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BBC:
[...] Dr Asakawa is behind early digital Braille innovations and created the world's first practical web-to-speech browser. Those browsers are commonplace these days, but 20 years ago, she gave blind internet users in Japan access to more information than they'd ever had before.
Now she and other technologists are looking to use AI to create tools for visually impaired people.
For example, Dr Asakawa has developed NavCog, a voice-controlled smartphone app that helps blind people navigate complicated indoor locations.
Low-energy Bluetooth beacons are installed roughly every 10m (33ft) to create an indoor map. Sampling data is collected from those beacons to build "fingerprints" of a specific location.
Daredevil should soon be available to help Dr Asakawa with her work.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday December 08 2018, @07:47AM (6 children)
I at first thought that the sequences in which YouTube would play multiple tracks were canned, and so deterministic.
This does not seem to be the case. And I am by now dead _certain_ that YouTube knows my name, email and even my phone number when I use Tor Browser to listen to music videos. (I watch them sometimes, but usually I put Tor Browser in the background to just listen.)
And _how_ did they identify me?
Not a failure at all of Tor, Tor Browser or any of their cipers.
No.
A failure of Operational Security.
Sometimes I don't use Tor.
I've clued in to regularly deleting My Everything from Safari, then using Chrome whenever I do want to stay logged in.
But I've used YouTube enough with Safari or Chrome logged in that YouTube now has a custom playlist _just_ for me.
While I expect Google's playlists _are_ at first deterministic, it will quite cheerfully customize them for you provided it can identify you, then if you consistently start on any of a small set of favorite songs, _especially_ if you search for some other favorite from time to time, YouTube can SuperCookie even Tor Browser!
I Am Doomed.
_We_ Are Doomed.
In other news, I'm doing just fine today, not speaking in tongues in any way. ;-D
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 08 2018, @07:59AM (1 child)
It's offtopic, but I totally agree. I use firefox in private mode 100% from home and yt is constantly recommending videos that I have liked when logged into Google from other locations.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday December 08 2018, @08:35AM
Well, to come back on topic, we can safely say this would not happen to Dr. Asakawa. So she may have something to offer to those who are concerned about privacy on Youtube also...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday December 08 2018, @12:54PM
I think you're working to hard. You may or may not have a supercookie - and if so, you should identify it and delete it. But, fingerprinting exlains it.
I tend to switch between several browsers. The browsers are all hardened. It seems that Youtube still identifies me. All of my browsers are pretty unique. Almost all of my browsers report that I'm using a Linux, unless I've changed the user agent. Add that to geolocation, and Youtube or any other surveillance actor can make a pretty good guess who I am. I can almost hear the AI's murmuring to each other. "How many people in SW Arkansas use any Unix-like OS? And, how many of them refuse cookies? This is the same guy, despite the fact that he doesn't search for the same kind of content. He's trying to trick us."
When I'm using the VPN, it seems to fool Youtube, sometimes.
I hate Youtube's tracking, not only for privacy reasons, but because it creates an echo chamber. I do have my preferred music, and the more accurately Youtube defines my preferences, the more they lock me into seeing the same, or very similar music and videos. I clicked some of those spammy "top ten" videos. It took a long time before Youtube stopped consistently offering me more of those. It's the echo chamber from hell!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 08 2018, @02:03PM
I have multiple with multiple browsers and multiple VPNs.
Supercookies can't survive an OS wipe.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 08 2018, @09:30PM (1 child)
Because TBB's use of Private Mode causes it to retain cookies for the length of the session, and neither the built in Firefox tools, nor other cookie purge tools can look at and delete the private session cookies. When I filed a bug report on this on the torproject website it was closed as 'NOTABUG' because you should start a new identity each time you view a website with cookies. I didn't bother filing a bugreport with Mozilla, but if someone else wants to test this behavior and report it for me, they are welcome to. It should show up on any site that uses cookies after either deleting cookies via built in Firefox cookie purges, or third party tools like the uMatrix periodic cookie flush.
Suffice it to say you are actually safer with non-Private mode and the right set of plugs than with TBB and private mode thanks to both the false sense of anonymity and the opaque retention of identifiable data in places you and your addons can't view, access, or delete.
Be warned, and pass this information along. People using TBB need to be well aware of it.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday December 09 2018, @11:44AM
What is most disturbing is that YouTube always plays the same set of videos in TBB, in Safari with its history pre-cleared as well as in Chrome, in which I only rarely delete my history.
I figure I _might_ defeat YouTube's TBB SuperCookie by starting with a song that while at one time a favorite, has not been so for a number of years.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]