My dog, Yuri, an approximately 10-year-old rat terrier, has never expressed any interest in my writing career, though he’s often with me as I write, lying in his little bed near my desk.

This post first appeared in the San Jose Mercury News

But today was an exception. He and I are reviewing the Link AKC smart collar. He couldn’t care less about electronics that track his location and activity, but he loved that he got in some extra walks as we tested the collar. He did, however, whine a little when I had to stop to call tech support to help me activate my online account. The good news is that the Link AKC representatives answered right away and were helpful. Phone support, however, is only available between 6:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. PST.

The Link AKC is an attractive leather collar with an electronic device that serves as a sensor and GPS locator. The unit connects to your Android or iOS device via Bluetooth and communicates with the company’s servers via AT&T’s mobile network. It costs $149 (but is currently on sale for $99) and requires a $10 a month service plan, which you can reduce to $7 a month with a two-year commitment.

Before using the sensor unit, you need to remove it from its sleeve and place it on the small base station that also serves as a charger. There is a pass-through port that allows you to charge other devices, such as your phone. Depending on usage, the sensor should run for about two days between charges.

Set up would have been straight forward had I not been confused by the way the unit slips out of the sleeve. The support department walked me through the process, and once I realized what to do, it was easy.

The Link AKC app lets you view your dog’s activity, locate him via GPS, turn on a light on the collar or play a beeping sound, which could be used for dog training. When you’re ready to go for a walk, you press “start an adventure,” and the app starts mapping your movement, with the option to take photos. It’s akin to a Fitbit for dogs.

The collar comes in different sizes including Yuri’s preferred “extra small.” The tracking device, however, comes in only one-size, and, although it fits, it’s a bit bulky for Yuri.

If your dog wanders out of Bluetooth range from the base station, the app will invite you to track your pooch, but this function isn’t 100 percent reliable. If you live in a large house — and especially if the dog is in the yard —  it’s easy to get out of range.  Yuri hasn’t left the house in the time I’ve been writing this article, but sometimes it says he’s nearby and other times it says he’s away. If he actually were to get lost, the collar is supposed to locate him assuming he’s getting a GPS signal and it is in range of the AT&T cellular network.

The product is advertised to “manage your dog’s wellness,” but the only thing it actually tracks is activity such as walks and when your dog is running around the yard. It doesn’t measure  heart rate, body temperature or other vital signs. It does offer advice based on the dog’s breed, weight, age and activity levels, and there is a place where you can manually type in your dog’s vet records.

There are other pet trackers on the market. I haven’t tried it, but PetPace (starting at $160) claims it “continuously analyzes vital signs and behavior from your pet’s smart-sensing collar” and says it “alerts you and your vet immediately at the first sign of trouble.”

The Whistle 3 GPS Pet Tracker & Activity Monitor costs $79.95 plus $9.95 per month or $95.40 a year. The rechargeable battery, according to the company, lasts at least seven days between charges. Like the AKC Link, it tracks your dog’s activities and locates it if it’s lost.

Another option is an object tracker such as the Tile or TrackR. These devices, which are mostly used to track keys and wallets, can also let you know if your dog comes into proximity of another person who uses either a Tile or TrackR. They don’t have built-in GPS but instead rely on a network of users.

There are plenty of other options out there, so before you buy, I suggest you visit Larrysworld.com/dogtrackers for links to articles and reviews of various tracking devices.

Whether or not you use a tracker, be sure that your pet is licensed and has a tag with your name and phone number. Having both dogs and cats wander away in past years, I can tell you that a name tag is a cheap and very reliable way to get your animal back. Also, make  sure you have a picture of your pet, just in case you need to post fliers if the animal gets lost. When it comes to finding lost pets, old-fashioned human kindness is a lot more reliable than Bluetooth, GPS and cellular connectivity.

Paraic Hayes of IDA Ireland

The time around St. Patrick’s Day is a great time to think about the deep ties between the United States and Ireland. And, as Paraic Hayes, head of West Coast operations for IDA Ireland said in this this podcast interview with Larry Magid, the ties extend to business and technology.

For the past week I’ve been using the Samsung Galaxy S9+, which goes on sale Friday. AT&T loaned me a unit to review.

Physically, it looks a lot like its predecessor with its 6.2-inch Gorilla glass screen. But oh what a screen. The 2960 x 1440 pixel Super AMOLED display is gorgeous. Colors pop in ways that I haven’t seen before. Text is crisper and easier to read. Like some previous Galaxy models — the screen wraps around the phone’s body. With the exception of a tiny bezel on the top and bottom, the front of the phone is all screen that even extends to a small slice of the phone’s sides.

At its announcement at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona a couple of weeks ago, Samsung made a big deal that the phone’s camera can capture images in low-light.

Based on my tests, it delivers by switching to a fast f/1.5 aperture when it needs to maximize light. In daylight, the phone switches to its f/2.4 aperture to increase sharpness. I used a darkened windowless bathroom as a testing lab by taking a picture of the sink with the Galaxy S9+ as well as the Google Pixel 2, which also has a highly rated camera.

The difference, though not dramatic, is noticeable.  The Samsung camera got a 99 from DxOMark, a camera testing lab. That’s the highest mark yet for a phone camera, beating out the Pixel 2 by one point.

The camera also supports “fun features” and other gimmicks, such as super slow-motion that works with any moving object captured by the phone’s video camera.

The phone also lets you create an “AR Emoji,” which is a cartoon image of yourself, similar to Apple’s Animoji, introduced with the latest iPhone. Before I tried it, I put this in the gimmick category, but after playing with it, I’ve upgraded it to a fun feature. I love my emoji cartoon, which is a younger and fitter looking version of myself. You can also express your emotions with animated emoji stickers.
Another big plus for the Galaxy S9 is that it retains the standard 3.5 mm headphone jack, which means that you don’t need a wireless Bluetooth headphone or an adapter to listen to music. Apple famously abandoned the headphone jack as have some other phone makers, including Google, which left it out of its newest Pixel 2.

Thankfully, Samsung is finally using a USB C charging port, which is slowly becoming the new standard instead of the microUSB. USB C allow for faster data, more power and are easier to insert. Like Apple’s Lightning jack in newer iPhones, there is no wrong way to insert the plug into the phone.

The phone also has surprisingly good and loud stereo speakers. Normally I cringe when I hear loud music on a phone’s speaker, but these are quite acceptable.
The phone has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 2.8 GHz processor, which is the fastest as far as smartphones go. That may not matter to folks whose phones are already fast enough, but when comparing it with my Pixel 2, I did notice apps loading, and in some cases running, slightly faster.

Like many newer smartphones, Samsung lets you unlock the S9 with your fingerprint and has now moved the fingerprint reader to a convenient spot just below the rear camera. It’s easy to reach and is quick and accurate. The S9 also has an iris scanner which I find problematic. Unlike the face-recognition feature in the iPhone X, it sometimes doesn’t work well with eye glasses or low light conditions. I quickly abandoned using it.

As an experienced Android user, I found the S9 to be easy enough to adapt to, but — as with all Samsung phones — it took me awhile to get used to the differences between Samsung’s implementation and the “pure Android” experience from Google Pixel phones.

Samsung has a very active software team and has distinguished its phones with unique features and user interfaces that make them very versatile but necessarily easier to use. Samsung gives users a lot of choices when it comes to the interface. For example, the navigation bar, by default, appears only if you swipe up from the bottom. But you can double tap a little round dot on the phone’s left side to make it remain in view.

Just like Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft Cortana, Samsung has its own artificial intelligence and voice recognition system that it calls Bixby. One way to activate Bixby is by pressing a dedicated button. Although you can disable that button, you can’t reassign it to other features.

I wish I could re-assign it to activate Google Assistant, which I find to be the best of the various voice-activated AI systems. Having said that, Bixby is better for accessing Google maps while driving. Press the Bixby key and say where you want to drive, and it just brings up the map with the directions. You can change your destination the same way. Most Android phones make you touch the screen two or three times before the voice command turns into driving directions, which can be dangerous at 65 miles an hour.

Though less expensive than the $1,000+ iPhone X, the Galaxy S9 is not cheap. The unlocked S9+ that I tested costs $840 from Samsung and the smaller S9 sells for $720.  Surprisingly, it costs more if you buy it from a carrier, though I wouldn’t be surprised to see some discounts soon.
If you’re in the market for a high-end phone, be sure to consider the Galaxy S9 or S9+. But if you’re even reasonably happy with your existing phone, you might want to wait to see if next year’s flagship phone offers more compelling reasons to upgrade.

Read the full post on Forbes.com

As you may have heard, Facebook has acknowledged that data from Facebook users wound up in the hands of Cambridge Analytica and then to the Trump campaign.

Controlling data accessible to apps

In this case, the culprit was a Facebook app which, like many apps on the service, gathers personal data as a matter of course. And while Facebook may be in the process of tightening its controls over how these apps operate, it remains essential for users to be aware of what apps they’re using and what information they collect.

You can view and control the data apps collect by going to the App Settings page that can can access as follows:

Web: Click on down arrow to the right of your Facebook home page, select settings and select Apps from the left column. That brings up a page for your installed apps. Click on an app to see and edit permissions

Mobile: Click on the 3 horizontal lines (upper right Android and bottom of iOS screen) to bring up the menu and scroll down and click  Account Settings and then Apps. Tap on an app to view and edit its privacy settings.

Facebook has two ways to disable your account. One is reversible and the other is permanent.

You can deactivate an account and then later reactivate it. While it’s deactivated, people can’t see your timeline or search for you, though some information, such as messages you sent, may still be visible.

If you delete your account, it’s gone forever and can not be reactivated. Facebook says that they “delay deletion a few days after it’s requested” and that a deletion request is canceled if you log back into your account during that period. They further say that it can take up to 90 days to delete data stored in backup systems.

To deactivate an account (with option to reactivate later)

1. Click on the down arrow at top left of any page
2. Select Settings
3. Click in the general tab in left column
4. Select Manage Account
5. Scroll down to Deactivate your account
6. Click Decativate your account
7. You are then required to enter your password

To permanently close your account

You need to click here to notify Facebook of your intention to close your account and then select Delete My Account

There have been a lot of news stories about Facebook privacy, including personal information being collected and provided to political campaigns.

Fortunately, there are ways to control your privacy on Facebook but it doesn’t happen automatically. You have to take steps to make it happen.

Unless otherwise noted, these instructions apply to the web. All of these controls are also available on mobile but the actual instructions may be a little different

Controlling audience for your posts

The first thing you need to do is to be sure that your posts are reaching only your desired audience.  You do that on a post-by-post basis through the audience setting on the bottom of each post, just to the left of the Post button. On mobile it will be above your post and just below your name.

If you click on button (it might say Friends or something else) you’ll see several options including Public, Friends, Friends except (you can specify who shouldn’t see it), Only me, specific friends or custom.  This gives you an enormous amount of granular control. You could, for example create a list of friends or family members and send a specific post just to them.

Note that this setting is sticky so it stays in place until you change it. If, for example, you decide to post something to Public, you’ll need to change it back to Friends or whatever you prefer, the next time you post — otherwise that post too will be public.

You can change the privacy of a post at any time.

Activity log

The activity log tells you what you’ve done on Facebook, including what you’ve posted and liked. It’s a great starting point to see if there is content that you should perhaps delete or change its audience by clicking the down arrow just to the right of each activity in your log

You can access your activity log by clicking the down arrow on the top right of each page or clicking View Activity Log inside your cover photo. On a mobile device it’s to the left and below your photograph.

General Privacy Settings

There are some general settings that affect all posts that you can access as follows:

1. Click down arrow on top right of any page
2. Select Settings
3. Select Privacy in the left column of the Settings page

Your Activity

The first option in the Your Activity section is “who can see your future posts,” but note that if you change it when you post, that new setting will remain in effect.

The second option lets you access the Activity Log

The third option lets you limit the audience of past posts that you shared with friends or friends or public. This is a great way to instantly go back and limit the audience on all past posts.

How People Find and Contact You

This section is pretty self-explanatory. It allows you to control things like who can send you friend requests, who can see your friends list, who can look you up via your email address and phone number (keep them as “everyone” if you want to be findable by old friends who have your email address, but restrict it if you’re concerned about people with your email address finding you on Facebook). Finally you get to decide if you want search engines like Google and Bing to link to your profile account. This does not affect Facebook’s internal search function.

Blocking unwanted contact

There are lots of ways to avoid hearing from people, but the most effective — especially if they are going out of their way to bother or stalk you — is to block them. You do this by clicking Blocking in privacy settings.

Your first option is to add a person to the Restricted List so that they will only see what you post to the public or on a mutual friend’s timeline and posts they’re tagged in. They will not see what you post just to friends.

You can also block people completely, which means they will no longer see what you post or be able to tag you or invite you to events. They won’t be able to send you messages. You can always unblock them later by clicking Unblock to the right of their name.

If you scroll down you’ll see other blocking options including blocking messages from certain people, blocking app invites from specific apps, blocking event invites and blocking specific apps from contacting you and getting non-public information about you.

Preventing apps from accessing your information

As you may have heard, Facebook has acknowledged that data from Facebook users wound up in the hands of Cambridge Analytica and then to the Trump campaign.

Controlling data accessible to apps

In this case, the culprit was a Facebook app which, like many apps on the service, gathers personal data as a matter of course. And while Facebook may be in the process of tightening its controls over how these apps operate, it remains essential for users to be aware of what apps they’re using and what information they collect.

You can view and control the data apps collect by going to the App Settings page that can can access as follows:

Web: Click on down arrow to the right of your Facebook home page, select settings and select Apps from the left column. That brings up a page for your installed apps. Click on an app to see and edit permissions

Mobile: Click on the 3 horizontal lines (upper right Android and bottom of iOS screen) to bring up the menu and scroll down and click  Account Settings and then Apps. Tap on an app to view and edit its privacy settings.

You can deactivate an account and then later reactivate it. While it’s deactivated, people can’t see your timeline or search for you, though some information, such as messages you sent, may still be visible.

If you delete your account, it’s gone forever and can not be reactivated. Facebook says that they “delay deletion a few days after it’s requested” and that a deletion request is canceled if you log back into your account during that period. They further say that it can take up to 90 days to delete data stored in backup systems.

To deactivate an account (with option to reactivate later)

1. Click on the down arrow at top left of any page
2. Select Settings
3. Click in the general tab in left column
4. Select Manage Account
5. Scroll down to Deactivate your account
6. Click Decativate your account
7. You are then required to enter your password

To permanently close your account

You need to click here to notify Facebook of your intention to close your account and then select Delete My Account

Facebook Android Messenger and phone records

There was a report that Facebook is collecting phone records from its Android users.  This is based on the fact that the Facebook Messenger Android app and Facebook Lite app give users the option to import phone contacts so that they can easily identify their Facebook friends who are in their contact list. This is a very common practice on many apps. In a blog post, Facebook said that the syncing feature “helps you find and stay connected with the people you care about, and provides you with a better experience across Facebook.” The company said that it never shares this data with third parties.

However, Facebook apparently also accessed logs of actual calls and text by default, according to Ars Technica.

Currently, as you can see from the graphic below, Facebook does ask for permission before syncing your phone contacts and acknowledges that it also uploads “your call and text history.”  The default is off but if you press that big blue button, it gets turned on.

Here is what you see shortly after installing Facebook Messenger on an Android device

According to, Ars Technica Facebook didn’t always give people this option, saying that Facebook’s argument that this has always been opt-in “contradicts the experience of several users who shared their data with Ars.”

Off by default

Whatever the history is, today syncing of phone records is off by default and turned either through settings or by clicking “turn on” in the permission dialog box that comes up when you install the app. Having said that, as you can see from the notice below, the big blue “turn on” button that opts-you in is a lot bigger than the “not now” button. The ability for that feature to capture call and text records, according to Ars Technica, was based on what was possible in an earlier versions of Android (prior Android 4.1 or “Jelly Bean”)— that “also granted Facebook access to call and message logs by default.” The blog said  “the permission structure was changed in the Android API in version 16. But Android applications could bypass this change if they were written to earlier versions of the API (application program interface).

How to make sure you’re not syncing phone data

Facebook has instructions on how to stop your Messenger app from syncing your phone contacts.

by Larry Magid

This post first appeared in the San Jose Mercury News

Last week I wrote about Facebook’s rather complicated privacy settings and, as I said at the time, “I wish it weren’t necessary for me to write this column.”  I actually had two reasons for saying that. One is because I believe that Facebook should turn on more privacy features by default and second, because Facebook makes it too complicated to find and configure your privacy settings.

I’m not sure if Facebook plans to address my first issue but, based on a statement posted Wednesday by Facebook Vice President and Chief Privacy Officer Erin Egan and Ashlie Beringer, vice president and deputy general counsel, the company apparently agrees that “It’s time to make our privacy tools easier to find.”

Egan and Beringer acknowledged that privacy controls are now “spread across nearly 20 different screens,” and pledged to make things a lot easier going forward by making them accessible on a single page.

Some of my friends have announced, on Facebook, their intention to leave the service. I respect their decision and wish them well, but I have no plans to #DeleteFacebook.

My reasons can be summed up in 3Ps: Personal, Professional and Patriotic.

Read more at Forbes.com

The tech industry is facing difficult times right now, punctuated by the tragic shooting at YouTube but also including a “tech backlash” as a result of the practices of some companies.

To be sure, the issues that regulators and indeed many ordinary people have with the likes of Facebook, Google, Amazon and, to a lesser extent, Apple, have nothing to do with Nasim Najafi Aghdam’s shooting spree at YouTube. That was the act of an individual who was apparently angry at Google-owned YouTube because of her perceived inability to adequately monetize the videos she was posting on the service. But it nevertheless rattled Silicon Valley at a time when nerves are justifiably raw for other reasons.

The YouTube shooting also exposed other problems with tech. Shortly after the shooting, Vadim Lavrusik, a product manager at YouTube with more than 41,000 Twitter followers, tweeted “Active shooter at YouTube HQ. Heard shots and saw people running while at my desk. Now barricaded inside a room with coworkers,” but just after that his account was hacked and used to falsely imply that Daniel Keem, or “Keemstar,” a popular YouTube personality was “lost in the shooting.” Keem was not involved in the incident.

But, in addition to this tragedy, the tech industry is also suffering through problems both self-inflicted and undeserved.

One of the self-inflicted problems stems from Facebook’s previous policies of allowing app developers to siphon information from users and their friends. The issue came to light after it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica had improperly obtained information about “50 million” Facebook users that it sold to the Trump campaign. Facebook on Wednesday said it may have been as many as 87 million users. The information, which helped the campaign tailor its targeted ads, came from an app whose developer, according to Facebook, passed information on to Cambridge Analytica in violation of his agreement to use it for research purposes only.

When I first heard the Cambridge Analytica story, I hearkened back to a press event at Facebook on October 21, 2010, when Mark Zuckerberg along with Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist John Doerr, Zynga founder Mark Pincus and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced the $250 million sFund “to invest in entrepreneurs inventing social applications and services.” I’m reminded of this event thanks to Recode’s Kara Swisher who live blogged it and pointed out that “Larry Magid from CBS asked about social responsibility around privacy, especially after the recent controversy around the leaking of Facebook user info to advertisers, via third-party apps companies such as Zynga.” Neither Swisher’s post nor my memory recall how Zuckerberg and the others responded, but I distinctly remember that sinking feeling I had about Facebook turning over personal information to what would eventually be thousands of third-party developers. I rarely take credit for having been prescient, but in this case, my gut feeling was correct.

To its credit, Facebook is finally doing something to rein in these third-party app developers. On Wednesday, the company announced updated “plans to restrict data access on Facebook,” which include several restrictions on how developers can collect user information. These include no longer allowing apps “to ask for access to personal information such as religious or political views, relationship status and details, custom friends lists, education and work history, fitness activity, book reading activity, music listening activity, news reading, video watch activity, and games activity.” On Monday, the company will start displaying a link at the top of people’s News Feed “so they can see what apps they use — and the information they have shared with those apps.” Facebook said that users “will also be able to remove apps that they no longer want.” And the company will tell people if their information was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.

During a press call on Wednesday, Zuckerberg took personal responsibility for letting people down. “We didn’t focus enough on preventing abuse in thinking through how people could use these tools to do harm as well.” He added “we didn’t take a broad enough view of what our responsibility is and that was a huge mistake. It was my mistake.”

Amazon is also having a tough time. There are plenty of good reason to be concerned about potential abuses by Amazon or any other company with enormous market share. And I’m not unsympathetic to President Trump’s concern over its impact on “mom-and-pop retailers.” But the president’s repeated unsubstantiated attacks on the company for taking advantages of tax loopholes and subsidized postal rates are unprecedented, inappropriate and untrue. To begin with, Amazon does collect state sales tax in every state that has a sales tax. There was a time when people in California and other states could save 9 percent or more on sales tax by purchasing from Amazon rather than local merchants, but those days, thankfully, are over. And even though Amazon does get a bulk discount on package delivery from the U.S. Postal Service, that discount is reportedly available to anyone that ships in that quantity. Despite Trump’s claim that the American taxpayer is subsidizing Amazon in the form of low rates, the Post Office says it makes a profit on the deal and, besides, it also says on its website that it “receives NO (emphasis theirs) tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.” Trump’s tweets coincided with a large decline in the value of Amazon stock.

It’s no coincidence that Amazon’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is also the owner of the Washington Post, which has published numerous stories with information that Trump clearly doesn’t like. Calling the Post and other media outlets “fake news” isn’t enough for Trump. He also seems to feel a need to punish Amazon, whose stockholders, in addition to Bezos and other wealthy individuals, include millions of regular people who own the stock in their portfolios or through their pension plans, 401(k)s, mutual funds and other investment instruments.

Disclosure: Larry Magid is CEO of ConnectSafely.org, a nonprofit internet safety organization, that receives financial contributions from Facebook, Google and other technology companies.

The tech industry is facing difficult times right now, punctuated by the tragic shooting at YouTube but also including a “tech backlash” as a result of the practices of some companies.

To be sure, the issues that regulators and indeed many ordinary people have with the likes of Facebook, Google, Amazon and, to a lesser extent, Apple, have nothing to do with Nasim Najafi Aghdam’s shooting spree at YouTube. That was the act of an individual who was apparently angry at Google-owned YouTube because of her perceived inability to adequately monetize the videos she was posting on the service. But it nevertheless rattled Silicon Valley at a time when nerves are justifiably raw for other reasons.

The YouTube shooting also exposed other problems with tech. Shortly after the shooting, Vadim Lavrusik, a product manager at YouTube with more than 41,000 Twitter followers, tweeted “Active shooter at YouTube HQ. Heard shots and saw people running while at my desk. Now barricaded inside a room with coworkers,” but just after that his account was hacked and used to falsely imply that Daniel Keem, or “Keemstar,” a popular YouTube personality was “lost in the shooting.” Keem was not involved in the incident.

But, in addition to this tragedy, the tech industry is also suffering through problems both self-inflicted and undeserved.

Self-inflicted wounds

One of the self-inflicted problems stems from Facebook’s previous policies of allowing app developers to siphon information from users and their friends. The issue came to light after it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica had improperly obtained information about “50 million” Facebook users that it sold to the Trump campaign. Facebook on Wednesday said it may have been as many as 87 million users. The information, which helped the campaign tailor its targeted ads, came from an app whose developer, according to Facebook, passed information on to Cambridge Analytica in violation of his agreement to use it for research purposes only.

When I first heard the Cambridge Analytica story, I hearkened back to a press event at Facebook on October 21, 2010, when Mark Zuckerberg along with Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist John Doerr, Zynga founder Mark Pincus and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced the $250 million sFund “to invest in entrepreneurs inventing social applications and services.”

I’m reminded of this event thanks to Recode’s Kara Swisher, who was with All Things D at the time. During a live blog, she pointed out that “Larry Magid from CBS asked about social responsibility around privacy, especially after the recent controversy around the leaking of Facebook user info to advertisers, via third-party apps companies such as Zynga.” Neither Swisher’s post nor my memory recall how Zuckerberg and the others responded, but I distinctly remember that sinking feeling I had about Facebook turning over personal information to what would eventually be thousands of third-party developers. I rarely take credit for having been prescient, but in this case, my gut feeling was correct.

To its credit, Facebook is finally doing something to rein in these third-party app developers. On Wednesday, the company announced updated “plans to restrict data access on Facebook,” which include several restrictions on how developers can collect user information. These include no longer allowing apps “to ask for access to personal information such as religious or political views, relationship status and details, custom friends lists, education and work history, fitness activity, book reading activity, music listening activity, news reading, video watch activity, and games activity.” On Monday, the company will start displaying a link at the top of people’s News Feed “so they can see what apps they use — and the information they have shared with those apps.” Facebook said that users “will also be able to remove apps that they no longer want.” And the company will tell people if their information was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.

During a press call on Wednesday, Zuckerberg took personal responsibility for letting people down. “We didn’t focus enough on preventing abuse in thinking through how people could use these tools to do harm as well.” He added “we didn’t take a broad enough view of what our responsibility is and that was a huge mistake. It was my mistake.”

Undeserved attack

Amazon is also having a tough time. There are plenty of good reason to be concerned about potential abuses by Amazon or any other company with enormous market share. And I’m not unsympathetic to President Trump’s concern over its impact on “mom-and-pop retailers.” But the president’s repeated unsubstantiated attacks on the company for taking advantages of tax loopholes and subsidized postal rates are unprecedented, inappropriate and untrue. To begin with, Amazon does collect state sales tax in every state that has a sales tax. There was a time when people in California and other states could avoid paying sales tax by purchasing from Amazon rather than local merchants, but those days, thankfully, are over. And even though Amazon does get a bulk discount on package delivery from the U.S. Postal Service, that discount is reportedly available to anyone that ships in that quantity. Despite Trump’s claim that the American taxpayer is subsidizing Amazon in the form of low rates, the Post Office says it makes a profit on the deal and, besides, it also says on its website that it “receives NO (emphasis theirs) tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.” Trump’s tweets coincided with a large decline in the value of Amazon stock.

It’s no coincidence that Amazon’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is also the owner of the Washington Post, which has published numerous stories with information that Trump clearly doesn’t like. Calling the Post and other media outlets “fake news” isn’t enough for Trump. He also seems to feel a need to punish Amazon, whose stockholders, in addition to Bezos and other wealthy individuals, include millions of regular people who own the stock in their portfolios or through their pension plans, 401(k)s, mutual funds and other investment instruments.

Disclosure: Larry Magid is CEO of ConnectSafely.org, a nonprofit internet safety organization, that receives financial contributions from Facebook, Google and other technology companies.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has expressed support for the Honest Ads Act. In a blog post, he wrote “Election interference is a problem that’s bigger than any one platform, and that’s why we support the Honest Ads Act. This will help raise the bar for all political advertising online.”

The Honest Ads Act (full bill) would add transperancy to online advertising. It would require companies to disclose copies of political ads, their buyers and intended audiences as well as what the ads cost. This information would have to remain on file for at least four years.  The Senate version of the bill was sponsored by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota,   Mark Warner, D-Virginia, and John McCain, R-Arizona.

Zuckerberg also described steps Facebook has taken in the wake of the revelations of its platform being used by Russian actors to influence the election.  He wrote:

After we identified Russian interference in the 2016 US elections, we successfully deployed new AI tools leading up to the 2017 French, German, and Alabama Senate special elections that removed tens of thousands of fake accounts.

Earlier this week, we took down a large network of Russian fake accounts that included a Russian news organization.

He also announced additional steps:

• From now on, every advertiser who wants to run political or issue ads will need to be verified. To get verified, advertisers will need to confirm their identity and location.
• We will also label them and advertisers will have to show you who paid for them. We’re starting this in the US and expanding to the rest of the world in the coming months.
• We have also built a tool that lets anyone see all of the ads a page is running.
• We’re also creating a searchable archive of past political ads.
• We will also require people who manage large pages to be verified as well.

The Justice Department today seized the websites of BackPage.com and replaced it with a banner indicating that it has been seized by the government.

Read the full post at Forbes.com

Facebook is in the process of notifying users whether their personal information may have been accessed by Cambridge Analytica.

Starting today, users will see one of two notices. The one on the right will go to people if one or more of their friends used the app This is Your Digital Life,” which passed the information on. The notice on the left will go to other users to help them determine what apps they’ve used and what information those apps may know about them.

As I say in my 50 second CBS News Radio Eye on Tech segment (click below to listen), Mark Zuckerberg said several times during his Senate testimony on Tuesday that Facebook never sells user data to advertisers, but he didn’t explain why that wouldn’t be in Facebook’s business interest.

By keeping the data and selling your eye balls, Facebook can keep the advertisers coming back, making money each time. If they sold your data, it would be a one-time sale and there would be no repeat business. Not selling user data isn’t just ethical, it’s good business.

Listen to Larry’s Eye on Tech segment (click on speaker to unmute)

This post first appeared in the San Jose Mercury News

My first instinct was not to write about Mark Zuckerberg’s two days of testimony before Senate and House committees. Why bother adding to the chorus of wall-to-wall coverage? But, now that the hearings are over, I’ve had a chance to reflect on some of the issues that emerged during those two days.

One nearly obvious observation is that many of the lawmakers who spoke have a hard time understanding how social media, or for that matter the internet, works or the difference between a service’s responsibility to protect private information and a user’s right to disclose anything they want. Another observation is that Zuckerberg, despite being one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, still hasn’t figured out how to truly give users control over their information in a way that’s obvious, easy to implement and fully transparent.

It takes more than a yes or no answer

Let’s start with the fundamentals of social media. During Wednesday’s hearing Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) asked Zuckerberg “Yes or no? Will you commit to changing all the user default settings to minimize to the greatest extent possible the collection and use of users’ data?” adding “I don’t think that’s hard for you to say yes to, unless I’m missing something.”  Zuckerberg responded, “This is a complex issue that I think deserves more than a one-word answer.” But Pallone cut him off and expressed his disappointment, perhaps in part because he and other representatives had only four minutes for their entire exchange with Zuckerberg. I would have preferred fewer questions, longer answers and thoughtful conversations.

What disappointed me was that Pallone’s insistence of a one-word answer prevented me from hearing how Zuckerberg would have responded to this important and complex issue.

Had he responded in full, I suspect he would have explained that the whole purpose of social media is to allow people to share information. If not, why bother calling it “social.” He might have explained that “minimize to the greatest extent possible,” is a rather vague concept. In fact, Facebook could engineer its service to collect nearly no information by default, but it wouldn’t be social media. It would be an information site, like a newspaper or blog. The whole idea of social media is to allow people to express themselves.

The congressman could have responded, “OK, let people express themselves, but don’t collect any personal information,” but that would have violated what Facebook calls its “real name culture,” a principle that Facebook established early on. As an organizational principle, Facebook insists that people identify themselves (with some safety related exceptions) and take responsibility for what they post. I’m not against sites that allow for anonymity — there are legitimate reasons why some people might not want to identify themselves, but such sites are often criticized for making it too easy for people to harass, bully and defame without having to take responsibility. By collecting and sharing each user’s identity, Facebook has done a better job than most at cutting back on these types of offensive posts.

I’m not sure what else Zuckerberg might have said in response to Pallone’s question, but I would have loved to have heard an intelligent discussion about what information collection should be opt-in only and what should be opt-out. I would also like to have heard a conversation about information that a social media company should collect and what tools it should use to protect user data. It’s a well-known fact that Facebook makes its money by presenting highly targeted ads based on who people are and what interests them. That’s fundamental to its business model and not likely to change as long as the service remains free. It’s also true for Google and even partially true for Amazon, which markets products based on user habits and data.

Some members of Congress and some in law enforcement have complained about how some apps, including Facebook-owned WhatsApp, encrypt user data and posts, making it much harder for law enforcement to access that data when solving crimes or fighting terrorism. Encryption is a very good privacy practice, but there are public officials demanding greater privacy and also an end to encryption or a back door to encrypted data. You can’t have it both ways.

Yet there are some things Facebook can and should do to protect user privacy, including changing some of its default settings to require users to opt-in rather than opt-out. For example, by default the “Public,” can see your friends list. That should be more restricted by default, perhaps to “Only me,” which is an option. Another default, “Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile,” should default to no instead of yes.

Facebook could also make privacy settings easier to configure and, of course, needs to follow-up on its commitment to prevent third-party apps from disclosing user data. And it should make controls over data collected for advertising a lot more obvious. The controls are there, but people can’t find them.

Well-meaning but confusing in-line privacy settings

There is one well-meaning privacy setting that I want tweaked. Zuckerberg repeatedly told members of Congress that users have “in-line” controls over the audience for each post. Every time you post, you have the option to specify whether it can be seen by “Public,” or restricted to “Friends,” “Friends except…,” or “Only me.” You can also specify specific friends or create a custom list for this post such as co-workers, family, close friends or any other group.

I love that these settings are available for each post because there are times when you want to share with a small audience and other times when you might want to share with everyone. But one problem, which I suspect very few Congress members know, is that these settings are “sticky,” so, if you usually post to friends only and then decide to make one public post, your default will have changed to public until you change it again. It’s very easy to forget to change back so I can easily see how people might accidentally direct their posts to the wrong audience. There is a place in privacy settings where you can set “Who can see your future posts,” but that setting is automatically changed every time you use the in-line tool to change the audience of a single post. A better solution would be for that setting to remain sticky and for the in-line change to apply only to that one post.

Of course, I would have brought up this issue had I been at the hearing and allowed to speak. But, aside from Zuckerberg, there weren’t any apparent Facebook experts at the hearing nor would the four-minute-per-representative limit have allowed for such an explanation if one had been there. Yes, Facebook needs to be fixed. But so do Congressional hearings.

Disclosure: Larry Magid is CEO of ConnectSafely.org, a non-profit internet safety organization that receives financial support from Facebook and other companies.

Click above for Larry’s CBS News Radio Eye on Tech report about fake news videos

Here’s one more thing to think about when it comes to media literacy.

Not only do we have fake stories and even fake pictures. Now it’s possible to create fake videos like the one below of Barrack Obama talking trash. The video was created by actor and comedian Jordan Peele who mouthed the words that appear to come from the former president’s mouth. Peele’s purpose was to show how it’s now possible to literally put words into someone else’s mouth.

According to The Verge, it’s getting easier to create videos like this thanks to artificial intelligence and some pretty sophisticated new software including a Photo Shop like program for audio that Adobe has reportedly been experimenting with.

Detection tools might be coming but in the mean time…

There are also tools in the works that can spot fake news, making this look a lot like another technology arms race between the fakers and the fake detectors.  In the mean time, it’s up to all of us to use our media literacy skills and ask ourselves if there is something fishy about what we see? Does it seem real? If there is any doubt, do a little research, including checking urban myth sites like Snopes.com and Politifact. You can like Barack Obama or not, but you should know that he doesn’t trash talk in public.