law

Microsoft seems to pushing Copilot to its Microsoft 365 users for an additional $3 per month unless the users switch to the "classic" plan before the next billing cycle. Leonard French, in his YouTube video, comments on the implications this could have for confidentiality in healthcare, legal and other similar industries. This was prompted after Kathryn Tewson started a thread on Bluesky on the issue after speaking to Microsoft support. She writes:

1. It is impossible to disable Copilot in OneNote, Excel, PowerPoint, or Windows itself.
2. It will not become possible to do so for another month AT THE EARLIEST.
3. While they couldn't be sure, they think it's likely that Copilot ingests organizational data via the systems and applications it's embedded into even when not invoked.
4. They were unable to determine if such ingested data would "bleed over" into files other than those it was sourced from
5. They were very clear that organizational data would not be used to "train foundational models," but couldn't rule out the possibility that it could leave our organization in some way and pass beyond our custody and control.

Wendover Productions along with LegalEagle are suing PayPal in a class-action lawsuit. I first discovered this from Leonard French who reads through the document providing his commentary. At the time of writing this LegalEagle has also uploaded a video addressing the lawsuit which has to do with Honey hijacking referrals from creators as discovered by MegaLag.

The YouTube commenters on all videos pointed out that this was a form of cookie stuffing, which according to Wikipedia:

... is a deceptive tactic in affiliate marketing. In affiliate marketing, individuals (affiliates) are compensated for enticing consumers to buy products through specially crafted URLs that set cookies on users' browsers to track which affiliate referred the user to the site. Affiliates engaging in cookie stuffing use invasive techniques, like pop-up ads, to falsely claim credit for sales they did not facilitate.

The FBI together with eBay went after Shawn Hogan and Brian Dunning for cookie stuffing using the eBay affiliate program where they both pled guilty to a single wire fraud charge.