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Professor warns students about exactly how much private information available to them

"I know many students don't understand all of the ways they're being tracked."

Professor warns students of available private information

College is generally a time where kids are feeling much more freedom than they're used to. They're finally able to come and go as they please, stay out as late as they want and sleep in as long as they feel like it without immediately having to answer to a parent. It's a mix of freedom and privacy that nearly every adolescent craves and as long as they do well in classes, no one asks too many questions.

Well, about that privacy, professors are saying not so fast in feeling untethered. Apparently the software used on many college campuses is not just for submitting assignments or downloading readings. After a recent article was published by The Markup titled, He Wanted Privacy. His College Gave Him None. written by Tara García Mathewson, college professor and doctoral candidate Victoria Alexander took to social media to help ring the alarm.

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Photo by Tyler Lastovich on Unsplash

The hardest words to say are, "I'm sorry," but Apple (surprisingly) doesn't have a problem saying them after a whistleblower revealed that human strangers were listening to your private conversations. Apple commendably went a step further and actually fixed the issue that makes it feel like your phone is eavesdropping on you.

The unnamed whistleblower told The Guardian that Siri records conversations as a form of quality control called "grading." The purpose was to allow Apple to improve Siri, but it ended up feeling like one huge privacy violation.

It turns out, Apple's voice assistant could be triggered accidentally, even by muffled background noises or zippers. Once triggered, Siri made audio recordings, some of which included personal discussions about medical information, business deals, and even people having sex. The percentage of people yelling out, "Hey Siri!" while getting it on is probably very small.

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Instagram / Sia Music

Warning: one NSFW photo below.

She's far from the first celebrity to have nude photos leaked online, but Sia's response is certainly unique — and kind of awesome.

On Nov. 6, the pop singer tweeted out a blurred photo of her naked backside with a message: "Someone is apparently trying to sell naked photos of me to my fans. Save your money, here it is for free. Everyday is Christmas!"

It was a brilliant tweet, at once diminishing the photo's value (hard to make money on something that's been sent out for free to 3.2 million people on Twitter) and embracing herself for who she is.

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The future is now! And it's kind of scary.

Amazon's come a long way from being the little online bookstore that could. Now, in addition to delivering your packages, running your smart home features, and telling you what to wear, it may also soon be helping the government track every move you make.

A few items on that list are a little creepy, but it's really that last one that's setting off red flags with people and groups like the ACLU concerned with civil liberties.

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