-factor authentication for advertising purposes. The company received a draft complaint from the FTC on July 28, it disclosed in its regular quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange commission. The complaint alleges that Twitter is in violation of its 2011 settlement with the FTC over the company's "failure to safeguard personal information."

That agreement included a provision banning Twitter from "misleading consumers about the extent to which it protects the security, privacy, and confidentiality of nonpublic consumer information, including the measures it takes to prevent unauthorized access to nonpublic information and honor the privacy choices made by consumers." In October 2019, however, Twitter admitted that phone numbers and email addresses users provided it with for the purpose of securing their accounts were also used "inadvertently" for advertising purposes between 2013 and 2019. In the filing, Twitter estimates the "range of probable loss" it faces in the probe is between $150 million and $250 million, although it adds that "the matter remains unresolved, and there can be no assurance as to the timing or the terms of any final outcome."

Christine Ro from the BBC writes about the private agents in Japan, called "wakaresaseya," that you can hire to seduce your spouse or their partner. From the report: The industry is still serving a niche market. One survey showed around 270 wakaresaseya agencies advertising online. Many are attached to private-detective firms, similar to private investigators in other countries (who can also become entangled in relationship dissolution). "Wakaresaseya service costs quite a lot of money," acknowledges [Yusuke Mochizuki, an agent of the "farewell shop" First Group], so clients tend to be well-off. Mochizuki, a former musician who has turned his lifelong interest in detective work into a career, says that he might charge 400,000 yen for a relatively straightforward case in which there's plenty of information about the target's activities, but more if the target is, for example, a recluse. Fees can go as high as 20 million yen if a client is a politician or a celebrity, requiring the highest level of secrecy. (While Mochizuki says that his firm has a high success rate, a consultancy that provides advice on the industry points out that potential clients should be sceptical of such claims, and prepared for possible failure.)

Although some features of the wakaresaseya industry are unique to Japan, similar services exist around the world. They may be less formalized honeytrap or con-artist arrangements, or they may be part of the private-investigations industry. Conventionally "the Western perspective was to sensationalize the industry and almost exoticise it. There's this false exoticisation of Japan that occurs in the West quite frequently." It's difficult to gain a full understanding of the people affected by the wakaresaseya industry, because according to Scott, "people are very reluctant to be seen as associated with it, let alone a victim of it." The industry has a seedy reputation.

As TV and radio producer Mai Nishiyama comments; "There's a market for everything in Japan." This includes a variety of relationship-based services like renting faux family members and the additional services offered by wakaresaseya firms, such as assistance with romantic reconciliation, separating a child from an unsuitable girlfriend or boyfriend or preventing revenge porn. Agents can also be hired to gather evidence that will help a wronged spouse collect consolation money, which is compensation for the dissolution of a relationship. Although the Yamagami International Law Office hasn't worked with wakaresaseya agents, lawyer Shogo Yamagami notes that some clients do work with private agents more generally to obtain evidence of adultery. The consolation payment system means that hiring wakaresaseya agents can be beneficial not just emotionally, but also in practical monetary terms.

"Google has taken one step closer to banishing third-party cookies from Chrome," reports Engadget. The internet giant has started testing its trust tokens with developers, with promises that more would move to live tests "soon." As before, the company hoped to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome once it could meet the needs of both users and advertisers.

Trust tokens are meant to foster user trust across sites without relying on persistent identifying data like third-party cookies. They theoretically prevent bot-based ad fraud without tying data to individuals. This would be one framework as part of a larger Privacy Sandbox including multiple open standards.

The company still hopes to eliminate third-party cookies by 2022.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Wehner said on Thursday that upcoming changes to Apple's iOS 14 operating system could hurt the social network's ability to target ads to users. With the update to its mobile devices, Apple will ask users if they want to let app developers track their activity across other apps and websites. Apple has not said when iOS 14 will launch, but it's expected to roll out this year. "We're still trying to understand what these changes will look like and how they will impact us and the rest of the industry, but at the very least, it's going to make it harder for app developers and others to grow using ads on Facebook and elsewhere," Wehner said.

Until now, advertisers could use a device ID number called the IDFA to better target ads and estimate their effectiveness. In iOS 14, each app that wants to use these identifiers will ask users to opt-in to tracking when the app is first launched. The change is expected to start impacting Facebook's advertising in the third quarter but it will have a more pronounced effect in the fourth quarter, Wehner said.

Google and Apple, which already battle over mobile operating systems, are opening a new front in their fight. How that plays out may determine the future of the web. From a report: Google was born on the web, and its business reflects its origin. The company depends on the web for search and advertising revenue. So it isn't a surprise that Google sees the web as key to the future of software. Front and center are web apps, interactive websites with the same power as conventional apps that run natively on operating systems like Windows, Android, MacOS and iOS. Apple has a different vision of the future, one that plays to its strengths. The company revolutionized mobile computing with its iPhone line. Its profits depend on those products and the millions of apps that run on them. Apple, unsurprisingly, appears less excited about developments, like web apps, that could cut into its earnings.

The two camps aren't simply protecting their businesses. Google and Apple have philosophical differences, too. Google, working to pack its dominant Chrome browser with web programming abilities, sees the web as an open place of shared standards. Apple, whose Safari browser lacks some of those abilities, believes its restraint will keep the web healthy. It wants a web that isn't plagued by security risks, privacy invasion and annoyances like unwanted notifications and permission pop-ups. Google leads a collection of heavy-hitting allies, including Microsoft and Intel, trying to craft new technology called progressive web apps, which look and feel like native apps but are powered by the web. PWAs work even when you have no network connection. You can launch PWAs from an icon on your phone home screen or PC start menu, and they can prod you with push notifications and synchronize data in the background for fast startup. PWA fans include Uber, travel site Trivago and India e-commerce site Flipkart. Starbucks saw its website usage double after it rolled out a PWA.

The split over native apps and web apps is more than just a squabble between tech giants trying to convert our lives online into their profits. How it plays out will shape what kind of a digital world we live in. Choosing native apps steers us to a world where we're locked into either iOS or Android, limited to software approved by the companies' app stores and their rules. Web apps, on the other hand, reinforce the web's strength as a software foundation controlled by no single company. A web app will work anywhere, making it easier to swap out a Windows laptop for an iPad. "What you're seeing is the tension between what is good for the user, which is to have a flexible experience, and what's good for the platform, which is to keep you in the platform as much as possible," said Mozilla Chief Technology Officer Eric Rescorla.

During today's testimony before a Congressional antitrust panel, Mark Zuckerberg went off-script a little bit pointing out how Facebook lags behind a number of competitors, including Alphabet, Amazon.com and Apple. From a report: Zuckerberg isn't hesitating to use some sharp elbows, pointing out that Amazon is the fastest-growing advertising platform and Google is the biggest. "In many areas, we are behind our competitors," Zuckerberg said. "The most popular messaging service in the U.S. is iMessage. The fastest growing app is TikTok. The most popular app for video is YouTube. The fastest growing ads platform is Amazon. The largest ads platform is Google. And for every dollar spent on advertising in the U.S., less than ten cents is spent with us."

Facebook has taken the EU to court for invading the privacy of its employees, Financial Times reported [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source] Monday citing two people with direct knowledge of the matter. From the report: The social media company claims EU regulators have asked broad questions beyond the scope of two ongoing antitrust probes, and it has requested that the General Court in Luxembourg intervene. The EU is investigating both how Facebook collects and makes money from data and whether its Marketplace business has an unfair advantage over rivals in classified advertising. Since March, Facebook has provided the European Commission, the executive body of the EU, with 1.7m pages of documents, including internal emails, in response to multiple requests for information. The EU has made further requests for all documents containing key words and phrases such as "big question," "for free," "not good for us" and "shutdown," according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

Australia's competition regulator on Monday accused Alphabet's Google of misleading consumers to get permission for use of their personal data for targeted advertising, seeking a fine "in the millions" and aiming to establish a precedent. From a report: The move comes as scrutiny grows worldwide over data privacy, with U.S. and European lawmakers recently focusing on how tech companies treat user data. In court documents, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) accused Google of not explicitly getting consent or properly informing consumers of a 2016 move to combine personal information in Google accounts with browsing activities on non-Google websites. "This change ... was worth a lot of money to Google," said commission chairman Rod Sims. "We allege they've achieved it through misleading behaviour." The change allowed Google to link the browsing behaviour of millions of consumers with their names and identities, providing it with extreme market power, the regulator added. "We consider Google misled Australian consumers about what it planned to do with large amounts of their personal information, including internet activity on websites not connected to Google," Sims said.

The EU has demanded that Google make major concessions relating to its $2.1 billion acquisition of fitness-tracking company Fitbit if the deal is to be allowed to proceed imminently, according to people with direct knowledge of the discussions. Ars Technica reports: EU regulators now want the company to pledge that it will not use that information to "further enhance its search advantage" and that it will grant third parties equal access to it, these people said. Brussels insiders said that a refusal by Google to comply with the new demands would probably result in a protracted investigation, adding that such a scenario could ultimately leave the EU at a disadvantage. "It is like a poker game," said a person following the case closely. "In a lengthy probe, the commission risks having fewer or no pledges and still having to clear the deal." They added that the discussions over the acquisition were "intense," and there was no guarantee that any agreement between Brussels and Google would be reached.

Google had previously promised it would not use Fitbit's health data to improve its own advertising, but according to Brussels insiders, the commitment was not sufficient to assuage the EU's concerns nor those of US regulators also examining the deal. Google declined to comment on the specifics of its latest discussions with the European Commission but pointed to an earlier statement saying, "Throughout this process we have been clear about our commitment not to use Fitbit health and wellness data for Google ads and our responsibility to provide people with choice and control with their data. "Similar to our other products, with wearables, we will be transparent about the data we collect and why. And we do not sell personal information to anyone."

Even though Twitter hit 186 million monetizable daily active users between April and June (up 34 percent year-over-year), it had an operating loss of $124 million during the quarter as ad revenue slowed. "With that in mind, the company says it's looking into other revenue streams beyond advertising, which could include some form of subscriptions," reports Entrepreneur. From the report: CEO Jack Dorsey said on an earnings call Thursday that "you will likely see some tests this year" of different approaches. He noted that he has "a really high bar for when we would ask consumers to pay for aspects of Twitter," however. "We want to make sure any new line of revenue is complementary to our advertising business," Dorsey said. It's unclear what types of revenue-driving products and subscription services Twitter has in mind. Without speculating too much, we could see an option to remove ads from the platform for a monthly fee, for instance.

Google is getting serious about competing with Amazon in online shopping -- just like it did in 2013, 2014, 2017 and 2019. The New York Times: But in 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic continues to grip America, the push to create an online shopping marketplace to compete with Amazon has taken on new urgency as consumers are avoiding stores and turning to the internet to fill more of their shopping needs. On Thursday, Google announced that it would take steps to bring more sellers and products onto its shopping site by waiving sales commissions and allowing retailers to use popular third-party payment and order management services like Shopify instead of the company's own systems. Currently, commissions on Google Shopping range from a 5 percent to 15 percent cut depending on the products.

Google is usually the starting point for finding information on the internet, but that is often not the case when consumers are searching for a product to buy. More consumers in the United States are turning first to Amazon to find products that they plan to purchase. This has allowed Amazon to build a rapidly growing advertising business, which is a threat to Google's main financial engine. Google's seven-year battle to take on Amazon has had more lows than highs. In 2013, it started a shopping service called Google Shopping Express, offering free same-day delivery. It offered $95 annual memberships for faster delivery and it tried delivering groceries. Google eventually scrapped the efforts. Google Express evolved into an online shopping mall filled with top retailers like Target and Best Buy. In 2017, it added Walmart to its virtual mall, but the partnership was short-lived. Last year, Google ditched Google Express for Google Shopping and introduced a buy button to allow shoppers to use credit cards stored with the company to complete the transaction without leaving the search engine.

An anonymous reader quotes the Verge: Disney has significantly reduced its spending on Facebook and Instagram ads amid concerns about the social media platform's enforcement of its content policies, The Wall Street Journal reported. It joins a list of large companies that have cut back on Facebook ads as part of an effort to compel Facebook to change how it handles hate speech and misinformation on its platforms.

The monthlong #StopHateforProfit boycott organized by a coalition of civil rights organizations including the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, Color of Change, and Sleeping Giants kicked off July 1st and includes companies like Hershey, Honda, Ben & Jerry's, and Verizon. Other companies not part of the formal boycott that have pulled ads from Facebook and other social platforms included Coca-Cola, Lego, Starbucks, and Unilever. And Microsoft suspended its advertising on Facebook and Instagram through August.