Throbbing Hive with John Moe: Privacy nightmares all around
by Anna Reed
December 01, 2015
Every Tuesday at 7:30 a.m., John Moe stops into the Morning Show to share the latest news in technology.
This week, John Moe stopped by The Current's Morning Show to talk to Sean McPherson about a VTech data breach and the Facebook wordcloud that he calls "a privacy nightmare".
John says that the VTech data breach, which is focused on children, is "huge, scary and not getting the attention that it needs".
VTech, an electronic and educational toy company for kids, has an app store that was hacked and 5 million accounts were stolen. Passwords, names, secret questions, IP addresses, mailing addresses and photos were all among the data stolen. "This is an example of VTech as a company really falling on its face," he says.
But privacy is not an issue for kids alone. A few weeks ago you might have seen "wordclouds" taking over Facebook - where an app would collect the words most used in any person's statuses. This app came from a South Korean company named Vonvon, who made a stipulation so that when users signed up for the app, they gave the company permission to access IP addresses, age, hometown, photos, etc.
"The message here is especially if it's a company you've never heard of like Vonvon, take the time to read what you're giving permission for," John says.
John Moe co-hosts the podcast Conversation Parade (with Open Mike Eagle) on the Infinite Guest network, and is an author of a number of books, including The Deleted Emails of Hilary Clinton: A Parody and Dear Luke, We Need To Talk, Darth: And Other Pop Culture Correspondences.