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Works in progress

Who owns ‘your’ contacts

If you are a doctor, or a politician, or someone in a position of responsibility in a charity, or you are using your personal phone to contact work colleagues or customers, then there are probably contacts on your phone which you hold in trust, but does the fact you hold their information give you the right to give it, without their knowledge or consent, to a third party?

Almost every ‘free’ social media app is financed by selling personal information to advertisers, and when you grant app access to your contacts the owning corporation has access to as much as you know – at the very least phone numbers, but potentially home and work addresses, dates of birth etc. In fact the corporation probably knows a lot more about them than you do, as it knows who else’s contact lists they appear on.

If your contacts include vulnerable people, and, for example they might to more susceptible to poor buying decisions, say people with poor self esteem responding more readily to advertisements for ‘quick fix’ weight loss products.

Note that this does not happen the way a person would think about it, e.g. this person runs a support group, lets target them, but buy an algorithm which takes large amounts of data, profiles people in a more general way, creating groups of people more likely to respond to particular types of message.

The message might not be ‘buy something’ – it could equally well be ‘vote for something’ or ‘protest about (immigration,violence against women, corrupt government,damage to the environment, …)’

If you are an estate agent your contacts list probably contain more people who are about to buy new furniture than if you are, say a farmer.

What are the risks?

Exchanging your personal data for some benefit from a marketeer has a long tradition – and can be mutually beneficial. This can avoid you being bombarded with information on unwanted products, and can also allow a retailer to offer targeted discounts or coupons.

The big datasets of customer information can lead to companies knowing more than they may expect, for example a supermarket knowing a teenage girl was pregnant before her parents did.

There is, I believe, a difference between trading your privacy for some benefit, compared to the personal information of a third party who will not benefit from the arrangement.

What are the options?

Instant messaging is a very useful facility, particularly with the ability to keep in touch with friends or family, or local groups, so is it possible to use Instant Messaging, while not sharing information about other people?

Use a second phone

If a company entrusts it’s employees with customer data, the company should consider the risks and benefits of providing them with a ‘work’ phone and insisting that work and personal contacts must be kept separate. Despite the inconvenience of staff having to carry a ‘work’ and a ‘personal’ phone there is a risk that the companies data will be leaked, via personal use of a proprietary IM app. There is also a risk to the employees privacy (and that of their contacts), if the company backups up contacts from phones to its own systems.

I use an old Android phone, which I only use for WhatsApp, which I do use, reluctantly, as there are people I want to keep in touch with who use it – largely because of the network effect where they have contacts who use it – and so on. As this phone only has contact information for people who are already WhatApp users, it is not giving Meta group any information they do not already hold. This phone also has a XMPP instant messenger app on it – see below – which allows me to forward important messages.

Use an iPhone with iOS18 or over

With iOS 18 it is now possible to allow an app to only have access to a limited subset of your contacts. This is a big improvement over previous versions which, like Android (up to Android 15) only allow, or deny app access to All your contacts – and WhatsApp will not run without Contacts permission.

Use an Internet Standard XMPP Instant Messenger chat app

Unlike WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Viber, Facebook Messenger or other proprietary Instant Messengers there are a wide range of Apps which will talk to each other over XMPP. It is fairly easy to find one (such as Conversations or Snikket) which do not require access to your contacts information.

These can be installed on the same device as a proprietary Instant Messenger, and allow you to communicate with other XMPP users. If you are in an area where the privacy of end users is important then consider making XMPP accounts available to those users who do not have one. With Snikket hosting this has become much easier, as you can rent a simple hosted service from them to try it, with the potential to run your own system if this becomes more cost effective.

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Works in progress

The Future – Feudal or Federal

This is a work in progress, incomplete but published on the Release Early, Release Often principle. Feedback is very much welcomed.

Back in 2012 Bruce Schneier, author of Applied Cryptography and respected security expert, wrote a set of articles on Feudal Security, and The Battle for Power on The Internet, describing how the trend towards channeling all our Internet activity (which is becoming most of our communicating, shopping and learning) through a small number of giant internet companies. He compared this to the way that vassals in medieval times swore allegiance to the barons, who in return mostly provided a degree of protection, but often abused that power.

He said that it was time for governments to establish regulatory frameworks to control the corporations. Unfortunately, in many respects the situation has become worse. Many Internet Giants have revenue greater than the GDP of most countries, so most governments are negotiating from a position of weakness.

The concept that Feudal is the only possible way means that, for example, people wishing to leave WhatsApp due to some scandal or dislike of its policies or market domination, tend to switch, for example to Telegram i.e. leaving one closed system for another.

I like the video explaining the concept of Federated Systems at https://framatube.org/w/9dRFC6Ya11NCVeYKn8ZhiD – particularly as it is on PeerTube – a Federated Video Sharing system.

I hope an Internet of Federated systems can provide almost the same functionality and convenience that the giant monolithic systems can, through the organisations they already belong to.

To make this possible the Free Software community needs to make sure that these alternative systems are readily available to non technical people.

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Uncategorized Works in progress

Producers, Consumers and Intermediaries

This is a work in progress, published in this state, but which needs substantial revision to finish it.

In the real world the things we want as consumers are often supplied by a chain, where some form of intermediary sits between us and the ultimate producer of whatever that thing was, for example

Farm or Factory -> Retailer -> Consumer

Writer -> Publisher -> Reader

Our place in this chain will very according to what we are doing, when a writer buys food, they switch from a producer to a consumer. The ability to specialise accounts for much of human progress, and the intermediary also has an important role and should add value to the process.

Problems in the system tend to come down to abuses of power, usually because one element of the chain has some form of monopoly which prevents, for example shoppers from going to an alternative shop to buy some product, but, for example aggressive negotiations by supermarkets may force farmers into being unable to sell their products are a sustainable price.

Risk and reward

The intermediary is sometimes taking a risk, for example a shop purchases goods, and sells them at a profit, but the profit has to cover the goods which the shop buys and then is unable to sell.

Problems arise if, for any stage in the process, the profits are either excessive in relation to the risk, or fail to cover the risks. In free market theory, competition should prevent this from happening, for example if a shop is making excessive profits, then a competitor will notice an easy profit to be made and move in to undercut the original, profiteering shop.

If this is prevented by some form of monopoly then the system breaks down. Again, in theory, there are markets build around a natural monopoly – for example the supply of utility services to houses. Although an element of competition can be introduced, for example by creating a market in gas intermediaries, the pipework carrying the gas has to be run by a body which is controlled by regulation rather than competition.

Licensing and Copyright management

Publishers, Record Companies, YouTube, CCLI potentially add value by collecting money from people who watch media or listen to music and the artists and musicians who create it.

In the case of YouTube, in general for their advertising supported model, they are not taking money directly, but receiving money from advertisers

The situation becomes complicated in the case of intermediaries (collective rights management) who are not really in the chain, for example PRS for Music – as they do not actually know whose content is actually being used. At least the Public Lending Right tries to match library loans to author remuneration.

For all creative content a major issue is ensuring that revenue generated from that content is distributed appropriately down the chain, from the purchaser through the intermediary they deal with, for example Amazon for Kindle books, then possibly other intermediaries, such as a publisher, and finally the author(s). For a paper book, bought from a high street bookseller, they will have costs, such at rent and rates to pay, which an online seller will not have at the same level, so the purchaser should expect to pay more. It would help someone trying to make ethical decisions on any kind of creative content to have more transparency on where their money is going.