---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <20190807051728.GA1961@telecom.csail.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2019 05:17:28 +0000 From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> Subject: AT&T Is the Latest Phone Company to be Sued for Mishandling Data AT&T is being sued by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for allegedly selling customers' data to third parties for commercial use. By Jessica Messier The company is being sued by the digital activism group Electronic Frontier Foundation on behalf of customers located in California. The suit also pointed to other tech companies, including LocationSmart and Zumigo, for collecting customers' location data and selling it to third parties for commercial use, The Verge says. "Under federal law," the suit continues, "AT&T is bound to secure the sensitive customer information, but has failed to do so," The Verge reports. "The suit also accuses the company of misrepresenting its privacy protections to customers." https://mytechdecisions.com/mobility/att-is-the-latest-phone-company-to-be-sued-for-mishandling-data/ -- Bill Horne (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly) ------------------------------ Message-ID: <20190809150130.GA24584@telecom.csail.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2019 15:01:30 +0000 From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> Subject: Arkansas: Downed line causes traffic problems in Clay County CORNING, Ark. (KAIT) - A downed line in Clay County caused major traffic problems on U.S. Highway 67/62 in Corning. The truck hit a power pole dropping a fiber optic line across the highway. Crews from Entergy, ArDOT and CenturyLink responded to the call. https://www.kait8.com/2019/08/09/downed-line-causes-traffic-problems-clay-county/ -- Bill Horne (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly) ***** Moderator's Note ***** THis might seem like a non-story outside of a town in Arkansas, but it illustrates the increasing and preventable brittleness of our telecom- munications infrastruction. Fiber-optic cables can be put in manholes just like copper cables, so the obvious question is why an alternate cable route was not used for a critical line in a vulnerable location. Bill Horne Moderator ------------------------------ Message-ID: <FD010611-ABF9-4A55-806C-2FF4994D7122@roscom.com> Date: 7 Aug 2019 09:17:36 -0400 From: "Monty Solomon" <monty@roscom.com> Subject: Revealed: Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls Documents, screenshots, and audio obtained by Motherboard show that humans listen to Skype calls made using the app's translation function. By Joseph Cox Contractors working for Microsoft are listening to personal conversations of Skype users conducted through the app's translation service, according to a cache of internal documents, screenshots, and audio recordings obtained by Motherboard. Although Skype's website says that the company may analyze audio of phone calls that a user wants to translate in order to improve the chat platform's services, it does not say some of this analysis will be done by humans. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xweqbq/microsoft-contractors-listen-to-skype-calls ***** Moderator's Note ***** I don't see why this is news: robust mechanized translation has been unobtainium for centuries, and any effort to make it work will require frequent human intervention. Moreover, the reporter's effort to hype the piece by adding "Revealed" to the subject and "personal conversations" to the text is proof that some things never change, least of all the habit of adding fear-words to flogging weak stories. Bill Horne Moderator ------------------------------ ********************************************* End of telecom Digest Sat, 10 Aug 2019