Microposts

Week two in the nephews LEGO Masters challenge was a robot. Meet DocBot 9000, bearing a medicine missile and oxygen tank, and who took me about two hours in a crunchtime just before our weekly call. 😬

Ok, bit of a false alarm. Prompted by Curtis, I built my own testing keyboard and confirmed that it doesn’t get access to text unless it’s the active keyboard. 🤔

The best I can figure is that something knew which store I was at (not difficult, particularly since I use Foursquare) and then, based on profiles of me, knew I’d probably be interested in particular meat snacks (likely correct!)

I’d love to know if anyone knows about the privacy or data sharing of Bitmoji and their iOS keyboard. Despite not using it for months, I believe they are listening to, and probably selling, all data typed on installed devices.

In past, Jessica and I have only referred to a particular jerky brand in person while at Trader Joe’s together. Several days ago, she was waiting in the (longer COVID-19) line while I was outside and mentioned via Apple Messages that she bought “meat snacks”. We talked about a specific brand and that was that. Remember, Apple Messages are end-to-end encrypted, meaning Apple can’t read your chats.

Later that night, I got a banner ad for the brand, which I had never seen before.

The only vector I can guess is that we both have (welp, I used to have) the Bitmoji keyboard installed, which technically has access to all data typed on our phones.

Combine that with later serving a desktop ad to a household using the same IP address as that phone once it had returned home… it’s absolutely possible.

Ad tech. Man.

Concerning the aforementioned LEGO build, I’m pretty happy with this little guy from earlier today. I didn’t dig into my main collection, but now that I’m thinking about building things more often, I may come up with some sort of organizational system…