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Facebook's data collecting practices have once again been called into question, after a new report revealed that it "routinely tracked" people who do not use the app. Privacy International analysed 34 apps on the Android mobile operating system with user bases of between 10 and 500 million.
The charity began the study after the scandal surrounding the now defunct London based political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, which was accused of improperly obtaining personal information on behalf of political clients and using it to influence the outcome of the US 2016 presidential election or the UK Brexit referendum.
The Intel Management Engine (ME), also known as the Manageability Engine,[1][2] is an autonomous subsystem that has been incorporated in virtually all of Intel's processorchipsets since 2008.[3][4][1] The subsystem primarily consists of proprietary firmware running on a separate microprocessor that performs tasks during boot-up, while the computer is running, and while it is asleep.[5]As long as the chipset or SoC is connected to current (via battery or power supply), it continues to run even when the system is turned off.[6] Intel claims the ME is required to provide full performance.[7] Its exact workings[8] are largely undocumented[9] and its code is obfuscated using confidential huffman tables stored directly in hardware, so the firmware does not contain the information necessary to decode its contents.[10] Intel's main competitor AMD has incorporated the equivalent AMD Secure Technology (formally called Platform Security Processor) in virtually all of its post-2013 CPUs.[11]
Critics like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and security expert Damien Zammit accused the ME of being a backdoor and a privacy concern.[13][4] Zammit stresses that the ME has full access to memory (without the parent CPU having any knowledge); has full access to the TCP/IP stack and can send and receive network packets independently of the operating system, thus bypassing its firewall.[12]
In the context of criticism of the Intel ME and AMD Secure Technology it has been pointed out that the NSA budget request for 2013 contained a Sigint Enabling Project with the goal to "Insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems, IT systems, …" and it has been conjectured that Intel ME and AMD Secure Technology might be part of that programme.[89]
originally posted by: LookingAtMars
Here we have another corporation tracking us for their financial gain. I am sure they are also sharing the info with the government since the company was started with the help of the C**.
It is bad enough the government tracks and monitors everything but all these corporations doing it for financial gain is just too much.