Flock Uses Overseas Gig Workers to Build Its Surveillance AI

An accidental leak revealed that Flock, which has cameras in thousands of US communities, is using workers in the Philippines to review and classify footage...

Phishing scam takes $950k from DoorDash drivers

A particularly nasty slice of phishing, scamming, and social engineering is responsible for DoorDash drivers losing a group total of around $950k. DoorDash drivers are contractors who pick up food deliveries from stores and restaurants and deliver the products to the customer. A 21 year old man...

An Examination of the Bug Bounty Marketplace

Heres a fascinating report: "Bounty Everything: Hackers and the Making of the Global Bug Marketplace." From a summary: …researchers Ryan Ellis and Yuan Stevens provide a window into the working lives of hackers who participate in “bug bounty” programs­ -- programs that hire hackers to discover an...

Fired by algorithm: The future’s here and it’s a robot wearing a white collar

Black Mirror meets 1984. Imagine that your employer uses a bot to keep track of your “production level.” And when this bot finds that you are an under-performer it fires off a contract-termination mail. Does this sound like the world you live in? Unfortunately, for some people it is. The case...

Gig Workers Being Paid $500 for Payroll Passwords

Fintech startup Argyle, a financial-services platform aimed at gig workers, is working to replace credit scores assigned by bureaus like Equifax. But closer security analysis hints that Argyle could be just the latest incarnation of an ongoing data-collection campaign, paying people to give up...

Amazon Delivery Drivers Hacking Scheduling System

Amazon drivers -- all gig workers who dont work for the company -- are hanging cell phones in trees near Amazon delivery stations, fooling the system into thinking that they are closer than they actually are: The phones in trees seem to serve as master devices that dispatch routes to multiple...