Monthly Archives: November 2018

Linkedin have changed their privacy settings, making email addresses private to connections. This has arguably increased the privacy and security of users, but may have negative consequences on businesses or recruiters using Linkedin to gain email addresses through connections.

This new setting has been quietly introduced and blocks users from exporting email addresses.Linkedin state: “This is a new setting that gives our members even more control of their email address on LinkedIn. If you take a look at the setting titled ‘Who can download your email’, you’ll see we’ve added a more detailed setting that defaults to the strongest privacy option. Members can choose to change that setting based on their preference. This gives our members control over who can download their email address via a data export.”

The option to show or hide your email address can be changed under Settings & Privacy – Privacy – Who Can See My Email Address? – Allow your connections to download your email [address of user] in their data export?. Significantly the toggle now defaults to No.Most users don’t know this exists because LinkedIn has not widely announced it. That means nearly no one’s email addresses will appear in LinkedIn Archive exports anymore. Your connections will still be able to see your email address if they navigate to your profile, but they can’t grab this from their whole graph.

Facebook came to the same conclusion about restricting email exports when it was in a data portability fight with Google in 2010. Facebook had been encouraging users to import their Gmail contacts, but prohibited users exporting their Friends’ email addresses. Facebook argued that users have ownership of friends email addresses privately, but not those of their Friends solely through Facebook. On a social network like Facebook, preventing email address being exported makes more sense but LinkedIn’s professional network is used differently. Users purposefully connect with those they don’t know to gain professional contacts, and where exporting has always been allowed, making this change subtly could result in some unhappy users.

Microsoft and Apple are working together to resolve iCloud for Windows compatibility issues. This is due to the latest update of Windows 10 in October 2018, where Windows reports that iCloud is “incompatible”. After this update, users of iCloud faced compatibility issues when updating and/or installing.

If users attempted to install the latest version of iCloud, after the new update, Windows presents an error message stating “iCloud for Windows requires Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10 (April 2018 Update) and earlier.” And for those users who already had the app installed prior to the latest Windows 10 update, there are numerous issues with photos syncing and other features.

In a post on its support webpage, Microsoft says it is now temporarily blocking users with the iCloud application already installed from updating to the Windows 10 October 2018 build, to prevent this problem occurring. Additionally, Microsoft says it is working with Apple to “provide a compatible version” of iCloud for users.

For those unfamiliar, Apple’s iCloud for Windows application allows users to access core iCloud functionality from their PC, including photos, email, iCloud Drive files, and more.

Flickr is an image and video hosting service, created in 2004. Since then ownership has been changed several times. Recently, in April 2018, Flickr was taken over by SmugMug.

It has been announced that changes to Flickr free accounts will come into effect next year. Flickr has always offered two types of accounts: Free and Pro. On January 8, 2019 free accounts will be limited to 1000 photos or videos stored, with videos limited to 3 minutes, instead of the previous free allowance of 1 TB of storage with no restrictions. Pro users will now be offered unlimited storage.

From January 8, 2019 members will no longer have access to 1TB of free storage and instead will be offered free storage for 1000 items. Users will then have until February 5, 2019 to remove photos and videos above this amount. On this date, Flickr will automatically delete data over 1000 if users do not subscribe to Pro, with the exception of content that was uploaded with a Creative Commons license before November 1, 2018.

The reason for this change is said to be due to Yahoo providing users 1TB of free storage in 2013 — and this has likely become unsustainable to provide since. Flickr has reported three major points as to why this has had a negative effect, see their press release here.

Flickr have stated a fair logic for choosing 1000 photos or videos to offer free users. Although most products today sell storage in megabytes or gigabytes, calculating how much storage photos or videos consume can be difficult. It is a much easier measurement to count in number of items, similar to their method in 2013 where they offered free users 200 photos. It is definitely a positive to be able to upload high quality pictures without considering space requirements. Lastly, Flickr found that more than 97% of Free members had less than 1000 photos and videos, whilst the majority of Pro users had over 1000 items, and therefore believe they have found a fair benchmark to offer.

Assessing the reasoning, it seems Flickr are keen to show they are a service worth a price to ensure a high quality platform for people interested in photography, although it can be argued there are free users serious about photography who will be disadvantaged by this move.

If you would like to sign up for a Pro account please take advantage of our discount code, which takes 30% off the Pro price, valid until the end of November.
Enter code: FLICKRPRO30

Pro-Brexit campaign group Leave.EU and an insurance company owned by its founder Arron Banks face total fines of £135,000 over breaches of data laws.

This fine was given by the Information Commissioner Office for the misuse of personal data by political campaigns. It has been reported that over a million emails were sent out containing marketing for the Eldon Insurance firm’s GoSkippy services.

Mr Banks attempted to defend himself by stating that “we may have accidentally sent a newsletter to customers” but there was “no evidence of a grand data conspiracy”. He also reportedly added “Gosh, we communicated with our supporters and offered them a 10% Brexit discount after the vote! So what?”.

Since the EU in a referendum in June 2016 there have been several investigations assessing how the different campaigns were run, including into how they were funded and how they used personal data. The ICO said this had been the “most complex data protection investigation” it had ever carried out, through which they had uncovered a “disturbing disregard for voters’ personal privacy”.

Elsewhere in the report, it highlights what it says is the close relationship between Leave.EU and Eldon Insurance. Both organisations face fines of £60,000 for emails which breached data laws. It also imposed a £15,000 fine for a separate “serious” breach after a Leave.EU newsletter was sent to more than 319,000 email addresses on Eldon’s customer database.

The use of personal data to target political messages has to be transparent and lawful. It has been shown that personal privacy rights have been compromised. Misuse of personal information threatens the integrity of an election process and results in uncertainty as to whether individuals were unknowingly influenced to vote a certain way in the UK EU referendum.