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Life hacker: “There’s no shortage of realty sites out there, and there’s not a huge amount to differentiate them—in the end, they’re all built to facilitate property deals.
One of the things they have in common is that they all keep details of properties—including listing photos—online, even years after they are sold, rented, or otherwise taken off the market.
In other words, if your home or apartment has ever been listed for sale or rent, there might still be interior and exterior pictures of it online, as well as other sensitive information such as floor plans. This is all useful information for someone who might want to pose as you, or perhaps pay a call to your home in the middle of the night.
The good news is that you can arrange for the images to be scrubbed from these sites, though it does take a little bit of work. You’ll first need to claim ownership of a property, and then petition to get the relevant details taken down. Here’s how it works for major sites, including the MLS, Zillow, Redfin, and Realtor.”
Screenshots of Everything
The New York Times [unpaywalled]: “Should we trust them? What to Know About A.I. Phones and Computers Apple, Microsoft and Google need more access to our data as they promote new devices that are powered by A.I…In this new paradigm, your Windows computer will take a screenshot of everything you do every few seconds. An iPhone will stitch together information across many apps you use. And an Android phone can listen to a call in real time to alert you to a scam. Is this information you are willing to share? This change has significant implications for our privacy. To provide the new bespoke services, the companies and their devices need more persistent, intimate access to our data than before. In the past, the way we used apps and pulled up files and photos on phones and computers was relatively siloed. A.I. needs an overview to connect the dots between what we do across apps, websites and communications, security experts say. “Do I feel safe giving this information to this company?” Cliff Steinhauer, a director at the National Cybersecurity Alliance, a nonprofit focusing on cybersecurity, said about the companies’ A.I. strategies.
All of this is happening because OpenAI’s ChatGPT upended the tech industry nearly two years ago. Apple, Google, Microsoft and others have since overhauled their product strategies, investing billions in new services under the umbrella term of A.I. They are convinced this new type of computing interface — one that is constantly studying what you are doing to offer assistance — will become indispensable.
The biggest potential security risk with this change stems from a subtle shift happening in the way our new devices work, experts say. Because A.I. can automate complex actions — like scrubbing unwanted objects from a photo — it sometimes requires more computational power than our phones can handle. That means more of our personal data may have to leave our phones to be dealt with elsewhere.
The information is being transmitted to the so-called cloud, a network of servers that are processing the requests. Once information reaches the cloud, it could be seen by others, including company employees, bad actors and government agencies. And while some of our data has always been stored in the cloud, our most deeply personal, intimate data that was once for our eyes only — photos, messages and emails — now may be connected and analyzed by a company on its servers…”
Russian spy satellite reportedly continues suspicious maneuvers.
Slingshot reports that the satellite, which has been in orbit for just over a year, has been positioning itself near several communications satellites in what appears to be an ongoing signals intelligence-gathering mission.
Luch 2’s latest move, flagged by Slingshot’s automated tracking system, was a “large maneuver” on June 23 that would indicate that the satellite is moving towards an Intelsat communications satellite.
Audrey Schaffer, Slingshot’s vice president of strategy and policy, said the company “has had eyes on Luch 2 since it was launched in March 2023, and our machine learning algorithms have predicted its next move.”
The company is forecasting that Luch 2’s next object of interest is the Intelsat 1002 communications satellite.