Jimmy Villarreal’s Post

And this surprises... who? Years ago I would do a "demo" on FB's app and website - using basic tools - showing all the things FB was doing in your browser and especially in your phone. Everyone... and I mean every-single-person I showed this to was "shocked and appalled..." Guess how many stopped using it? Zero. Zilch. Nadda. None. Why? No one cares more about the risk than they do about the value the platform offers them. It's just that simple. And until that pivot point changes no amount of law suits, banning of apps, or exposure is going to change anything. In security we talk a lot about risk, which is critically important and core to all your decisions. But what you hear less about, likely because it's quite difficult to measure effectively and is constantly changing, is risk appetite. How humans interpret risk is extraordinarily complex, fluid, and... almost always wrong. And that "how"... the process... is underpinned by risk appetite. I find thoughts like this interesting because it's almost like theoretical physics where there are foundational theories (e.g., general relativity, quantum mechanics, string) that provide these intangible constants, in this case risk appetite, that permeate the entire fabric of our Cybersecurity universe, but are just out of reach. https://lnkd.in/exSzYfQT

https://lnkd.in/g4sCTjAY FTC Order Will Ban NGL Labs and its Founders from Offering Anonymous Messaging Apps to Kids Under 18 and Halt Deceptive Claims Around #AI Content Moderation The Federal Trade Commission and the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office have taken action against NGL Labs, LLC and its co-founders, Raj Vir and Joao Figueiredo. The #lawsuit settlement of $5 million includes a ban on offering their #app to individuals under 18 due to marketing violations and false #claims on content moderation. The complaint also highlights the deceptive tactics used to lure users into paid subscriptions by promising message sender #identities. #endpoint #cloudsecurity #smallbusiness #infosec #bankingindustry #cyber #endpointsecurity #iotsecurity #IoT #UK #cyberawareness #technology #datasecurity #cloud #google #microsoft #windowssecurity #vulnerability #securityawareness #riskmanagement #dataprivacy #infrastructure #globalsecurity #threatintelligence #EU #socialmedia #news #defensivemeasures #knowledgebase #linkedin #networksecurity #vulnerability #internetofthings #FTC #LAAttorneyOffice #TechNews #Legal

What is social media? According to Webster's Dictionary, it entails forms of electronic communication through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content. What are examples of social media? Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, Whatsapp and even LinkedIn. What's the real point of social media? This seems to have less of a straight forward answer. When social media was in its infancy, MySpace was created by employees at marketing firm eUniverse borrowing ideas from Friendster. eUniverse helped promote the new platform, which garnered a lot of support for homepage customization, choosing which seven friends (and Tom) to highlight and allowing bands to upload music. Facebook was created a short time later, initially as a vehicle for comparing the "hotness" of two college students. Eventually it became a platform just for college students, and then everybody. Fast-forward to 2024, and it's a day that ends in "y" and social media is in the news. TikTok has given birth to another dubious trend. The alleged Chase Bank Infinite Free Money glitch fortunately has already ended, at least for new participants. Users thought they were gaming ATMs by submitting fake checks and immediately withdrawing the money when it was instantly added to their account. TikTok posts of people allegedly wielding large wads of bills and celebrating went live. And shortly after, Chase started going after anyone who participated in this "glitch" - a.k.a. check fraud. TikTok has a history of promoting questionable trends. In addition to defrauding Chase, popular trends included asphyxiation with a belt to black out, binge drinking with a special concoction, vandalizing school bathrooms and running through fences on private property. The latter two remain issues for my area on Long Island. The question I pose is this - why do we really use social media? What is the end goal? I joined Facebook in university because it had just unlocked at my school, I received an invitation to join and wanted to explore this new piece of technology. In case I haven't dated myself with that nugget, nearly 20 years later I'm still on the platform, but for a different reason. It's useful to me as a method of communicating with folks who are geographically-estranged. I joined LinkedIn as I finished my Bachelor's degree as I began my first full-time job hunt. Now, I tell myself I'm on the platform to retain professional relationships I've cultivated and to attract new employment opportunities. But is this true? Why bother writing any of this? Why do folks I know "doom scroll" instead of just putting the phone away? Why do some platforms seem to entice users into destructive and/or dangerous behavior? If you escape social media, how do you replace the productive uses it did offer?

I do not know if it's a matter of apathy, lack of ambition, or lack of money, but there should have been a better social media site than everything currently used in the West by now. Faulty AI, complete lack of customer support, and crooked corporate agendas have rendered Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, Discord, and even TikTok worse than useless for many millions of users and have been effectively disenfranchised from the Internet. Even LinkedIn is not entirely immune to this problem. Things like activism, community organizing, entrepreneurship, and basic human connection are being suffocated by the insistence of people and organizations insisting on only ever communicating through a single site or app that may not be usable to everyone. There is even a problem with lack of badly-needed safeguards and security measures that leave users vulnerable to hacking, fraud, and unfair bans. I have a very long memory and can recall when mySpace, YouTube, and Facebook were much safer and more welcoming spaces than they are right now. We have had more than fifteen years to learn from the mistakes made in website and app designs since then and it is about time that at least somebody produced something better. While I am here on LinkedIn, I want to find and partner with someone, form a team even, with the necessary software and development skills to start a new site/service to rival the current social media behemoths. Even BlueSky and Mastodon will not, and never will be, enough. There needs to be something entirely new.

X is making progress in removing it's blocking feature. While I see the validity in the argument "if they want to see your posts they'll just create another profile" (Let's face it, I'm sure we all know of at least one cyber stalking story where this has happened). Does that mean we should just stop allowing people to block in the first place? I'm not so sure, and given the article mentions that app stores require blocking as a functionality, it will be interesting to see how this one plays out. How would you feel if you couldn't block on a social media app? Would it stop you using it? #SocialMedia #X #Twitter

...LAWSUIT Zuckerman v. Meta Platforms, Inc..... A case arguing that Section 230 protects tools that empower people to control what they see on social media. On May 1, 2024, the Knight Institute filed a lawsuit on behalf of Ethan Zuckerman—a professor of public policy, communication, and information at the University of Massachusetts Amherst—asking the court to recognize that Section 230 protects the development of tools that empower social media users to control what they see online. Professor Zuckerman would like to release a tool called Unfollow Everything 2.0, a browser extension that would allow Facebook users to automatically unfollow their friends, groups, and pages, and, in doing so, to effectively turn off their newsfeeds, which Facebook algorithmically sorts to drive user engagement. The tool would also enable people to donate their data to an academic research study that explores how this increased control affects user behavior and well-being. Zuckerman hasn’t released the tool, however, out of fear that Meta will sue him if he does so, as it threatened to do when a U.K.-based developer released a similar tool called Unfollow Everything. The lawsuit asks the court to declare that Section 230 immunizes Zuckerman from civil liability for releasing Unfollow Everything 2.0. In the alternative, it asks the court to declare that the tool does not violate Meta’s Terms of Service, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or California’s Computer Data Access and Fraud Act. Status: Complaint filed on May 1, 2024. Case Information: Zuckerman v. Meta Platforms, No. 3:24-cv-02596 (N.D. Cal.) Source: https://lnkd.in/eay34pKT

I wonder if anybody on LinkedIn would like to help implement a new online authentication method that would guarantee safety and authenticity of any user account because of the rule system I want to replace on most social media people can just make an account and start posting right away that won't be a thing the social media project I am currently working on solo with no money but it's okay I can still do all the coding in the burns and in the back end with the help of modern Ai they will take and fix what I do myself sort of but besides that there are many key factors to this and I would love to discuss with somebody if they would be willing to help fund me I want to take down Facebook I want to take down all the bad social medias and provide a completely safe place for people to post without hate without ridicule without scammers it's different, but I'm different as well so that's why it's probably so different from what everybody else has been used to. there will be community events with people that don't have to worry about paying anything because I'm going to have it running ad-free with crypto in the back end generating tokens for authenticity and the extra tokens be sold to cover the cost of the site there will be a mood board so people can indicate what mood they're in for the day so people will know whether or not to talk to somebody don't have a profile picture don't feel your profile out you're gone ain't going to deal with all these other people that like to make multiple accounts and infring and steal information ain't going to happen there yes I'm using my voice as I talk to my phone so the paragraphs are not coming out and the sentences are a little off I do understand that my writing skills are a little bit lacking and I have some injuries to my extremities which make it a little bit harder than others to sit at a computer and type. severe carpal tunnels left shoulders thrown out right hand's broken you know stuff like that. I'm told to take care of myself but it's kind of hard when I ain't got no way to do it I don't know what else to say then I would really love to fix my life and if anybody would give me the chance to prove to them that I have gotten greatness in me and that I can figure things out at least on the math and science side. but to get back to you the main point five layers of authenticity first they have to register and confirm their email second they have to register a number and then third their ID there's no ID that would be a child account child accounts have to be fostered by their parents they can't just make them we'll keep the 13 year olds and under half of it off of it that's for sure and then freedom more added security and authenticity there will be a algorithm built in for monitoring their habits and their locations and how they normally post so if anybody was to somehow get into their account I would be noticed AI backing I'm already researching back end & front+ 2 own and waiting for testing.

So, if you'll forgive a bit of self-promotion, as I don’t post all that often lately, I recently launched an SMS Spam Blocker app for iOS. For whatever reason, I made some donations to some causes, and especially with the US election coming, I get a lot of spammy and fraudulent messages—12 just today—but not one of them bothered me. I put LLMs to good use and created what I thought would be a synthetic training dataset, but now I'm pretty sure it is actually the source of most US-based text spam…sigh…well, at least I'm fighting fire with fire. With that data I created an on-device text classifier for political, fraudulent, business, job offers, government, and OTP messages with options to allow or block each category. Everything is processed locally, and with a bunch of work, I got the coveted (to me) "Data Not Collected" privacy mark on the App Store. It's 100% free -- why? -- because after years of working on phones and in the tech industry, I felt this was a solvable problem and wondered if I still had the programming chops to do it. Unfortunately, strong incentives don’t exist for Apple, Google, Samsung, telcos, or governments to address this problem properly and most are content enough to make you pay extra to stop the abuse... However, this proves to me that, like many things in technology, people and principles matter. Also, a nice perk of a local approach: it costs me nothing to run, and it's near-instantaneous private processing for you. Win-win! The UI ain't pretty, but it gets the job done. I hope you give it a try and it makes your day just a little bit better. https://lnkd.in/gEqtsWDi

🚨 Breaking News in the Tech World 🚨 🤖 Hey tech wizards, did you hear about the latest online shenanigans? Researchers have uncovered approximately 250 fake ads lurking on our favorite social media platforms Facebook and Instagram! 😱 And guess what? Some are still out there in the wild, pretending to be the real deal. 🧐 💡 Why should we care about these imposters? Well, in the world of cybersecurity, these fake ads are like online ninjas, sneaking around trying to steal your data without you even realizing it. 😈 It's a digital game of hide and seek, and we can't afford to lose! 🔒 🔍 Remember when our tech ancestors warned us about the dangers of cyber threats? It seems like we're still playing the same game, but this time the stakes are higher, and the pretend-play is getting sneakier! 🕵️♂️ Let's channel our inner Sherlock Holmes to uncover these imposters and protect our digital fortresses! 🕵️♀️ 🔮 Predictions for the future? Brace yourselves, my tech-savvy friends, as the battle against fake ads is just heating up! 👾 With technology evolving faster than we can say binary code, we need to stay on our toes and outsmart these online tricksters before they outsmart us. 🚀 📈 Let's join forces, share our knowledge, and keep the tech community safe from these digital pranksters! 💪 Together, we can turn the tables on fake ads and show them who the real automators of solutions are! 💻🛡️ #ainews #automatorsolutions #TechSafety #CyberSecurity #StayVigilant #DigitalDetectives #FakeAdAlert 🚨 #CyberSecurityAINews ----- Original Publish Date: 2024-08-14 10:54

Facebook's #MITM attacks on other social media oligopolists using "nation-state" #hacking. 1. Zuck had a hair-do - we need to see contemporaneous pics of Jen Pasaki to confirm my secret theory that they are one and the same person. 2. Irony. The joins are almost seamless between Facebook and Uncle Sam on the one hand, and Alphabet and Uncle Sam on the other hand, so maybe Langley could just contract out the whole deal. 3. Zuckerberg must have upset someone, because he's personally been fingered in this case: "At the request of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook officials developed a program called In-App Action Panel (IAAP) that they deployed in 2016 and which was in use through mid-2019, according to the documents, which include internal emails." Facebook Chief Operating Officer Javier Olivan wrote that the program could pay users to “let us install a really heavy piece of software (that could even do man in the middle, etc.).” 4. Lavrentiy Beria: "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime." As the AI paragraph always starts, "in today's interconnected world.." there are no secrets. Everything is recorded for future use. #cyberthreats #cyberthreatintelligence #darkwebmonitoring https://lnkd.in/gj-3qms6 and when that link fails https://lnkd.in/ga5puh7D