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The Specter of Snapchat
September 04, 2014
There is a peaceful mutiny swelling in the world of images today, roiling on smartphones, in the pockets of passersby. For now, it travels inconspicuously under the sign of a faceless ghost—that logo for the international communications phenomenon called Snapchat. A leader in ...

The Rise of the Benevolent Data Pillage
September 03, 2014
While alerting the next-of-kin and helping make funeral arrangements are thought to be the primary responsibilities of a person who has recently lost a friend, the deletion of the deceased’s online browsing history has lately earned a place among them. It is one of the kindest ...

The Perpetual Sales Pitch
August 29, 2014
A farmer grows fruit, a carpenter builds a chair. The fruit is fresh or foul, the chair sturdy or flimsy. Either way, the marketplace decides. Relative quality is apparent: the slickest of salesmen will have trouble selling rotten apples if there is decent fruit to be had ...

LinkedIn Will Email Your Exes For You
September 24, 2013
Baffled masses: Don’t say we didn’t warn you. Weeks before news broke that the popular social networking site LinkedIn was being sued by customers for regularly and shamelessly hacking into their customers’ email accounts, Ann Friedman’s sharp piece ...