Jason Hong's Confabulations

I just filled out a survey by Pew Internet and Elon College about the future of Internet technologies on well-being. Here are my responses: Our question: Over the next decade, how will changes in digital life impact people’s overall well-being, physically and mentally? Many years ago, the famed Nobel laureate Herb Simon pointed out that "[I]nformation consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention." Simon presciently pointed this out in 1971. However, back then, the challenge was information overload. Today, we now also have organizations that are actively vying for our attention, distracting us with smartphone notifications, highly personalized news, addictive games, Buzzfeed-style headlines, and fake news. These organizations also have a strong incentive to optimize their interaction loops, drawing on techniques from psychology and mass A/B testing to draw us in. Most of the time it's to increase clickthrough...

I was recently honored with Alumni of the Year award from my high school alma mater, the South Carolina Governor's School for Science and Math . For this award, I was also offered some time to give a short speech at this year's commencement ceremonies. Note that the main speaker was Mick Mulvaney , who is Trump's budget director at the Office of Management and Budget. As you might know, Mulvaney is in charge of putting together the proposed US government budget, which essentially cuts... well, pretty much everything except the military . Given that I am a scientist myself, and am an alum of a school for science and math, and would be speaking after someone who is proposing massive cuts to the National Science Foundation, EPA, National Institutes for Health, ARPA-E, Centers for Disease Control, NASA, and more , I felt I had to make a strong case for why science really matters, and to still encourage the graduating seniors that there is hope for the future. And yes, I d...

A journalist asked me about cybersecurity under the Trump administration, whether anything will change. Here are my thoughts. Note that this is just my opinion and does not represent my employers or any of my funders. -------------- I don't expect much to change. President Obama already  made cybersecurity one of his top 10 priorities, and as a result, a lot of the heavy lifting has already started. However, there are still some opportunities for the  next administration . For example: A lot more research funds for longer-term thinking and solutions to big problems. Security today is dominated by the latest data breach, and there isn't enough funding for problems 5-10 years down the road, in particular Internet of Things. Another area that needs longer-term thinking and solutions is foreign countries interfering with elections . It's unclear how much happened this year, but it's only going to get worse. There are a lot of concerns that foreign countries are...

I've been asked by more and more journalists to offer some insights into various aspects of cybersecurity. I figured that since I'm already writing these up, I might as well share them with the public. This one is on ransomware. ------------------ Ransomware is a kind of malware that holds your data hostage. The malware scrambles your data and makes it so that you can't access it, unless you pay a ransom, typically in Bitcoin. It's not really clear if you can recover your data or not. Some people have been able to by paying the ransom, while others have not. Instead, the best thing you can do is to prevent being infected in the first place. Here are some tips for protecting yourself: Don't install any software you weren't expecting to install. A lot of malware and ransomware are designed to trick you into installing them. They might pretend to be anti-virus, or say that you need to update your browser. Don't do it! Be especially careful of email ...

I was just asked to write up some tips for managing privacy on smartphones. I figured this would be generally useful to share with folks on the Internet. 1. Many Android phones track a person's location history. You can check if Google has your location history by logging into your Google account and going to:     https://www.google.com/maps/timeline If you want to turn this feature off, on your smartphone, go to:   Google Settings (app) -> Location -> Location History Or go to:   Settings -> Location -> Google Location History ----------------- 2. You can also choose to opt out of personalized ads. Android phones can share an advertising ID with sites, and this ID can be used to build up a profile of interests. These advertising IDs are just like web browser cookies. If you want to turn this feature off, go to:   Google Settings (app) -> Ads Or go to:   Settings -> Accounts -> Google -> Personal Info & Privacy...

I wrote up a white paper about the cybersecurity issues that we will face as the Internet of Things becomes more common. I discuss issues like physical security, scale, lack of experience by manufacturers, and lack of tools and best practices. One idea I also advance is this pyramid of IoT Devices. At the top tier we will all have a few devices that have a lot of computational horsepower, such as laptops, smartphones, and glasses. In the middle tier we will have dozens of devices that have moderate computational capabilities, but also only require a little bit of our attention. These include TVs, refrigerators, and smart toys. At the bottom tier are hundreds of cheap devices or ones that we are barely aware of. These include RFIDs, smart toilets, digital picture frames, electronic locks, smart meters, cheap environmental sensors, and more. The bottom two tiers are the ones we need to worry about the most. The top tier already has major tech manufacturers wor...

I got a fraud alert on my phone this morning from SMS short code 28107. Is this legitimate? The short story, from what I can tell, is yes. The alert I got was: FREE MSG: Chase Fraud-Did you use card ending xxxx for $xx.xx at INGLES MARKETS on 07/13? If YES reply 1, NO reply 2 In cybersecurity, getting these kinds of alerts is a pretty common kind of scam. Attackers will send out lots of these kinds of SMS and email and try to get you to verify your account, essentially tricking you into sharing sensitive information. If you ever get one of these kinds of alerts, you should try to verify it independently. So I logged into my credit card account and saw that there were several purchases that morning. Looking up the name of the store, it appears to be a chain of grocery stores in North Carolina. Ok so definitely fraud. So I responded with a "1" to the SMS message, and it said that Chase would call when a specialist is available, or call the number on the card. There...