Aardvark Daily

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All your data are belong to us

As I scanned the headlines this morning looking for ideas to act as the genesis of yet another daily column, I noticed something.

We really have reached a point where the paranoia of those in power and the greed of those to whom we are beholding for our online activities has become almost overbearing.

Let me share just a few of the headlines that have jumped out at me.

Let's also lament the loss of those carefree innocent days of our childhood, when we were not assumed to be guilty of anything unless there was good reason and when we could revel in the freedom offered by privacy and anonymity.

Enough of this teary-eyed reflection... back to the world as it is in 2025.

Russia is to enforce location tracking app on all foreigners in Moscow but we kind of expect this sort of paranoia and authoritarian actions in such a country.

Whilst many in the West will be pointing and jeering at the despotic diktats of the Russian authorities they likely forget that exactly the same kind of tracking is taking place in virtually every other country -- only it's far more covert.

If you have a smartphone then your location is being tracked by the likes of Google and your telco every second of every day. When I asked Google's Gemini AI, it told me:

As we well know, any information that Google holds will always be available to governments, even if it takes a subpoena to extract it.

At least the Russians are open about what's going on perhaps.

Whilst on the subject of Google and its prying eyes, the fact that AI chatbots can be tricked into revealing secrets should be a worry to us all.

Google probably knows more about you than any organisation on the face of the planet so, given the way chatbots are often vulnerable to clever manipulation that bypasses their data firewalls, that huge trove of personal data could already be in the hands of third parties with less than honest intentions -- thanks to Gemini.

Forget about the risks of your personal data being lost to cyberattacks, the real problem could be that, given a few carefully crafted prompts, Gemini might spew out a lot of information about you that you'd rather it didn't.

Finally, in another privacy-related story, Microsoft's inclusion of the highly controvertial "Recall" function in Windows 11 has prompted the messaging service Signal to introduce DRM that is designed to sidestep the system.

Any attempt to screenshot a computer whilst it is running Signal will simply result in a black rectangle where potentially sensitive messaging data would otherwise appear.

Good on you Signal -- but why is this even necessary?

Yes, activating Recall is a user-selected option but I dare say that there will soon be malware that turns this feature on behind the scenes and then forwards all the collected screen activity to a bunch of spotty-faced evil little sods or cyber-gang on the other side of the planet.

People often ask me why I don't use a smartphone or run Windows.

I think the reasons are many and obvious, in light of today's column.

Carpe Diem folks!

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