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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • No, no, no, it’s super secure you see, they have this in the law too:

    Information collected for the purpose of determining a covered user’s age under paragraph (a) of subdivision one of this section shall not be used for any purpose other than age determination and shall be deleted immediately after an attempt to determine a covered user’s age, except where necessary for compliance with any applicable provisions of New York state or federal law or regulation.

    And they’ll totally never be hacked.


  • From the description of the bill law (bold added):

    https://legislation.nysenate.gov/pdf/bills/2023/S7694A

    To limit access to addictive feeds, this act will require social media companies to use commercially reasonable methods to determine user age. Regulations by the attorney general will provide guidance, but this flexible standard will be based on the totality of the circumstances, including the size, financial resources, and technical capabilities of a given social media company, and the costs and effectiveness of available age determination techniques for users of a given social media platform. For example, if a social media company is technically and financially capable of effectively determining the age of a user based on its existing data concerning that user, it may be commercially reasonable to present that as an age determination option to users. Although the legislature considered a statutory mandate for companies to respect automated browser or device signals whereby users can inform a covered operator that they are a covered minor, we determined that the attorney general would already have discretion to promulgate such a mandate through its rulemaking authority related to commercially reasonable and technologically feasible age determination methods. The legislature believes that such a mandate can be more effectively considered and tailored through that rulemaking process. Existing New York antidiscrimination laws and the attorney general’s regulations will require, regardless, that social media companies provide a range of age verification methods all New Yorkers can use, and will not use age assurance methods that rely solely on biometrics or require government identification that many New Yorkers do not possess.

    In other words: sites will have to figure it out and make sure that it’s both effective and non-discriminatory, and the safe option would be for sites to treat everyone like children until proven otherwise.






  • To be fair to Microsoft, this was a local model too and encrypted (through Bitlocker). I just feel like the only way you could possibly even try to secure it would be to lock the user out of the data with some kind of separate storage and processing because anything the user can do can be done by malware run by the user. Even then, DRM and how it gets cracked has shown us that nothing like that is truly secure against motivated attackers. Since restricting a user’s access like that won’t happen and might not even be sufficient, it’s just way too risky.








  • https://support.google.com/maps/answer/14169818

    Update Google Maps to use Timeline on your device

    Important: These changes are gradually rolling out to all users of the Google Maps app. You’ll get a notification when an update is available for your account.

    Location History is now called Timeline, and you now have new choices for your data. To continue using Timeline, you must have an up-to-date version of the Google Maps app. Otherwise, you may lose data and access to your Timeline on Google Maps.

    Timeline is created on your devices.

    Basically they’re getting rid of the web version because they’re moving the data to being stored on local devices only. Part of this might be because they got a lot of flak for stuff like recording location data for people who went near reproductive health clinics and other sensitive things. They can’t be forced to respond to subpoenas for data if they don’t have the data and can thus stay out of it, so I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s all that altruistic on their part.