Edison Festival parade lights up Fort Myers with floats and bandsCharlotte County Sheriff’s Office investigating shooting in Punta Gorda
FORT MYERS Edison Festival parade lights up Fort Myers with floats and bands The Edison Festival parade was a spectacle of lights and sounds, drawing crowds to celebrate the legacy of Thomas Edison.
PUNTA GORDA Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office investigating shooting in Punta Gorda The Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office is investigating a road rage/shooting in the Punta Gorda area on Saturday night.
CAPE CORAL Goth Gala for the Forlorn; How the alt scene honored Valentine’s Day Love Your Rebellion hosted the Goth Gala for the Forlorn at Nice Guys Pizza in Cape Coral on Friday night.
FORT MYERS Fort Myers gears up for Edison Festival parade; road closures in place Downtown Fort Myers is buzzing with excitement as the Edison Festival of Light Parade is set to begin.
the weather authority Near-record heat with sun and clouds for your Saturday The Weather Authority says the above-normal temperatures that Southwest Florida has been experiencing will stick around yet again for Saturday.
LEE COUNTY Savannah Bananas bring fun on the diamond at JetBlue Park The Savannah Bananas amazed and entertained a sold out JetBlue Park Friday night for the first time in Southwest Florida.
CAPE CORAL Caught on Camera: Cape Coral mailbox hit by drifting car A Cape Coral homeowner was left in shock after a car sent her mailbox flying through the air and left tire tracks next to her home.
ARCADIA DeSoto County man sentenced for deadly DUI crash Justice for a mother and son killed by a man driving under the influence.
NAPLES Oldest Black-owned business in SWFL continues to serve community Cleveland Bass Movers, founded in 1969, stands as the oldest Black-owned business in Southwest Florida.
FORT MYERS BEACH Broken gate on Lovers Key Beach Resort frustrating residents Residents of Lover’s Key Beach Club in Fort Myers Beach are frustrated with a gate that remains wide open, despite “No Trespassing” signs, since Hurricane Ian struck two years ago.
St. James City Church plans $700k flood-proofing project for future safety Hurricanes have caused flood after flood, and one island church, The First Baptist Church of Saint James City, wants to build higher.
Romance scams rise in the US, AARP warns residents to beware Romance scams are on the rise, with the Federal Trade Commission reporting over 64,000 cases in the U.S. in 2023.
Fort Myers Savannah Bananas make their way to Fort Myers for first time The Savannah Bananas have made their way to JetBlue Park for Friday’s sold-out game in Fort Myers to watch “the greatest show in sports.”
CAPE CORAL Cape Coral Yacht Club receives key permit Cape Coral received a key permit for a Yacht Club Community Park. This permit opens up the necessary steps for the park to be built.
PORT CHARLOTTE Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church holds 31st annual Greek Fest The Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church of Port Charlotte kicked off its 31st annual Greek Fest on Friday.
FORT MYERS Edison Festival parade lights up Fort Myers with floats and bands The Edison Festival parade was a spectacle of lights and sounds, drawing crowds to celebrate the legacy of Thomas Edison.
PUNTA GORDA Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office investigating shooting in Punta Gorda The Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office is investigating a road rage/shooting in the Punta Gorda area on Saturday night.
CAPE CORAL Goth Gala for the Forlorn; How the alt scene honored Valentine’s Day Love Your Rebellion hosted the Goth Gala for the Forlorn at Nice Guys Pizza in Cape Coral on Friday night.
FORT MYERS Fort Myers gears up for Edison Festival parade; road closures in place Downtown Fort Myers is buzzing with excitement as the Edison Festival of Light Parade is set to begin.
the weather authority Near-record heat with sun and clouds for your Saturday The Weather Authority says the above-normal temperatures that Southwest Florida has been experiencing will stick around yet again for Saturday.
LEE COUNTY Savannah Bananas bring fun on the diamond at JetBlue Park The Savannah Bananas amazed and entertained a sold out JetBlue Park Friday night for the first time in Southwest Florida.
CAPE CORAL Caught on Camera: Cape Coral mailbox hit by drifting car A Cape Coral homeowner was left in shock after a car sent her mailbox flying through the air and left tire tracks next to her home.
ARCADIA DeSoto County man sentenced for deadly DUI crash Justice for a mother and son killed by a man driving under the influence.
NAPLES Oldest Black-owned business in SWFL continues to serve community Cleveland Bass Movers, founded in 1969, stands as the oldest Black-owned business in Southwest Florida.
FORT MYERS BEACH Broken gate on Lovers Key Beach Resort frustrating residents Residents of Lover’s Key Beach Club in Fort Myers Beach are frustrated with a gate that remains wide open, despite “No Trespassing” signs, since Hurricane Ian struck two years ago.
St. James City Church plans $700k flood-proofing project for future safety Hurricanes have caused flood after flood, and one island church, The First Baptist Church of Saint James City, wants to build higher.
Romance scams rise in the US, AARP warns residents to beware Romance scams are on the rise, with the Federal Trade Commission reporting over 64,000 cases in the U.S. in 2023.
Fort Myers Savannah Bananas make their way to Fort Myers for first time The Savannah Bananas have made their way to JetBlue Park for Friday’s sold-out game in Fort Myers to watch “the greatest show in sports.”
CAPE CORAL Cape Coral Yacht Club receives key permit Cape Coral received a key permit for a Yacht Club Community Park. This permit opens up the necessary steps for the park to be built.
PORT CHARLOTTE Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church holds 31st annual Greek Fest The Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church of Port Charlotte kicked off its 31st annual Greek Fest on Friday.
File- In this March 15, 2017, file photo, a sign marks a pick-up point for the Uber car service at LaGuardia Airport in New York. Uber is vowing to head down a new road and become a more humane company. The promise made in a conference call with reporters Tuesday, March 21, 2017, comes amid a wave of ugly developments, including allegations of rampant sexual harassment and a video of a profanity-laced confrontation between the ride-hailing company’s CEO and a disgruntled driver. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File) (CBS) Your email is watching you. The recent revelation in a New York Times interview that the ride-share service Uber pays for data culled from unsuspecting users’ emails sheds light on an industry that capitalizes on the widespread collection of information obtained by tracking users’ online activity. Some of the most widely used email programs and add-ons note in theirs terms of service that they aggregate data on what users do with the service and elsewhere on the internet. As long as the data is stripped of personally identifying information, such as names and email addresses, selling and sharing this information is generally legal. In the case of Uber, the company’s CEO, Travis Kalanick, acknowledged in the Times interview that it pays a company called Slice Intelligence for data it gathers using an email digest service named Unroll.me. Slice collects and analyzes data from emailed receipts, including receipts for Uber’s biggest competitor, Lyft. Slice’s principal analyst, Ken Cassar, said in a webinar posted to the company’s website that Slice keeps anonymous data from its now 4.7 million users for two years, and is “able to see who bought, what they bought, where they bought it, when they bought it, and how much they paid.” In an interview with CBS News Tuesday, Jaimee Minney, vice president of marketing and public relations for Slice, acknowledged that the company collects data on purchases across a wide spectrum of industries, including another in which Uber is competitive. “We measure everything from shampoo to UberEats, the whole gamut. And we have clients across all industries,” Minney said, noting that the company does not share any information about individual users. But companies with access to large datasets about aren’t completely powerless to identify individuals, said Victoria Petrock, principal analyst for the market research company eMarketer. “Anonymized telecommunications data on its own might be anonymous. But when, for example, people apply artificial intelligence to datasets, the machine might start to find links that start to identify individual customers,” Petrock said. “I think that’s the concern about this, because companies have been doing this [tracking] for years and years.” One study found that data from as few as three purchases was enough to identify individuals. Peter Swire, senior counsel with the law firm Alston & Bird’s privacy & data security team, said identifying individuals from data has become its own competitive industry. “There’s big research program in how to re-identify data. So companies should be careful when they say something is de-identified, and it isn’t,” Swire said. Beyond individual websites and apps, few have access more information than the data-mining behemoth: Google. It’s looking at your information right now. Last year, the company changed longstanding policy in order to combine information from users’ email accounts with their browsing habits, as a way of serving up more personalized ads. (Two privacy groups filed a complaint with the FTC in response to the change.) The company also allows advertisers to target users based on a list of email addresses, using a tool called Customer Match. “We’ve long known that Gmail scans the content of emails for targeted marketing purposes. There’s lots of reporting on that over the years,” Swire said. But for services like Slice’s Unroll.me and other popular Gmail add-ons — such as Boomerang, which lets users schedule emails, and the grammar checker Grammarly — many customers remain unaware of the data being collected, even though its acknowledged in their terms and conditions. Slice’s Minney said the company will soon change its website to make its data collection practices more clear. “We underestimated how much people know about the data that are collected about them,” Minney said. It turns out the average person knows very little about what’s collected about them, according to a 2015 study by professors at the Universities of Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. The study found “that large percentages of Americans often don’t have the basic knowledge to make informed cost-benefit choices about ways marketers use their information.” “Sixty-five percent do not know that the statement ‘When a website has a privacy policy, it means the site will not share my information with other websites and companies without my permission’ is false,” the researchers wrote.