This week, we begin with an article about how researchers studying Covid-19 misinformation on Facebook aren’t provided with enough data & how academics believe in government intervention as the only solution to get transparency. Next, we have a piece on China’s new law to regulate cyberspace that lays conditions & guidelines for organizations collecting personal data. The following article examines Apple’s health app that allows doctors to observe the health data of their patients remotely. Following that, we have an article discussing the importance of decentralization & blockchain in accessing services of the traditional financial world. Next is a piece about a US telecom’s data breach in which no financial information of customers was compromised. Finally, we have an article on incorporating non-financial information to access credit scores and associated issues of bias & privacy in AI.
Why No One Really Knows How Bad Facebook’s Vaccine Misinformation Problem Is
Is Facebook “killing people” by enabling the spread of Covid-19 misinformation, as President Joe Biden said a few weeks ago? Or is the social media company efficiently purging Covid-19 misinformation from its platform and showing millions of people information about where to get vaccinated, as the company argued a day later in its response to the president? Biden partially walked back his comments, but the reality is we simply don’t know the true size or effect of Covid-19 misinformation on Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram.
China Passes New Personal Data Privacy Law, To Take Effect Nov. 1
China’s National People’s Congress on Friday passed a law designed to protect online user data privacy and will implement the policy from Nov. 1, according to state media outlet Xinhua. The law’s passage completes another pillar in the country’s efforts to regulate cyberspace and is expected to add more compliance requirements for companies in the country. China has instructed its tech giants to ensure better secure storage of user data, amid public complaints about mismanagement and misuse which have resulted in user privacy violations.
Pushing Health App Data To Doctors: A Burden Or An Asset?
Soon, Apple announced recently, it will enable doctors to monitor health data from their patients’ phones and watches between visits, part of the push into health care that Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, has declared will constitute the company’s greatest contribution to mankind. Since 2014, health systems around the country have partnered with Apple to tap into the mountains of data the company’s devices generate from patients. But most are still experimenting with these tools. While some doctors appreciate seeing records of home-monitored blood pressure, exercise, and the like between visits, for others the data is more of a burden than an asset.
Traditional Financial Data And The Blockchain Economy
Decentralization has become all the rage in recent years. It started with Bitcoin’s elegant distributed ledger. This spawned a myriad of clones but also some highly innovative rivals. Enter Ethereum a few years later, which allowed decentralized applications to be built on top of the base consensus mechanism. Companies could theoretically build decentralized exchanges, lending protocols, prediction markets and much more. These would allow users to access many of the services of the traditional financial world but in an entirely permissionless way. However, my time as a financial data provider has shown me there are a few roadblocks in the way.
40 Million T-Mobile Customers Hit By US Data Breach
More than 40 million T-Mobile customers have been hit by a US data breach, the company has admitted. It blamed the breach on a “highly sophisticated cyberattack”. It said it is “taking immediate steps to help protect all of the individuals who may be at risk from this cyberattack”. The firm said that while criminals stole personal information, no financial details were leaked as a result. The breach only came to light following online reports last weekend that criminals were attempting to sell a large database containing T-Mobile customer data online. The US telecom giant confirmed that hackers had gained access to its systems on Monday.
Should Your Web History Impact Your Credit Score? The IMF Thinks So
A group of researchers has published a blog post at the International Monetary Fund’s website in which they call for a significant shift in how credit scores are assessed. Instead of being based on traditional metrics, the group believes banks should begin incorporating additional information, including your browser history. The rise of fintech services and cryptocurrencies have changed modern banking in a number of ways, and banks face an increasing number of challenges as various third-party payment processors interpose themselves between financial institutions and their traditional customers.
Source: https://mailchi.mp/zigram/data-asset-weekly-dispatch_23_august_1
