Fluff

I Am No Fool

This post has no gags in it. Be careful when sending dentist selfies. Facebook had their own ghostbusters. AT&T doesn't know how all that data got there. A 9-year-old wants to go to school.

Endeavorance

Apr 1, 2024 — 5 min read

Please note: there's no humor, jokes or gags in this post, nor is there any April fools gimmick in the video. Please carry on as usual.

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Be Careful Sending Selfies From The Dentist

This is some advice that everyone should be aware of: if you are involved in a large scale drug trafficking operation in the UK, don't text a selfie to your crime partner. Really its grade school stuff, everyone knows that.

Khan Gorgulu (WOW) sent a selfie to (wait for it) Giovanni Spada, his partner in crime. The selfie was of Khan wearing those silly glasses the dentist gives you while they shine a light at your face and shove their fingers in your mouth while asking you questions that require more than a head nod to answer.

Unrelated: I'm not a huge fan of the dentist

So he sends this selfie and he's looking fire sure sure, but then the cops were able to identify him as the other partner once they got to Giovanni.

The two had been smuggling cocaine and weed into the UK, which is profitable given that its the UK and not many people would be able to live there if not for cocaine and weed. Unfortunately for them, they got got, and are both in jail now.

WOW! Facebook Invaded People's Privacy!

Aight so there's a lot of articles about this and most of them bury the absolute hell out of the lede so lemme try to not do that.

Facebook snooped on people's data outside of Facebook itself by recommending that their users install a VPN app on their phone which was owned by Facebook. This VPN channeled ALL network data through Facebook, who could decrypt it and analyze it as they see fit. They are now being sued for this effort, called "Project Ghostbusters," a pretty transparent attempt to spy on Snapchat, among other competitors.

You know all those VPNs that advertise on basically every YouTube channel? Yeah, basically that.

VPNs are important and useful, for certain. But they don't do the things that they often purport to do. Your data is almost exclusively encrypted by default on the web these days. Mobile apps require using HTTPS, as do some browsers now. HTTPS is what gives you that lock icon on the website URL. It means the data to and from the website is fully encrypted.

Your internet service provider can see what websites you're visiting, but they can't analyze the data. Usually. But if a VPN is installed on your device, that gives the VPN developer basically complete control over your internet traffic. The idea is that you'd probably trust a VPN provider more than your ISP, but if that VPN provider is Facebook, then now you've got yourself a situation where you end up in Stuff Keeps Happening. And nobody wants that.

Now That We Know How to Properly Protect Our data… DAMNIT

AT&T has reset PINs/passcodes for nearly 8 million customers after being informed that a hacker has shared a dataset of 73 million customers of AT&T dating back to 2019.

Emphasizing: Tech Crunch, the source of this story, reached out to AT&T and was like "hey bro, there's a massive trove of your customer data online". AT&T's response largely summarizes to "wow weird how did that get there? Uh, we'll take a look."

In 2019, the hacker made the claim that they got ahold of the data. At the time, AT&T said "nope." The company is now saying that according to internal investigation, there's no evidence of the data being stolen, which is weird! Because the data was stolen.

Because of this, AT&T is now like "oh, well maybe it was a 3rd party's fault" as if they aren't responsible for thoroughly vetting the security of vendors they use to manage user data.

The stolen data includes birthdays, addresses, social security numbers and more.

Need For Speed: Pattycakes

A 9 year old led cops on a (very short) car chase in California.

The child—whose name was not shared because they're a literal child but I'm gonna call them Jason Bourne—was reportedly trying to drive themselves to school. A cop saw the car speed off strangely from an intersection and began pursuit. Jason Bourne then made a few turns, pulled into a parking lot, and crashed into the cop car.

I can't believe cops would stop a child who simply wanted to get to school

Bourne is thankfully fine, and the cops reaction was largely confusion. Jason Bourne was escorted to school (which was like, one parking lot over. SO CLOSE!) and probably is gonna be groundedddddd.

According to the cop on the scene, at the end of the chase, Mr. Bourne stuck his little head out of the window and said "I'm sorry, I'm trying to get to school" which is actually heartbreaking. Kid was just tryina get an EDUCATION.