When the UNESCO creates malware: the Cookie Factory
Officially, “The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialised agency of the United Nations aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, the arts, the sciences, and culture.” In this mad times of mass idiocy, they thought useful of tasking themselves to raise awareness about the potential risk and ethical challenges of AI. It was a stupid idea.
What they’re saying
What do you understand out of the following promotional video? (There’s also a French edition, a Spanish edition, and probably others too.)
Wow, Ad of the Day and no less! Let’s examine their stupid voice-over’s sayings:
Artificial Intelligence is the future. But it’s a coin with two faces. A good one, and an evil one. Both feeding on your personal data, generated by your browsing habits.
Your cookies. This is how you are tracked on the internet. Your identity is served on a silver platter, while you remain completely powerless.
They know everything you know. What you like and what you do. And it’s never enough. Without ethical principles, your privacy is endangered.
This is why, at UNESCO, we are committed to defend your rights. To do so, we created the Cookie Factory. It’s a browser extension that will feed other A.I. with fake data. With keywords and web searches, an A.I. will generate new cookies on your computer to lure tracking algorithms into thinking you’re somebody else. All your cookies, browsing habits and history will be replaced. So you can see how much they know about you.
With the Cookie Factory, become anyone you want by picking any identity of your choice. You can even create your own personal cookie recipe. And roast the system on your own terms.
Download the Cookie Factory extension. And take a bite of freedom.
THIS IS TOTALLY BULLSHIT AND A COMPLETE CRAP!
What people might understand and expect
Many people might understand something along the following lines:
- “Download this and take a bite of freedom?” OK, so this browser extension is supposed to protect my privacy! Cool, I’m gonna install it.
- “Become anyone you want by picking any identity of your choice.” Great, I’ll try to pick a fake identity so the ads that show up despite my ad blockers stop offering me the exact products I just purchased on the Internet!
In brief, some people might think this stupid Cookie Factory extension for Chrome (for UNESCO, there’s no such thing as Firefox) to be a useful extension that would protect their identity the way other browser extensions attempt to do.
BAD JUDGMENT.
What this shit actually is and does
Here’s what it does:
To put it in words:
- No matter that your browser has ad-blocking extensions and that it would normally prevent any pop-up windows, this piece of crap will start 25+ windows of various sizes, shapes, and content, in an animated frenzy that looks like malware!
- These windows will change all the time, in quite a frightening manner that has nothing to do with what they know about you thanks to your cookies!
- While doing so, the user is almost powerless for a couple of minutes, as closing all of these windows is virtually impossible!
- Eventually, the user is allowed to take back the control, but the whole thing is a huge fraud!
Yeah, yeah, I’ve read this description on the very page of the extension, but the power of the ad is more powerful, methinks:
Cookie factory is an entertainment extension.
Discover in a fun way how cookies work while you browse the internet.
This extension is still a shame for UNESCO!
What I hope will happen
Especially in the United States, I hope there will be people to consider this a form of deceptive advertising.
I hope there will be someone to have panicked and to have had some data loss of some kind due to the installing and activating of this extension.
After all, it is deceptive advertising!
It doesn’t feed any A.I. with anything. It doesn’t give you any “bite of freedom”! Given that your popup-blocking and ad-blocking extensions are disabled, and that the frenzy of the dancing windows is unparalleled, it really behaves like malware! Just because there are cookies in your system would never start such a massive attack of pop-up windows!
I hope they’ll get a class-action lawsuit. The UNESCO, the creative agency that created this shit, and everyone else involved in this crappy project.
Oh, and may all of them get hit by colorectal cancer!
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