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New Software Remembers Everything Your Computer Has Ever Displayed (cnn.com)
A Napster co-founder launched a new software this week which lets you search for anything you've ever looked at on your computer. schwit1 shared this report from CNNMoney:
Atlas Informatics Founder and CEO Jordan Ritter calls the software "a photographic memory for your digital life"... This includes web pages, emails, Slack chats, Netflix films, Spotify songs, or anything else that's appeared in front of your eyes on your screen... You can search by keyword, content type or time, and it displays all related information based on relevancy. For instance, if two documents were open at the same time and you toggled between them, they will both appear whether or not they contain a keyword. Once installed on your hard drive and browser, Atlas Recall runs in the background and begins collecting your activity. The company captures all the content you've looked at and stores it on its servers.
It's encrypted before transmission to the Atlas Cloud servers, though you can block it from capturing data from certain applications, files, and web sites. "The platform wars are over, nobody won, and no one will ever win them again..." Ritter told CNNMoney. "What we want is something that works the way we use our devices and data."
It's encrypted before transmission to the Atlas Cloud servers, though you can block it from capturing data from certain applications, files, and web sites. "The platform wars are over, nobody won, and no one will ever win them again..." Ritter told CNNMoney. "What we want is something that works the way we use our devices and data."
In case I ever become Secretary of State.
Just what I need is gigs upon gigs of ads, spam, and other garbage backed up forever.
These solutions are already common in call centers and regulatory settings.
how convenient. i.e. you're doomed.
which is why governments the world over will immediately require every computer ever delivered to have atlas installed in a non-removable way.
What a splendid use for a wide bandwidth white noise generator.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
"Everything you've ever done on your computer, uploaded to someone else's servers. Huh, huh? "
"That's genius! What could possibly go wrong?"
Does anyone trust any particular cloud-based solution with their lives? Just asking.
Seriously, a "service" to record everything you've done on a computer? And we know how much "encryption" is worth against a FBI subpoena. This is the surveillance state's wet dream: you provide your own noose to hang yourself with.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnÃte homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
As quoted in The Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1896) by Jehiel KÌeeler Hoyt, p. 763
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu
Oh, hey, what a great idea, and absolutely no way this could be used to spy on anyone, no-siree-Bob, can't image anyone at three-letter agencies getting CC'd on the datastream, nope, never happen!
"It's encrypted before transmission to the Atlas Cloud servers"
What could possibly go wrong? I give it $100 billion in valuation.
I bet we can get people to pay us to install a keylogger on their system.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
Put me down for week 20 arrest. Week 25 convict.
For the second week -4. Or if you meant publicly week 75. (unless a presidential candidate or a kardashian uses the service in which case week 40)
Do you think that Atlas will report its own user's first or LEO will request the data first?
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
What we want is something that works the way we use our devices and data.
Recklessly? Blindly? I'm missing something here.
>"It's encrypted before transmission to the Atlas Cloud servers"
Yeah, right. Closed source binary blob program, right? So you just "promise" that it is done a certain way. Sounds a lot like those "wonderful" closed-source password storage databanks, put everything of highest value in it and just hope it actually IS encrypted the whole way and that there are no backdoors, no spyware, no three-letter-agency access, no undiscovered security holes, etc. Some things are better left to yourself.
"Danger, danger Will Robinson..."
If this was an encrypted, local-only archive and search? Sure, I could see some uses for it. I'd make very sure that it was saved to a specific encrypted drive and ensure that *nothing* was allowed to access that drive except for said program, impose a lot of limits on that, too. And when my screen locks or I logoff, the drive gets locked tight and absolutely nothing gets access until I explicitly unlock it again.
But as an online service? Really? Sure, I'll sign up for it... But only when they start paying me for it. If they're going to be merchandising my data (which they will, I'm sure), they'd better be paying me for it. I don't know what info like this is worth to corporations or the government, but it is worth at least $1000 per month to me. And that will be payable in advance, not after wards.
In the mean time, yeah, that's malware. Plain and simple.
Z
Isn't the exact sort of thing that I get paid good money and given generous budgets to make sure it isn't installed?
This isn't solving a problem, it's causing one (as many have said.)
I guess it isn't such an photographic memory, but more an index, isn't it? So it may remember the netflix url, but when netflix is gone, the movie is gone as well.
... why on Earth would I want this?
They claim that all your data is stored on their servers in encrypted form, yet they will be able to search that data - on their servers - for something that you are looking for.
How will they ever achieve that?
The data is encrypted so they don't have themselves access to it, yet, when you want to search something, they apparently have it all indexed for you.
How can they ever index it if they cannot read the data itself?
You have to admire their audacity, though. Why write viruses and trojans if you can just ask people to use your "service" voluntarily? And they actually do sign up for it! Absolutely brilliant idea.
New Software Remembers Everything Your Computer Has Ever Displayed
How does the software remember things my computer has displayed years ago, before the software was even written?
"The company captures all the content you've looked at and stores it on its servers."
Oh, I bet it does, and it'll be 100% secure with absolutely no chance of being hacked, spied on, or modified.
Because no one would ever want to use this for malicious purposes, like planting faked evidence of child porn, bomb-making, death threats, or extramarital affairs.
No, no one would ever want to do that!
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
No need to worry about it accidentally getting installed on any of my computers, which are all linux
*shrug*
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
...sexless reproduction.
I can’t remember anything
Can’t tell if this is true or dream
Deep down inside I feel to scream
This archive service stops me
This is one of the cases where a lack of Linux support is a feature!
Check out their privacy page, where they eventually get around to admitting they have all your data forever.
https://www.atlas.co/privacy-p...
It starts with stuff like:
"
You retain ownership and control of your data.
You can review and remove your digital items from the system at anytime.
You control what the system remembers. You may temporarily pause the system or permanently block by URL, file, application, and more. This excluded content never leaves your computer or phone.
Each digital item remains encrypted at rest and in motion.
"
But what does that really mean? And "encrypted" is only really meaningful if YOU have the key, which obviously, you do not- all the services they offer require that they access your data, after all. When it says you can remove the "digital items", they don't mention if that also removes the DATA. If it were to upload a personal LibreOffice document, what meaning is "digital item"? Is that the combination of my data plus the identifier that lets me see it? Have they provided a legal need to purge the data when I remove the document, or are we just deleting the reference, while the data still chills there? Also note the "block list" is itself a massive deal: the blacklist is a list of things that you DO NOT want transferred. This means that they have a list of things you do not want transferred, should that ever be something that can be used against you, hey, there it is.
Can they snoop through your data? Here's what they say on that:
"however, we do not have access to the contents of the items (documents or files) remembered through Recall beyond the minimum required to operate Recall and its associated services"
Let me translate that: "we have access to the contents of the items (documents and files)". The clause on the back COMPLETELY ELIMINATES the statement on the front.
The "privacy promise" does not appear to be a legal document. I can't find their EULA anywhere, and I will bet ANYTHING that the EULA both (a) doesn't actually have the legal safeguards that would be required to render them liable for breaking their promise and (b) allows them to update the EULA at any goddamned time. Again, I can't find it.
As a note: I wonder what a secure version of this would actually look like. The searching would have to happen on your machine, or a machine you own, and the data could still pass through their server as long as it was encrypted with a key that the owner (you) know, and the server (they) do not. Pretty much every search and voice recognition is doing this crap now, and they never offer an option for someone who runs their own server. I'm sure this is all by design.
Anyway, the big thing is this: anyone who uses this program gets exactly what it looks like, and fully deserves whatever results occur as a result. It is offered as a feature, and anyone who opts in must presumably want this.
...that Slashdot is no longer a site for knowledgeable nerds. No self-respecting nerd would ever in a million years even suggest installing software with security and privacy implications as dire as this carries, not even for a million opportunities to spout relevant buzzwords and hype-generating brandnames from days gone by. Thus we can posit that Slashdot is now a site for the mouth-breathing "nerd" who wants to seem informed without actually knowing anything of what they speak, let alone its implications.
I do believe this is the last time I'll be around these parts. Nice knowing you all!
Seriously, who but an extreme narcissist in urgent need of help would want something like this?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Error: NSE - No Signature Error
satellite and wireless caps are way to low for this to work.
Sneakernet for private homeweb.
A station wagon of memory sticks or hard drives...infinite bandwidth, one way only
Season 1, Episode 3: "The Entire History of You"
In related news, virus writers everywhere are kicking themselves for not thinking of this earlier. "What, you mean I could have got people to *pay me* to install my malicious, devious, dangerous crap? Why oh why didn't somebody tell me that earlier!? I could have made a fortune!" one parasite was hear to mutter.
Before you go, can you link to some of the comments defending it?
local search engines have been good at this for years, if you have at least some keyword to search upon also Everything by Voidtool is superawesome and works locally only who needs this overbloated "cloud" based "unicorn" starup srs
The company captures all the content you've looked at and stores it on its servers.
What could possibly go wrong?
Seriously, no one during the design process stood up and said "are we maybe having a stupid idea here?"
???
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Slashdot isn't suggesting installing it, it is publishing a news article bringing said software to our attention so when the boss asks for Atlas Cloud to be installed everywhere next week, you can immediately tell him he's a moron instead of you having to go out, research it and then come back to tell him he's a moron.
Explanation of why he's a moron is optional.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
This should be installed on all government employees' computers with contents posted immediately on web for public perusal. This would be an appropriate addition to an Open Government Act that has cameras and microphones in every room owned or operated by the federal government, with video readily viewable by the public, so that they can see what their "public servants" are doing for their taxpayer dollars. Let everyone see what these people are up to!
Curso NR 10 online curso NR 10 curso NR 10 online
This sounds like an interesting idea. People have been doing similar things with applications like Evernote for a long time, collecting snippets and sharing them with several devices. This sounds even easier to use, with a few options to aggregate and classify results and, even as off-putting as this idea may be to privacy-minded individuals, there is probably a relatively large demographic of people who would be interested in doing this. That said -- I find their claim to be encrypted and searchable from cloud services (including Google) to be dubious. My understanding is it is simply impossible to have an always-available searchable index that is also encrypted. Does anyone have any insight into what is involved there?