Twitter reveals unauthorized data use

France24 – AFP, 7 August 2019

Twitter said the error had been corrected and that it was "taking steps to make
sure we don?t make a mistake like this again" AFP/File

Paris (AFP) - The social network Twitter said overnight that user's personal data had been used for advertising purposes, without their consent and despite dedicated settings to counteract such events.

A Twitter statement said the fault was corrected Monday and that an investigation was being conducted to determine how many people had been affected, while advising users to verify their data sharing settings.

The situation involved two cases, the first one arising if users clicked or viewed an advertisement for a mobile application and then interacted with it since May 2018.

"In that case, we may have shared certain data (e.g., country code, if you engaged with the ad and when, information about the ad, etc) with trusted measurement and advertising partners, even if you didn't give us permission to do so," the statement said.

The second case involved Twitter showing people ads "based on inferences we made about the devices you use, even if you did not give us permission to do so," it added.

In that case, data was not used outside the company and did not contain personal information such as passwords or e-mail accounts, according to Twitter.

Twitter apologised for not respecting users' choices, and insisted that it was "taking steps to make sure we don?t make a mistake like this again."

"What is there for you to do? Aside from checking your settings, we don't believe there is anything for you to do," the statement said.

It provided a link to a form that allows users to contact its office of data protection for more information.

The problems arose after Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) took effect in May 2018.

The GDPR binds social media platforms and websites to ensuring they have user's explicit consent to collect personal data for advertising purposes or on behalf of third-party enterprises.

It also obliges companies that have been a victim of personal data loss to alert competent authorities in the country where their European headquarters are located, in this case Ireland, within 48 hours of their discovery, and the people affected as soon as possible.

Samsung Electronics apologises for factory cancer cases

Yahoo – AFP, Jung Hawon, 23 November 2018

Samsung Electronics co-president Kim Ki-nam bows as he makes a formal
apology to victims of work-related diseases in Seoul on November 23, 2018

Samsung Electronics apologised Friday to workers who developed cancer after working at some of its factories, finally ending a decade-long dispute at the world's top chipmaker.

The father of a dead 22-year-old worker and the company's co-president Kim Ki-nam signed a formal settlement agreement in Seoul as other disabled ex-employees looked on.

"We sincerely apologise to the workers who suffered from illness and their families," said the firm's co-president Kim Ki-nam. "We have failed to properly manage health risks at our semiconductor and LCD factories."

Samsung Electronics is the world's biggest mobile phone manufacturer and chipmaker and the flagship subsidiary of the Samsung Group, by far the biggest of the family-controlled conglomerates that dominate the South's economy.

Samsung currently operates vast semiconductor production compounds in Suwon as well as the cities of Hwaseong and Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul, as well as Xian in China.

Campaign groups say that about 240 people have suffered from work-related illnesses after being employed at Samsung semiconductor and display factories, with around 80 of them -- many of them young women -- dying.

Under a deal announced earlier this month, Samsung Electronics will pay the group's employees compensation of up to 150 million won ($133,000) per case.

It covers 16 types of cancer, some other rare illnesses, miscarriages and congenital diseases suffered by the workers' children. Claimants can have worked at plants as far back as 1984.

The scandal emerged in 2007 when former workers at its semiconductor and display factories in Suwon, south of Seoul, and their families said that staff had been diagnosed or died of various forms of cancer.

A series of rulings and decisions by courts, Seoul's state labour welfare agency and a mediation committee followed over more than 10 years, culminating in Friday's announcement.

Factfile on Samsung Electronics, including profit and smartphone market share

Hwang Sang-ki, who signed the agreement on behalf of the workers and their families, told reporters he was glad to have fulfilled his promise to his daughter, who died of leukaemia in 2007, to prove Samsung was to blame for her death.

But he went on: "The apology honestly was not enough for the families of the victims but we will accept it.

"No amount of apology will be enough to heal all the insults, the pain of industrial injuries and the suffering of losing one's family.

"I cannot forget the pain she and our family went through. Too many people have suffered the same fate."

Trade secret

Little is known about possible connections between the production process in the factories and the workers' illnesses, as Samsung has refused to disclose what specific chemical substances it uses, describing the information as a trade secret.

Hwang and other relatives have sought a court order to compel it to release the details.

"Compensation for industrial injury is important, but what's more important is prevention," said Hwang, whose story was made into a movie in 2013.

Samsung has played a key part in the South's rise to become the world's 11th-largest economy, but it is also the focus of resentment over the power and influence of the chaebols and has faced accusations of murky political connections.

Its de facto leader Lee Jae-yong was found guilty of bribing former president Park Geun-hye as part of the corruption scandal that brought her down, and he spent almost a year in prison before most of his convictions were overturned on appeal and he was released.

The cancer scandal is one of the worst instances of industrial injuries in the South, where safety standards sometimes belie its advanced technological status.

Two months ago, two subcontractors were killed in a carbon dioxide leak at Samsung Electronics' Suwon chip plant.

In January, four workers suffocated due to a gas leak at a steel factory owned by Posco -- the country's top steelmaker -- in the southern city of Pohang.

UK spy agency GCHQ offers apology to gay code breakers, including Alan Turing

The UK's eavesdropping agency, GCHQ, has apologized for its ban on homosexuals, particularly in relation to legendary code breaker Alan Turing. The apology came on the same day it officially opened a Twitter account.

Deutsche Welle, 16 May 2016

Monument in Manchester to Alan Turing

The head of the UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has formally apologized for a ban on homosexuals which led to the dismissal and subsequent suicide of one of its best-ever code breakers, Alan Turing, in the 1950s.

Speaking on Monday, Robert Hannigan told a gay rights workplace conference in London that Turing had been an example to others as he had not been afraid to think "differently and radically."

Alan Turing portrait at the National Gallery

"(I want to) say how sorry I am that he and so many others were treated in this way," Hannigan said. "Their suffering was our loss." GCHQ's ban on homosexuals was only lifted in the 1990s. The life of Turing was featured in a recent film with Benedict Cumberbatch "The Imitation Game.'

"To do our job, which is solving some of the hardest technology problems the world faces for security reasons, we need all talents and we need people who dare to think differently and be different," Hannigan said.

While Turing, and other gay men were regarded as security risks by their employers, the UK's domestic spy agency MI5 was recently rated the country's most gay-friendly employer by campaign group Stonewall. Six years ago it was ranked 134 on the index.

A scene from 'The Imitation Game'

Now with an outward presence on Twitter

GCHQ rarely makes public pronouncements and so its entry to the world of social media made Monday a double-first. "We want GCHQ to be more accessible and to help the public understand more about our work," an unnamed spokesperson said. "We also want to reach out to the technical community and add our voice to social media conversations about technology," maths and cyber-security.

The agency's first tweet "Hello, world" came with a background image of its ring-shaped building in Cheltenham, known locally as the "doughnut."

Hello, world. https://t.co/SROtSsE8KB

— GCHQ (@GCHQ) May 16, 2016

GCHQ presented itself as an agency "Where our brightest people bring together intelligence and technology to keep Britain safe."

The US Central Intelligence Agency, which joined Twitter in February 2014 and boasts 1.36 million followers, was concise in its welcome:

Welcome to Twitter @GCHQ! https://t.co/EmD8hGMRBv

— CIA (@CIA) May 16, 2016

Within two hours, GCHQ was testing the mental agility of its 16,300 new Twitter followers with a soccer-doku puzzle based on England and Wales' group in the upcoming Euro 2016 tournament in France:

Try our soccer-doku puzzle, fill in the gaps (3 pts win, 1 draw). Answers: 5pm https://t.co/L19xcgjV22 #MathsMonday pic.twitter.com/MufsT4QYaM

— GCHQ (@GCHQ) May 16, 2016

Others reflected on who the spy agency would follow from its official account, starting with a famous and fictitious operative:

Glad to see @GCHQ new Twitter account is following James Bond @007

— Paul Lewis (@paullewismoney) May 16, 2016

jm/msh (Reuters, AFP)

Related Article:

Britain pardons code-breaking hero Alan Turing over homosexuality conviction

Bloomberg apologizes for crashed terminals after IT meltdown halts London trading

Financial software and data provider Bloomberg has apologized for an IT meltdown which affected its 320,000 users' terminals around the world. A weekly bond sale in London had to be delayed.

Deutsche Welle, 18 April 2015

The whole of the London trading day had passed before Bloomberg could announce the situation had been resolved.

Problems began on Friday morning in London as Asian markets closed and Europe's opened at 8.20 am London time. Trading screens were blank for most of the following two hours. By the time US markets opened, most Bloomberg terminals were back up and running.

Bloomberg's screens are used by traders of government bonds as well as shares and other financial instruments.

The company issued a statement explaining the problem: “We experienced a combination of hardware and software failures in the network, which caused an excessive volume of network traffic."

"This led to customer disconnections as a result of the machines being overwhelmed," Bloomberg explained.

"We discovered the root cause quickly, isolated the faulty hardware, and restarted the software. We are reviewing our multiple redundant systems, which failed to prevent this disruption," the company added.

The US firm said there had not been a cyber attack.

Around 4pm local time in London, Bloomberg tweeted: “Service has been fully restored. We apologise to our customers for the disruption.”

According to Fortune, 320,000 people worldwide use Bloomberg terminals, which cost about $20,000 (18,500 euros) a year. A significant number were affected by the IT problem on Friday.

The UK Debt Management Office postponed its weekly tender of Treasury bills on Friday morning, but was able to carry out the debt sale in the afternoon.

Telephone and Twitter

During the day, as traders were unable to use their terminals, they placed their orders by telephone instead. The volume of trading in German Bund futures during the two hour period when screens were blank was down by about a third compared with the same period in the previous Friday trading sessions. Traders also took to Twitter under the hashtag #bloombergdown:

Maybe it could be a Blockbuster #BloombergDown pic.twitter.com/8KTHconmNp
— Advisory Desk (@advdesk) 17 april 2015

The outage was a signal of how dependent traders have become on Bloomberg terminals, and the 'chat' facility for reaching their clients. It was also an indicator of Bloomberg's dominant place in the trading terminal market.

The Bloomberg data terminals are the center of the business empire that Michael R. Bloomberg founded in 1981. He returned to lead the company last year after serving three terms as mayor of New York City.

Bloomberg has become the world's biggest financial information provider, overtaking rival Reuters. The company is privately held and is not obliged to divulge financial information. In September it said revenue grew to more than $9 billion in 2014.

jm/bw (Reuters, AP)

Pentagon agency's Twitter account deleted for 'poor taste'

Google – AFP, 20 Sep 2013

The logo of social networking website 'Twitter' is displayed on a computer

screen in London on September 11, 2013 (AFP/File, Leon Neal)

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has scrapped the Twitter account of an agency that counters homemade explosives after it posted joking comments about a bombing in the Philippines, officials said Friday.

After explosions at two movie theaters in the Philippines, a staff member at the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Organization (JIEDDO) wrote in a tweet Wednesday that perhaps the cinemas were showing the film "Gigli," a 2003 romantic comedy starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez that flopped at the box office.

"Were they re-showing Gigli? Bomb explosions occur at 2 movie theaters in the Philippines... the IED is a global threat," said the post.

When the posting sparked critical reaction online, the agency tried to make another joke along the same lines. "Bad ppl doing bad thing didn't warrant bad movie reference. Will punish #socialmedia rep by forcing 2 watch Gigli," the agency wrote on its Twitter account.

After more negative reaction on Twitter, JIEDDO issued an apology. "Tweet was in poor taste. We apologize."

Pentagon press secretary George Little then promptly announced in a tweet that he had ordered the suspension of the JIEDDO Twitter account "following inappropriate and offensive tweets."

"Plainly unacceptable," he wrote.

JIEDDO, which was created to combat improvised explosive devices in Iraq and Afghanistan with multi-billion dollar funding, said in a statement Friday those responsible for the tweet "have been appropriately disciplined after an internal review."

The organization "has a policy and procedure in place for selecting and crafting social media posts. That policy was not followed," spokesman David Small said.

"We sincerely apologize for the distasteful comment. Bottomline, there is nothing funny about an IED event."

Apple's Tim Cook says 'I'm sorry' to Chinese customers

BBC News, 1 April 2013

Related Stories 

• Apple gets China copyright fine

Apple has 11 stores in mainland China

Apple boss Tim Cook has apologised to Chinese consumers after state media accused the firm of arrogance and greed and of "throwing its weight around".

A two-week long Chinese media campaign had focused on Apple repair policies.

A statement on Apple's China website said "misunderstandings" may have led to the perception "Apple's attitude was arrogant" towards Chinese customers.

Mr Cook promised to improve the repair policy on the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, and to improve warranty information.

"We are aware that a lack of communications... led to the perception Apple's attitude was arrogant and that we do not care and attach importance to consumer feedback," Mr Cook wrote. "We express our sincere apologies for any concerns or misunderstandings this gave consumers."

Apple said it would enhance communication with Chinese consumers and strengthen oversight of authorised resellers.

State broadcaster CCTV and the state's flagship newspaper, People's Daily, had portrayed Apple as the latest Western company to exploit Chinese citizens.

Last week the paper ran an editorial headlined: "Strike down Apple's incomparable arrogance."

China is Apple's third largest market, with more than 17,000 outlets selling its products in mainland China, including 11 Apple stores and 400 premium resellers.

Earlier this year Mr Cook said he expected China to replace North America as its largest source of revenue.

Kim Dotcom: NZ Prime Minister apologises over unlawful spy operation

The Prime Minister of New Zealand has issued a public apology to Kim Dotcom, the founder of Megaupload.com, for an unlawful wiretapping operation mounted against him by the country's spy agency.

The Telegraph, Reuters, 27 Sep 2012

The founder of Megaupload, Kim Dotcom, a German national also known as Kim
Schmitz, is seen at court in Auckland earlier this year Photo: REUTERS

An official report showed confirmed the breach of privacy rules on Thursday, prompting the apology from John Key and dealing a possible blow to a US bid to extradite Mr Dotcom..

Washington wants the 38-year-old German national, also known as Kim Schmitz, to be sent to the United States to face charges of internet piracy and breaking copyright laws.

Thursday's report by the Inspector-General of Intelligence, the official watchdog for New Zealand spy agencies, found the Government Communications and Security Bureau (GCSB) had spied on Mr Dotcom, despite a law prohibiting it from spying on New Zealand citizens and residents.

The flamboyant Mr Dotcom was granted New Zealand permanent residency status in 2010.

"It is the GCSB's responsibility to act within the law, and it is hugely disappointing that in this case its actions fell outside the law," John Key said in a statement, adding the blunder was the result of "basic errors".

Related Articles

• Kim Dotcom: New Zealand to investigate 'unlawful' wiretapping 24 Sep 2012
• Megaupload found Kim Dotcom 'surrenders' to the US 11 Jul 2012
• Kim Dotcom’s extradition delayed 10 Jul 2012
• Kim Dotcom raid illegal, New Zealand court rules 28 Jun 2012

"They [GCSB] have failed at the lowest hurdle," he added.

"I'm personally disappointed. New Zealanders should be very disappointed."

Mr Key apologised to Mr Dotcom and all New Zealanders, saying they were entitled to be protected by the law and that it had failed them.

New Zealand police asked the GCSB to keep track of Mr Dotcom and his colleagues before a raid in late January on his rented country estate near Auckland, which saw computers and hard drives, works of art, and cars confiscated.

The illegal surveillance may deal another blow to the US extradition case after a New Zealand court ruled in June that search warrants used in the raid on Dotcom's home were illegal.

The raid followed a request by the FBI for the arrest of Dotcom for leading a group that netted $175m since 2005 by allegedly copying and distributing music, films and other copyrighted content without authorisation.

Mr Dotcom maintains that the Megaupload site was no more than an online storage facility, and has accused Hollywood of lobbying the US government to prosecute him.

US authorities are currently appealing a New Zealand court decision that Mr Dotcom should be allowed to see the evidence on which the extradition hearing will be based.

The extradition hearing has been delayed until March 2013.

Related Article:

Megaupload Trial May Never Happen, Judge Says

Facebook removes abortion tips, then restores them

RNW, 2 January 2012, by Marco Hochgemuth 

Rebecca Gomperts (Women on Waves)

Facebook temporarily removed the profile picture of Rebecca Gomperts, the Dutch founder of Women on Waves, an organisation that works to provide women with safe, legal abortions. The image consists of a block of text providing information on how women can self-induce an abortion without the assistance of a doctor. Women on Waves was furious, but media attorney Quinten Kroes said there was little they could do.

Rebecca Gomperts was shocked when she received an email from Facebook informing her that her profile photo had been removed because it violated the website’s terms of use known as the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.

Apology

Meanwhile Facebook has sent her another message, apologising for the removal, and claiming it was an error. Ms Gomperts was given permission to reinstate the image. She assumed that the service's change of mind was prompted by the flood of protests and publicity it had created.

Describing the contentious picture, Rebecca Gomperts said,

“It’s actually a sticker we designed to provide information on how women can safely induce an abortion using a medicine called Misoprostol. The text is based on information and research from the World Health Organisation. So it is really quite safe.”

The English-language text says that to induce a safe abortion women should buy 12 Misoprostol tablets at a pharmacy. They are advised to say the drugs are intended for ‘their granny who has arthritis.’ When the tablets are taken a few hours apart they will induce labour accompanied by abdominal cramps and vaginal bleeding eventually leading to a miscarriage after about 10 hours. Diarrhoea is the most common side-effect. In case of a high fever and severe pain women are advised to see a doctor, who should be told the patient suffered a miscarriage.

Legally unassailable

Women on Waves says the removal of the photograph is in violation of article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - which specifically mentions ‘the right to ... seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media’ – and the European Convention on Human Rights. However, media and privacy lawyer Quinten Kroes says this not entirely true:

“Women on Waves refers to very basic human rights, such as the freedom of expression. These fundamental rights are primarily intended as protection from government interference, which is not what this is about. Facebook has not removed the profile photograph as a result of pressure from any government, but on its own initiative. From that perspective, Facebook could argue its own freedom of expression was at stake here. Facebook cannot be made to spread ideas the company does not support.”

Mr Kroes says Facebook's legal right to remove the text is based on its' extensive and legally unassailable terms of use: “They will undoubtedly include articles granting Facebook the right to remove specific texts because the texts violate certain norms or prompted complaints from other users.”

Men kissing

This is not the first time Facebook has removed photographs from profile pages for alleged terms-of-use violations. Earlier, photographs of partially nude people, works of art involving (too much) nudity and of kissing men fell victim to Facebook’s censorship.

“It really worries me that there should be so much censorship on the internet. Regardless of whether it’s Google or Facebook,” says Rebecca Gomperts, “Because when you no longer know what’s going on, you can also no longer discuss it. That’s what we all should protest against.”

Kroes says leaving Facebook is the only thing users can do to protest against the removal of photographs. And indeed, Ms Gomperts is considering leaving Facebook in favour of its competitor Google+. But that site has just this week become the subject of a fierce discussion on its strict terms of use.

US columnist MG Siegler angrily reported that his profile photograph had been removed because it showed him giving the middle finger. Since then, numerous people in the US have expressed their support by posting photographs on their Google+ profiles in which they make a similar gesture.

Related Article:

Facebook unwelcome in Vietnam, but Zuckerberg OK