Wednesday Newsbytes: What AT&T Users Should Know About Massive Data Breach; Google’s Incognito Mode Not So Incognito; Congress Bans Microsoft’s Copilot; Amazon Removing Millions of Products… and more
Every day we scan the tech world for interesting news in the world of technology and sometimes from outside the world of technology. Every Wednesday, we feature news articles that grabbed our attention over the past week. We hope you find this week’s ‘Wednesday Newsbytes’ informative and interesting!
What customers should know about AT&T’s massive data breach
Millions of current and former AT&T customers learned over the weekend that hackers have likely stolen their personal information and are sharing it on the dark web.
AT&T on Saturday said it doesn’t know if the massive data breach “originated from AT&T or one of its vendors,” but that it has “launched a robust investigation” into what caused the incident. The data breach is the latest cyberattack AT&T has experienced since a leak in January of 2023, that affected 9 million users. By contrast, Saturday’s much larger breach impacts 73 million current and former AT&T account holders. AT&T has seen several data breaches over the years that range in size and impact.
The data breach prompted an Ohio man to file a class-action lawsuit against AT&T, accusing the telecommunications giant of negligence and breach of contract. Lawyers representing Alex Petroski of Summit County, Ohio, argued that the cyberattack could have been avoided and that AT&T’s security failed to protect customer data…
The Incognito Mode Myth Has Fully Unraveled
If you still hold any notion that Google Chrome’s “Incognito mode” is a good way to protect your privacy online, now’s a good time to stop.
Google has agreed to delete “billions of data records” the company collected while users browsed the web using Incognito mode, according to documents filed in federal court in San Francisco on Monday. The agreement, part of a settlement in a class action lawsuit filed in 2020, caps off years of disclosures about Google’s practices that shed light on how much data the tech giant siphons from its users—even when they’re in private-browsing mode.
Under the terms of the settlement, Google must further update the Incognito mode “splash page” that appears anytime you open an Incognito mode Chrome window after previously updating it in January. The Incognito splash page will explicitly state that Google collects data from third-party websites “regardless of which browsing or browser mode you use,” and stipulate that “third-party sites and apps that integrate our services may still share information with Google,” among other changes…
Scoop: Congress bans staff use of Microsoft’s AI Copilot
The U.S. House has set a strict ban on congressional staffers’ use of Microsoft Copilot, the company’s AI-based chatbot, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: It’s the latest example of the federal government trying to navigate its internal use of AI while simultaneously attempting to craft regulations for the burgeoning technology.
The House last June restricted staffers’ use of ChatGPT, allowing limited use of the paid subscription version while banning the free version.
Driving the news: The House’s Chief Administrative Officer Catherine Szpindor, in guidance to congressional offices obtained by Axios, said Microsoft Copilot is “unauthorized for House use.”
“The Microsoft Copilot application has been deemed by the Office of Cybersecurity to be a risk to users due to the threat of leaking House data to non-House approved cloud services,” it said. The guidance added that Copilot “will be removed from and blocked on all House Windows devices.”
What they’re saying: Microsoft hopes the suite of government-oriented tools they plan to roll out this summer will address Congress’ concerns…
Amazon removing millions of products for very concerning reason
The online retail giant has been working to remove a particularly insidious type of product.
One of the best parts of shopping in the 21st century is that consumers have access to millions, if not billions, of items without even needing to leave their house.
It’s estimated that Amazon (AMZN) itself sells between 300 million and 600 million SKUs (or stock keeping units, the industry term for individual items) at any given time, and the retail giant is constantly updating its inventory.
But it’s not just variety that shoppers are looking for every time they log onto their favorite online shopping platform.
Whether it’s Walmart+, Target’s new membership program Circle Rewards, Amazon Prime, or a laundry list of other online retailers, companies are certainly expected to keep a large inventory of goods. But in order to keep your customers, companies are also expected to offer lightning-fast delivery options (Amazon’s two-or-less day delivery remains the gold standard.)
Some may tempt customers by offering other savings on goods like fuel, cash back on purchases, or access to other highly coveted services like streaming platforms.
Amazon cracking down on millions of items
But one of the most highly prized — and hardest to attain — aspects of the online shopping experience is consumer trust. It can be difficult to earn for nearly any company…
GPT-4 is 82% more persuasive than humans, and AIs can now read emotions
GPT-4 is already better at changing people’s minds than the average human is, according to new research. The gap widens the more it knows about us – and once it can see us in real time, AI seems likely to become an unprecedented persuasion machine.
We don’t tend to like thinking of ourselves as being particularly easy to manipulate, but history would appear to show that there are few things more powerful than the ability to sway people to align with your view of things. As Yuval Noah Harari points out in Sapiens, his potted history of humankind, “shared fictions” like money, religion, nation states, laws and social norms form the fundamental backbones of human society. The ability to assemble around ideas and co-operate in groups much bigger than our local tribes is one of our most potent advantages over the animal kingdom.
But ideas are mushy. We aren’t born with them…
Thanks for reading this week’s Wednesday Newbytes. We hope these articles were informative, interesting, fun, and helpful. Darcy & TC
i couldnt open the amazon article because an adblocker came up instead of The Street. was there something important to learn there? thanks for all your interesting insights and advice. you are the greatest!
Mary, you should be using an Ad Blocker that allows you bypass its blocks – as does our recommended ad blocker, uBlock Origin.
You should not allow software to determine what pages your allowed to visit or what articles you can read. It’s different if a security app (like Emsisoft) blocks a page for malicious content or being a phishing site or containing dangerous downloads etc.
Anyway here’s the gist of that article…
“…Amazon said it had destroyed over seven million fake or counterfeit items using the various investments and teams it stood up to combat the issue.
“This includes counterfeits that were attempted to be sent into Amazon’s fulfillment network as well as situations where the company worked with brands and law enforcement to find counterfeiters’ warehouses and facilities, and got them shut down,” an Amazon spokesperson told TheStreet…