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Business & Government Intermediate read

Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft Weave a Fiber-Optic Web of Power

To say that Big Tech controls the internet might seem like an exaggeration. Increasingly, in at least one sense, it's literally true: The internet can seem intangible, a post-physical environment where things like viral posts, virtual goods and metaverse concerts just sort of happen. But creating that illusion requires a truly gargantuan -- and quickly-growing -- web of physical connections. Fiber-optic cable, which carries 95% of the world's international internet traffic, links up pretty much all of the world's data centers, those vast server warehouses where the computing happens that transforms all those 1s and 0s into our experience of the internet. Where those fiber-optic connections link up countries across the oceans, they consist almost entirely of cables running underwater -- some 1.3 million kilometers (or more than 800,000 miles) of bundled glass threads that make up the actual, physical international internet. And until recently, the overwhelming majority of the undersea fiber-optic cable being installed was controlled and used by telecommunications companies and governments. Today, that's no longer the case.

Individuals Simple read

Amazon's Alexa Collects More of Your Data Than Any Other Smart Assistant

According to a survey from Reviews.org, Amazon's Alexa collects more data from users than any of the other digital assistants analyzed, which included the Google Assistant, Siri, Bixby, and Cortana.

Individuals Simple read

Lawsuits Accuse Siri, Alexa, and Google of Listening When They're Not Supposed To

On Thursday, a judge ruled that Apple will have to continue fighting a lawsuit brought by users in federal court in California, alleging that the company's voice assistant Siri has improperly recorded private conversations. He ruled that the plaintiffs, who are trying to make the suit a class action case, could continue pursuing claims that Siri turned on unprompted and recorded conversations that it shouldn't have and passed the data along to third parties, therefore violating user privacy. The case is one of several that have been brought against Apple, Google and Amazon that involve allegations of violation of privacy by voice assistants.

[Intermediate] Amazon Looks to Ramp Up Biometric Payments With Promotional Offer

Amazon’s naked payments system is now being used at 50 locations in the US, and the company is looking to get more customers signed up by offering a $10 credit incentive.

The company first unveiled the Amazon One last autumn. It’s essentially a payment terminal with a built-in biometric palm scanner. A customer who links a payment account to their palm biometrics can make a purchase simply by waving their hand over the device.

Business & Government Simple read

Amazon fined €746 million for GDPR privacy violations

Amazon announced that it has been fined 746 million euros for violating the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules on how to process personal data. The notice, buried within the latest SEC filing from Amazon, said the decision was made by the Luxembourg National Commission (CNPD) for Data Protection on July 16. Alongside the fine, Amazon said the decision also imposes "corresponding practice revisions."

[Simple] Fired by Bot at Amazon

Contract drivers say algorithms terminate them by email -- even when they have done nothing wrong: Stephen Normandin spent almost four years racing around Phoenix delivering packages as a contract driver for Amazon.com. Then one day, he received an automated email. The algorithms tracking him had decided he wasn't doing his job properly.

Amazon: How Bezos built his data machine

People love convenience and Amazon has prospered by obsessing about how to anticipate our wants before we’re even aware of them. Here is a very detailed news column on how and why Amazon collects data about you.

Amazon Scooped Up Data from Its Own Sellers to Launch Competing Products

On Wednesday, US Congress was grilling the CEOs of Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon, and examined issues related to GAFA's dominance in the market.
Data was one of the underlying threads in that inquiries.

Ring logs every doorbell press and app action

A BBC data request reveals what data is being stored by the Amazon-owned business about its users.

Amazon: packages move lightning fast; CCPA electrons take months

Requested my personal data from Amazon under the California Consumer Privacy Act. The company that can get me toilet paper within 2 hours takes a month to send me a zip file?