Techmeme: Hashing for privacy in social apps (Matt Gemmell)

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February 12, 2012, 1:10 PM

Top News

Andy Baio / Wired:

The Perpetual, Invisible Window Into Your Gmail Inbox — The other day, I tried out Unroll.me, a clever new service that reads your inbox to let you unsubscribe from mailing lists and other unwanted e-mail flotsam with a single click. — As I was about to connect my Gmail account, my finger hovered over the “Grant access” button.

More: VentureBeat and Boing Boing. Tweets: @dragonflyeye, @waxpancake, @tcarmody and @digiphile

Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:

Apple requests U.S. preliminary injunction against the Samsung Galaxy Nexus based on four high-power patents — Apple has brought a motion in the United States for a preliminary injunction against the Galaxy Nexus, the official Android 4.0 ("Ice Cream Sandwich") lead device developed by Samsung in close cooperation with Google.

Joshua Topolsky / The Verge:

‘Saturday Night Live’ accurately skewers Verizon 4G advertising — Leave it to the writers of NBC's Saturday Night Live to sum up the confusion for average customers over 4G and 3G speeds with this hilarious send-up of Verizon advertising. It's not clear what the pitch is here, but it sounds pretty good to us.

More: Business Insider, 9to5Mac, PhoneArena, WebProNews, GadgeTell and UnleashthePhones. Tweets: @dannysullivan

Matt Gemmell:

Hashing for privacy in social apps — Three days ago, Arun Thampi blogged about his discovery that the Path social networking app uploads the user's entire iPhone address book to its servers. There's been extensive industry media coverage of this, and a new version of Path has been released …

More: Marco.org, Bits, MacStories and Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life

Matt Brian / The Next Web:

Following Path's contact fiasco, Instagram silently adds a contact list access prompt — With Path coming in for some intense criticism last week for uploading a user's entire contact list without their permission, it appears that Instagram has used its most recent update to safeguard itself …

More: MacGazette, PC Magazine and iDownloadBlog.com

Tweets: @mattgemmell, @marcoarment and @marcoarment

Thanks:@m4tt

Graham Cluley / Naked Security:

VIDEO: Boston Police hits back at Anonymous with sarcasm — Is it possible to fight Anonymous? — The movement is proud of saying that an idea can't be arrested or killed, but it seems like the Boston Police Department has thought of one way of fighting back: sarcasm.

More: Techie Buzz, The Boston Globe and Network World. Thanks:@sophoslabs

Henry Blodget / Business Insider:

DEAR TWITTER: Don't Mean To Be Rude, But Maybe It's Time To Hire A Full-Time Product Guy? — It's hard to find anyone anywhere who has anything less-than-glowing to say about Jack Dorsey, the entrepreneur who invented Twitter and another red-hot company called Square and is now Twitter's product guru.

More: parislemon

Drew Olanoff / The Next Web:

Spotify's iOS app gets an update that doubles the stream quality to 320 kbps — Spotify has been a monster success since launching in the US, and one of the best parts about paying for a subscription to the service is being able to listen to music on your mobile devices.

More: Engadget, The Verge and GadgeTell. Thanks:@thatdrew

Nancy Messieh / The Next Web:

Malaysia has reportedly deported a Saudi journalist facing the death penalty for his tweets — Being arrested for a tweet or a Facebook post in the Middle East is certainly nothing new. We've seen activists and journalists questioned, sentenced and imprisoned based on statements made on both social networks.

More: Agence France Presse and Global Voices

Mike Swift / Mercury News:

Google has intriguing plans at the Googleplex — Google (GOOG) is in the midst of more than $120 million in construction projects at its Mountain View headquarters, including work on a series of new or previously secret hardware testing labs that hint at the Internet giant's expanding interest …

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

Big Cuts at Airy Labs, Ex-Employees Blame Management — Airy Labs, an educational gaming startup backed by Google Ventures and others, has eliminated the vast majority of its 20-person staff, leaving only a skeleton crew to keep the company going. — That's what I've been told by former employees …

More: Hack Education. Tweets: @audreywatters

Reuters:

Protests erupt across Europe against web piracy treaty — (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of protesters took part in rallies across Europe on Saturday against an international anti-piracy agreement they fear will curb their freedom to download movies and music for free and encourage Internet surveillance.

More: BBC, WebProNews, USA Today, The Stream and TorrentFreak. See also Mediagazer

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