Vast quantities of data on hundreds of thousands of people is being used to construct computer models in an effort to predict child abuse and intervene before it can happen, the Guardian has learned.

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Tracking your phone's gyroscope, scanning your messages and giving your data to third-party companies.

These are just three of the things you agree to when signing up to some tech companies' apps and sites.

BBC research has found some of the language used in privacy policies and terms requires a university education to be understood.

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When Max Schrems, an Austrian privacy activist, requested to see his personal data that Facebook stored on its servers, he was mailed a CD-ROM containing a 1,222-page document.
That file, which would stretch nearly a quarter of a mile if printed and laid end-to-end, offered a glimpse into Facebook's appetite for the private details of its 1.65 billion users.

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Netflix’s rise to being the world’s primary media streaming service was no fluke. It was based on a complex recipe of data manipulation and emotion that means the company knows what you want to watch even before you know yourself.

Vast amounts of personal, behavioural and academic data about children are being collected, processed and used by schools, local authorities, and the government every year.

But a recent review by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in the UK of 50 websites and apps used by children found that only a third had “effective controls in place to limit the collection of personal information from children”.

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A thought provoking article by Graham Brown-Martin - keynote speaker at upcoming digitallyconfidentconference.org

When viewed through the prism of "network capitalism" Facebook's recent acquisition of WhatsApp for $19bn looks like good value.

The consensus is that Facebook acquired the company because it was fearful of losing its grip on the youth market, who favoured mobile communications, to a system that apparently their parents didn't use. And, as a theory has it, with the world shifting to mobile internet it only makes sense for Facebook to demonstrate its chops in the mobile world. This might also account for why it acquired Instagram...

Read the full article here.