James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
Google will soon let users auto-delete their location and activity data
With privacy concerns rising every day, Google LLC announced today that it will soon be rolling out a feature allowing users to auto-delete much of the data the company collects on them. Google product managers Marlo McGriff and David Monsees wrote in a blog post that although users can already manually delete location history, as ...
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, cloud chief Diane Greene are leaving Alphabet’s board
After 18 years as an Alphabet Inc. board member, Eric Schmidt will step down to allow “the next generation of talent to serve.” Schmidt (pictured) first took the seat when he was made chief executive of Google Inc. in 2001, a role he took on to reportedly add more business savvy to what co-founders Larry ...
Facebook opens data to researchers to ascertain election influence
Facebook Inc. is opening its doors to 60 researchers around the world so they can better understand how the platform affects democracy and elections. “We hope this initiative will deepen public understanding of the role social media has on elections and democracy and help Facebook and other companies improve their products and practices,” Facebook said ...
NY attorney general probes Facebook for collecting users’ emails
It must feel like the sky is falling in for the world’s biggest social media platform, with yet another investigation now underway for a privacy breach. A week ago it was revealed that Facebook Inc. had, by its own admission, “unintentionally uploaded” the email contacts of 1.5 million users to its systems. This affected people ...
Alexa team can see where customers live, but Amazon plays it down
Amazon.com Inc. just became the latest company to unsettle consumers over the fact their data might not be as hidden as they thought. According to Bloomberg, which spoke with a number of employees at Amazon on the condition of anonymity, employees on its Alexa auditing team have access to users’ location data and might know ...
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Donald Trump meet to discuss grievances
Twitter Inc. Chief Executive Jack Dorsey sat down with President Donald Trump on Tuesday to talk about the “health” of social media in the run-up to the 2020 U.S. elections, just a day after the president criticized Twitter for bias. According to Motherboard, which had obtained an internal Twitter email about the talk, the discussion ...
Google activists claim harsh treatment after protests
Thousands of Google LLC employees took to the streets last November to protest sexual harassment in the company and forced arbitration. Now, some of those who helped organize the protest say they have been retaliated against. In a letter that was shared with other Google employees on Monday, Claire Stapleton and Meredith Whittaker both said they ...
In another privacy bomb, Facebook admits storing millions of Instagram passwords in plain text
Last month Facebook Inc. admitted that it had stored thousands of Instagram users’ passwords in plain text, open for viewing by people at certain levels in the company. Today the company said that number is actually in the millions. “Since this post was published, we discovered additional logs of Instagram passwords being stored in a ...
Microsoft won’t share facial recognition technology with police, citing human rights concerns
While China doubles down on its efforts to track its citizens and concerns fester in the U.S. that a similar Orwellian super-surveillance might happen in the country, Microsoft Corp. may have just alleviated some of the concerns. Reuters reported Tuesday that Microsoft had been asked by law enforcement in California to share its facial recognition technology. The company ...
T-Mobile and Sprint refute report their merger is about to hit a brick wall
A report by The Wall Street Journal Tuesday cast doubt on whether the third- and fourth-largest U.S. telecommunications companies, T-Mobile U.S. Inc. and Sprint Corp., will merge, but the companies quickly refuted the report. According to the Journal, the $26 billion merger might not happen and Justice Department officials said as much to representatives of ...