Imagine what a criminal-minded AI could have done!

https://www.pcmag.com/news/365155/hackers-made-millions-using-infected-pcs-in-click-fraud-sche

Hackers Made Millions Using Infected PCs in Click Fraud Scheme

On Tuesday, the US Justice Department and Google announced they had shut down the click fraud operation, which was raking in tens of millions of dollars for the hackers behind it.

Dubbed "3ve" (pronounced Eve), the click fraud involved cybercriminals taking over Windows PCs, and secretly automating them to visit certain websites to generate the fake clicks over online ads. The operation was so large that 3ve was able to produce between 3 billion to 12 billion ad clicks per day.

… Kovter was spread via spam email attachments and compromised websites, which tricked victims into downloading fake Chrome, Firefox and Flash updates. An estimated 700,000 Windows computers were actively infected at any given time by the malware.

… In a white paper, both companies wrote that 3ve was "one of the most widespread ad fraud operations ever uncovered." To pull in more revenue, the hackers created thousands of counterfeit webpages of popular domains. Infected computer would then download the fabricated webpages, and engage in the click fraud.

Doing this allowed the hackers to fool advertisers into thinking their ads had been served on the top websites. According to the Justice Department, the scheme was so successful it forced businesses to pay more than $29 million for ads that were never viewed by real human users.

This could be really interesting.

https://www.cnet.com/news/sensitive-facebook-documents-should-be-published-within-next-week/

Sensitive Facebook documents could be published 'within the next week'

… The documents may contain evidence that Facebook knew about the issue as early as 2014.

Parliament seized the documents over the weekend from the founder of app development company Six4Three while he was visiting London.

… A California court, which has had the same documents under seal in the US, has asked Facebook to reassert this week why they should remain sealed.

Auditing is my field. It is good to see Harvard catching up.

Why We Need to Audit Algorithms

… For example, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires that organizations be able to explain their algorithmic decisions. The city of New York recently assembled a task force to study possible biases in algorithmic decision systems. It is reasonable to anticipate that emerging regulations might be met with market pull for services involving algorithmic accountability.

… An auditor should ask other questions, too: Is the algorithm suitably transparent to end-users? Is it likely to be used in a socially acceptable way? Might it produce undesirable psychological effects or inadvertently exploit natural human frailties? Is the algorithm being used for a deceptive purpose? Is there evidence of internal bias or incompetence in its design? Is it adequately reporting how it arrives at its recommendations and indicating its level of confidence?

(Related)

Surveillance cameras equipped with thermal imaging allow police to identify people by their gender, body size and color of their skin

Joe Cadillic writes:

BriefCam’s “Transforming Video into Actionable Intelligence” allows law enforcement and retailers to secretly identify people by their gender, body size, color, direction, speed and more.

BriefCam’s Video Synopsis version V allows police and retail stores to use surveillance cameras to identify individuals and cars in real-time.

“BriefCam is the industry’s leading provider of Video Synopsis® solutions for rapid video review and search, real-time alerting and quantitative video insights. By transforming raw video into actionable intelligence.”

What is really disturbing about the video, is no one knows where it is being used and by whom. BriefCam’s limited disclosures, claim it is being used by top law enforcement agencies and governments but that’s it.

Read more on MassPrivateI.

Perspective.

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2018/11/business/internet-usage-india-future/

The future of the internet is Indian

… As the world's second-largest online population, Indians are bound to have an outsized influence, says Kant. And unlike Chinese internet users, they're using global platforms.

"The largest number of citizens on Twitter will be Indians, the largest number of citizens on Facebook will be Indian," he said.

A Bollywood music label, T-Series, could soon have more subscribers on YouTube than any channel in the world.

Scooter franchises?

https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/27/for-a-small-fee-entrepreneurs-can-now-manage-their-own-fleet-of-bird-e-scooters/

For a small fee, entrepreneurs can now manage their own fleet of Bird e-scooters

Bird announced today that it will sell its electric scooters to entrepreneurs and small business owners, who can then rent them out as part of a new service called Bird Platform.

The company will provide the independent operators with scooters, which they are given free rein to brand as they please, as well as access to the company’s marketplace of chargers and mechanics, in exchange for 20 percent of the cost of each ride.