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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Twitter says it was just an accident that caused the microblogging giant to let advertisers use private information to better target their marketing materials at users.
The social networking giant on Tuesday admitted to an "error" that let advertisers have access to the private information customers had given Twitter in order to place additional security protections on their accounts.
"We recently discovered that when you provided an email address or phone number for safety or security purposes (for example, two-factor authentication) this data may have inadvertently been used for advertising purposes, specifically in our Tailored Audiences and Partner Audiences advertising system," Twitter said.
"When an advertiser uploaded their marketing list, we may have matched people on Twitter to their list based on the email or phone number the Twitter account holder provided for safety and security purposes. This was an error and we apologize."
Twitter assures users that no "personal" information was shared, though we're not sure what Twitter would consider "personal information" if your phone number and email address do not meet the bar.
"We cannot say with certainty how many people were impacted by this, but in an effort to be transparent, we wanted to make everyone aware. No personal data was ever shared externally with our partners or any other third parties," the mea cupa reads.
"As of September 17, we have addressed the issue that allowed this to occur and are no longer using phone numbers or email addresses collected for safety or security purposes for advertising."
[...] Aside from being a violation of privacy and potential legal liability for Twitter, the incident will have the added effect of making users less safe by discouraging them from using phone numbers and email verification as additional levels of security.
All in all, this is a bad look for Twitter that isn't likely to go away any time soon.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 10 2019, @04:11PM (1 child)
Hi
can you please tell us what American or Canadian company (to make it easy--just focus on 2 of the 3 countries located in North America) that actually *do not* overly utilize H1Bs?
i work at a place that laid off thousands and sent most of that work to HCL. they didnt tell the employees that is what was happening, tho, because that looks bad. instead everyone had documentation to do and you want to finally use your vacation time right, then train this helpful guy. one day there was a large meeting and entire floors of the building were cleared out. for a short while the desks were filled with h1b replacements. they just got bussed in. it was almost surreal. they came in after everyone that got kicked were gone.
due to the USA government stuff, the h1bs or as executives call them, experts they couldnt find anywhere else, were mostly eliminated shortly after the employees were. too costly as well i heard, to have someone local and demanding a living wage when so few of them were retained. just long enough to knowledge transfer the already transfered knowledge. because of the h1b thing, it changed tactics and the higher tier jobs that couldnt go to unskilled resources instead were placed in Canada as a "near sourcing effort".
the other jobs are all being done by young Indian men and women that won't deviate from the script because they don't understand what they are doing, and once they do, they leave for a more highly paid job utilizing the skills they picked up from seeing first hand how production systems work. thats what they told me anyway while trying to learn my job.
as for me I am just waiting for my turn to come up. from what i understand, a few people have timed a revenge but chances are if theres a failure it'll get blamed on someone that isnt an executive, so theres no real harm in everything getting ruined.
so yeah what jobs do you know of that could employ holdouts like me? ones that arent nearsourcing in the near future of course.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 10 2019, @06:52PM
Why would a Canadian company need H-1B visas [wikipedia.org]? I don't think it is even possible for a Canadian company to get them, presumably only US employers are eligible.