Good Monday morning. It’s September 30th. Shanah tova. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year holiday, began at sundown local time yesterday and ends tomorrow. 

Today’s Spotlight takes about 4 minutes to read. Here is a contact form if you want to talk about anything here.

2. News To Know Now

1. MIT researchers say that limiting WhatsApp’s distribution reduces the amount of disinformation publicized. The Facebook owned company limited accounts to forwarding messages from 256 groups to 20 groups and again to 5 groups. That’s important because an Oxford social media study released last week found that 70 countries are using computational propaganda to influence public opinion with 25 of them partnering with private firms to publish disinformation.

2.  Facebook will neutralize some fear-based advertising on Facebook and Instagram by creating rules to block certain weight loss products and cosmetic procedures from being displayed to users under the age of 18.

3. An ability to preserve thousands of languages spoken by small numbers of people is one overlooked benefit of social media according to a thoughtful essay by Dr. Raphael T. Garcia. He writes that YouTube’s reach and capabilities allow activists to preserve languages that may only be spoken by thousands of people.

3.  Government Data Mining, Part 3: The Algorithms 

Our government data mining analysis covers four areas over four weeks.

1. Facial recognition’s growth – two weeks ago
2. Ancillary data from applications – last week
3. National and local algorithms to make sense of all the data – below
4. Extensions into areas like personal health records and trackers  – next week

DNA testing at home led to big databases stuffed with results—and helped police solve multiple cold case crimes, including a 52 year old murder case in Seattle. GEDmatch, one of the larger aggregators of uploaded DNA data, is the database police most often use. That old Seattle case and the Golden State Killer case received headline attention, but law enforcement agencies are solving dormant cases every week using this unique collaboration between the public and law enforcement.

Users can opt-in to allow police genealogy experts to work with crime scene DNA results, genealogy hobbyist results, and create family trees for people who are still living. 

Technology is also fueling the New York Police Department’s real life exampleofa detective movie staple. Using software they developed and then made public for free, the NYPD uses Patternizr to find similarities between crimes. Like the genealogy situation, Patternizr requires human analysts to sort through the program’s output and decide which results to send to detectives.

Police are also finding new ways to use older technology like cameras and scanners. In London, the BBC reported that police tested rail passengers for hidden explosives or knives using new scanners that providing imaging from up to thirty feet away. Cameras are more widely used in other countries to surveil cities according to Comparitech. Their overview shows that London and Atlanta are the only non-Chinese cities on a list of the ten most surveilled cities, but plenty of western cities made the top 20, including Chicago, Sydney, and Berlin.

Benign social media use exists throughout law enforcement. We’ve all read tweets and social media updates about events in our communities as well as efforts to humanize officers. For example, the Gloucester (NJ) Police post images of recovered bicycles on Pinterest. But for every wholesome use of technology, we also see complaints like a 2016 ACLU of California warning about some police departments tracking activists and their movements on social media.

Next week: learn about the wild ways some law enforcement technologists hope to fight future crime.

Read Part One of the series, Facial Recognition’s Growth
Read Part two of the series, Tattletale Apps

4.  Google Updates Core Search Algorithm

This chart shows a website that Sue and I have been optimizing for a long time. We tried some new things recently and were happy to see daily traffic go from around 1,400 to 1,700. That’s a big jump. We were feeling pretty cocky about it until Google rolled out a core search algorithm update on September 24. You can see September 24th on the chart., It’s marked with a 2,700.

So what is a core search update and how do you get one?

• Google’s search results are in constant flux.
• More than 3,000 changes are made each year. 
• Every few months, there is a big adjustment called a Google core search update.
• Industry searchers can see the impact across many sites.
• About half of all search marketers say that this update had no effect. 
• But for individual websites like the one shown here, traffic can grow 50% overnight.

When we tell people that Google essentially sets the parameters for search, we mean that over the long haul most sites that do the right things prosper. Those who don’t (or even those who cheat) may see temporary improvements, but they always end up penalized or worse.

Google advises organizations that good search engine optimization (SEO) is iterative and improves over time. They also tell people that months can elapse before results are seen. That was our experience with this site.  We managed a website relaunch that improved the site’s mobile speed and usability in late May.  We saw early improvements, and by August, we were seeing dramatic improvement even without the huge increase in late September.

And yes, another site can absolutely be prioritized over this one in the future when there is another Google core update. Good search is an ongoing process. Google tells people that, and we assure you of that after working in search for more than ten years.

But the view from the deck is awfully nice when your ship comes in.

5. Debugged: Lottery Winners

Lottery winners also have a ship come in, but “conventional wisdom” said that they felt that they were worse off despite having won the money.

A study for a new economics textbook makes a compelling case that a 1978 academic paper on the subject only had twenty-two respondents.  That is certainly not a lot of people. Another study in 2007 only had 137 responses. That’s also too small a sample.

Read the Vox explainer about lottery winners being happy to win money.

6. Also in the Spotlight

Facebook is testing hiding like counts like we told you they would last week. The test began in Australia on September 27th, according to Techcrunch.

Attractive singles in your area may not be waiting suggested the FTC when it sued Match.com for deceptive advertising, Engadget reports.

Fake domain renewal invoices are commonplace, but Domain News Wire is showing one that uses a real PayPal invoice. Bottom line from us: if we’re not already managing your domain, you should only renew it or pay anything directly at the domain registrar’s site you used.

7. Great Data: See What Members of Congress Really Tweet About

The best looking data project I’ve ever seen for Twitter is also the newest. The Pudding has created awesome visualizations for issues and individual members with lots of easy-to-use options including time.

I lost an hour to this thing and I want more.

8. Protip: Your Clipboard History

One of the fun and useful things that Microsoft added to Windows 10 is the ability to see past clipboard entries.

Lifehacker shows you how to do it on Mac or PC.

9. Bizarre Bazaar (strange stuff for sale online)

Unique holiday gift alert. Emerald Heritage puts a spin on those buy a square foot of a country for fifty bucks offers. They’re using a location that Game of Thrones filmed at, knocked the price down to about $35 and include upgrades like maps and choose your own plot. Want some more space? You and a special friend can buy adjoining 9 square foot plots, fly to Ireland, and practice standing in them.

But it’s a smart use of the GoT affiliation, aggressively priced, and gift worthy. 

10. Coffee Break: The Typewriter Simulator

For those who learned how to type on a machine with clicks, clacks, and bells, this online simulator mimics carriage returns, correction paper, and prove how much of your speed on modern keyboards will not translate back to typewriters.

Hands on home row…and begin.

Good Monday morning. It’s September 23rd. The United Nations Climate Action Summit begins today. Learn more about the session at the official website.

Today’s Spotlight takes about 6 minutes to read. Want to chat about something you see here? There’s a contact form here.

2. News To Know Now

1. Facebook canceled “tens of thousands of apps” while conducting investigations into how they handle user privacy. Four hundred developers are associated with the apps, but Facebook has not identified them.

2.  Facebook political advertisers must create new disclosure statements by mid-October.  Snapchat announced that it will use similar processes and update its political ad library. Political advertisers in Canada and the U.S. have spent more than one million dollars so far in 2019 on Snapchat.  Open Secrets data has the details.

3. Big Tech finance headlines:

• Palantir will seek a $26 billion valuation, according to CNBC
• Salesforce.com has invested another $300 million in WordPress.com developer Automattic-with-the-three-ts. The announcement.
• Payment processing company Stripe added a $1.2 billion round and is now valued at $35 billion. Details at Crunchbase.

3.  Government Data Mining, Part 2: Tattletale Apps and Your Personal Data

Our government data mining analysis covers four areas over four weeks.

1. Facial recognition’s growth – last week
2. Ancillary personal data from DNA testing and app use – below
3. National and local algorithms to make sense of all the data – next week
4. Extensions into areas like personal health records and trackers.

Scary stories about phone apps, browser extensions, and smart devices abound in our society. We’re no longer surprised when we learn that a tech company is selling ovulation data from apps women use to track their periods or that Foursquare doesn’t care if you use their app to check in to a location since they have “passive” data collection.

Personal data from all of your transactions constantly flows into buckets at data brokerages around the world. WaPo columnist Geoffrey Fowler wrote a blockbuster expose this summer about browser extensions that seem innocuous but “leak information” directly to data brokers. In Fowler’s expose, one of the browser extensions was used to magnify images on a screen, but requested the ability “to read and change your browsing history.” The extension had 800,000 users and was packaging each user’s search history.

At a large family gathering this weekend, I was asked to troubleshoot someone’s PC because it seemed like Google was unresponsive. After only fifteen minutes of tinkering I found that there was a Firefox extension that promised private browsing. Instead, it read search data and routed the request to another network. Luckily, they didn’t return to Google but to Yahoo! search, which was my first clue that something terrible was happening.

Don’t forget that the absence of data is also data. Netflix raised eyebrows last month when The Verge found that Netflix was monitoring a phone’s physical activity sensor. Netflix later said it was a test to see if they could improve video quality while people were watching on the move. But the question remains why a video app gets to track your movements and activity. Fitness trackers, phones, and smart watches all have the ability to understand where you are and what you are doing or not doing.

Even medical data isn’t protected despite health privacy laws. ProPublica found 5 million health records on hundreds of computer servers worldwide. Anyone with a web browser or a few lines of computer code can view patient records, they found, including names in some cases. They didn’t do any hacking or nefarious activities because the records—either for consultation or stored for archives—were publicly accessible on the Internet.

Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are part of a new trade group called the CARIN Alliance that is creating a medical records universal standard for patient records. You’re probably already thinking to yourself, “What could go wrong with those three setting up programs accessing my most personal data?” Good news. The federal government, many state governments, and major health insurance companies are also participating.

The point is that your transactions every day create a growing pool of data about you.  Here in northern Virginia, our state is one of several using “remote sensing” that checks a vehicle’s emissions when it passes through a toll booth. The program is a great way to monitor air quality but also allows local jurisdictions to understand which vehicles don’t meet emissions standards and the locations that they travel through. 

Foursquare would call that a passive check-in.

Next week: the algorithms coordinating all of the data about you.

Read Part One of the series, Facial Recognition’s Growth

4.  Checking in On Amazon

Living off the grid has become harder and now Amazon is finding a way to track cash payments. 

The company announced last week that it would begin accepting cash payments via Western Union and a program called “PayCode”. When a user checks out from Amazon and selects PayCode, they receive a code that they bring to Western Union. Once there, they can settle the account and the product will be shipped. The service starts in October.

Deliveries in 2021 and later will likely be made in some fancy new vehicles after Amazon announced that it would become a signatory to the corporate climate pledge that echoes the Paris climate agreement. Amazon announced that it had placed an order to purchase 100,000 electric-powered trucks over 10 years from a startup named Rivian. Amazon’s $10 billion order follows their $700 million investment last February and Ford’s $500 million in April. 

Amazon also got a big assist from The Wall Street Journal (paywall) this weekend after they surfaced a report that a “grass roots” campaign called “Free and Fair Markets” that attacks Amazon is secretly funded by Walmart, Oracle, and commercial real estate behemoth Simon Property.  Campaigns that purport to be independent “grass roots” campaigns but are secretly funded by an interested party are called “astroturf campaigns” because they’re meant to look like grass (roots).

5. Debugged: Can You Identify Where These Pictures Were Taken?

First Draft News has a four image “Observation Challenge” that allows visitors  to assess where images came from and whether you could correctly identify their locations if you were working in a newsroom. There are lots of on-screen hints and you get four chances at each of four images.

Yes, you can use the Internet. It’s not a knowledge test.

6. Also in the Spotlight

Google sister company Wing upped the stakes in the delivery wars by announcing a drone delivery test in rural southwestern Virginia. FedEx and Walgreens are also involved. (via Transport Topics)

Trivia app Givling claims to pay off student debt, but may not be all that it claims to be, say the folks at Truth in Advertising.

LinkedIn will begin offering online testing for users who want to demonstrate their skills knowledge. Read more at TechCrunch.

7. Great Data: Mapping Political Supporters on Twitter

One of the best network maps we’ve seen recently is Erin Gallagher’s take on “Trump Train” supporters on Twitter. This isn’t political, but a good lesson in how to map followers and understand your influencers. Besides, as Erin points out, there is nothing like this in social media on the left side of the political spectrum.

Read the analysis here.

8. Protip: Backing Up Your iPhone

There are new operating systems for iOS users. You should back up your iPhone BEFORE upgrading.

Here is a step-by-step guide showing how.

9. Bizarre Bazaar (strange stuff for sale online)

Rockabye Baby is a music company that creates woodblock and mellotron-based lullabies from popular music, including classic rock, hip hop, and punk. Their new release is Lullaby Renditions of Selena. AV Club interviewed the team.

100 releases and 600 million streams to date.

10. Coffee Break:  Dark Web Images

A team of researchers has indexed 37,500 images from the Dark Web to test automating security images. You can go to their site, but you have to download all of the images in a tarball archive. If you don’t know what the file extension .tar.gz means, then you don’t need to visit. Luckily for you, I downloaded them all and am including three below.

Here’s the site if you’re that kind of interested.

Images showing credit cards, a gun, and drugs for sale so you don’t have to visit to see.