Geekly Update - 27 April 2017

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

About 52% of all website visitors are not humans. But don't worry... the Web hasn't been overrun by cats or Klingons. They're actually bots - software programs that interact with sites without human aid. The annual Imperva Incapsula Bot Traffic Report differentiates between good bots - such as Google’s web-crawling indexing bot - and bad bots that look for vulnerabilities and inject malware.

When Unroll.me was introduced a couple years ago as an easy way to “clean up your inbox,” I was skeptical. What might the company do, if they had access to all my emails? The NY Times reports that the Unroll.me app sifts through its users' messages and receipts, and sells that data to other companies for marketing purposes.

Here's why you need to read privacy policies. Unroll.Me's privacy policy clearly states “we may collect, use, transfer, sell and disclose nonpersonal information for any purpose.” Oh, and by the way, the NY Times privacy policy goes into great detail about the data they collect, (including subscribing and purchasing patterns) and how they use, share, sell, exchange or rent it. Hmmm, no mention of that in the Unroll.Me story.

"I always feel like... somebody's watching me listening to me…" Now it’s audio giant Bose’s turn to be sued for allegedly collecting and selling data about the audio content that users of its smart headphones choose.

A smart lock made in 1680 is a beautiful piece of mechanical engineering that even tells its owner if it’s been unlocked in his absence.

Wikipedia is demanding an apology from Burger King because the fast food chain pulled a fast one by manipulating its own Wikipedia entry to trigger Google Home virtual assistants.

This just in from the "What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" department... Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales wants to start a news organization to fight “fake news.” But he wants to do it by letting the people who donate money to his Wikitribune project choose (and edit) the stories that will be covered. Maybe we should demand an apology from Wikipedia.

Finally, a reason for video games to exist. The violent and popular video game, Grand Theft Auto 5, is being used in simulations to test self-driving cars. Let’s hope the cars don’t pick up GTA drivers’ bad habits.

Met Wes Cherry, who was an intern at Microsoft in 1988. During his dull moments there, he wrote the program that became the first Solitaire game included with Windows. No, he didn’t make a dime for it.

InterContinental Hotels Group now says up to 1,000 of its properties may have exposed guests’ credit card details to hackers, up from “a dozen or so” previously reported. No big deal, they were only off by two orders of magnitude.

Why does Apple employ a guy to make artificial sweat? So it can test wearable devices like the Apple Watch under real world conditions, and hopefully avoid giving customers nasty rashes as FitBit once did.

The Atlantic gives us one of the long reads in which it specializes, this time diving deeply into the turbulent history of Google Books.

Many innocent parties used Megaupload.com to store files that didn’t violate anyone’s copyright, but they have been unable to recover their property from the government’s evidence locker in the past five years. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is asking an appeals court to order the government to devise a way for such people to get their stuff back.

Hasbro has released a bilingual version of Monopoly for anyone interested in brushing up on their Klingon.

Oops! For 13 minutes on April 25, antimalware service Webroot quarantined a folder containing system files essential to Windows’ functioning. It’s not known how many users were locked out of their operating system, but Webroot claims to have over 30 million users worldwide.

Online shopping makes suckers of us all, says The Atlantic, in an exploration of how prices are changed on the fly to be maximize revenues based on customer location, type of device used to shop, and many other factors.

Your thoughts on these topics are welcome. Post your comment or question below...