Goodbye, Hello Barbie: Wireless toy dogged by POODLE SSL hole Mattel's Hello Barbie doll, the Wi-Fi-equipped playmate that talks to its owner and reports back on the conversations to mummy and daddy, has more security problems than first thought – this time on the software side. Last week security researcher Matt Jakubowski found that it was relatively easy to purloin wireless network …
Brilliant! The quote of the decade... (captures all our privacy woes perfectly)...
Whether its Win10 'spyware as a service', Xbox-one's desire for total control... Smart TV's spilling out ads during movies or like smartphones, phoning home with all the data they can hoover up, just to make data slaves of us all ... IOT / CloudFog downtime / hype / data ransoming etc..
Every corporation assumes they have a god-given fatwa-like right to perform holy-jihad on our data... All because, they want to 'connect the planet' for their sweet 'daughter max' so she can get a 'Double Irish' tax write-off!
Competing for $200m in commercial foreign contracts? Come right in, we have the perfect tool for 'the elite', designed for economic espionage against lesser countries, people, organizations and to quell dissent. Meanwhile, self-righteous deluded governments preach 'save the children, help us catch T's'...
Feed the Hackers, they're the ones who are really gaining from all of this! They silently watch as we buy into the rhetoric of our corporate and governmental masters and lock every-barn-door-wide-open. They must be laughing their a$$es off as we robotically feed the data monster and hang ourselves!
When TV programs like 'The 80's' / 'The 90's' etc get made for this era, will they show the naivety of those in power, or the data exploitation by those who really knew this was about 'Manufacturing-consent' for our personal info & freedom?
Sleep-walking to the mother all of privacy meltdowns or the looming privacy apocalypse... Nothing sums it up better than that sweet little line above..
It is possible for children to have privacy and to be able to use their imaginations, supplying their toys with voices and having a cheerful conversation. It' one way children expand how they understand points of view and creativity and all that brain-expanding stuff.
Now we strap them in push chairs and feel responses to their dolls and turn them into passive consumers of technology.
I know this point has been made before, but still.
I agree, even though I would never buy such a toy you have to wonder who chooses the responses? Maybe they agree with my parenting but maybe they don't.
Example questions.
Who is god?
Where do babies come from?
Does the light in the fridge go out when I shut the door?
If I say this statement is false have I created a paradox?
Could be worse. Vtech might bring out a doll. Maybe Facebook (Daddy loves Max?) or even Google. I can't quite imagine Apple (too cheap a market*) or Microsoft (Windows monicker seems hard to apply).
Is the Sindy name available to buy?
[*I think these sell for US$75, they aren't listed here yet]
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