Privacy: Unlist yourself from Truecaller

If you think the world of smartphones is any safer to tread without care, I would like to remind you the fact that terms like "internet never forgets" and "world wild web" apply to the internet whether you use it from a personal computer or a smartphone.

Truecaller is a mobile app available on google play, iOS and several other market places that uses a crowd sourced telephone directory to tell you the names of people who call you even if they are not in your phonebook. The company claims to 'partly' gather its data from public sources and partly 'crowdsources' it. The latter is, however, incorrect to the extent of being misguiding at best and fraudulent at worst.

Upon investigating the app and its modus operandi, it is obviously and blatantly clear that the app harvests the data (names, numbers and other information; all linked) from the phonebooks of the users who have installed the application. I verified this with a simple trick. I had a friend install the app, and then a second person (without the app installed - infact without a smartphone) called a third phone which already had the app installed to see what information the app would display. The name on the third phone's truecaller app appeared exactly with the company prefix and nickname that was saved as on the first person's phone. This clearly showed that the app had uploaded his complete phonebook to its database under the pretext of the "necessary" permissions it requires to install the app and now displays the phone numbers and names of all his contacts to anyone in the world who has the app installed even though all those people never opted for such. This is clearly a breach of privacy.

To further verify this, please see this blog post on the same matter and this Quora thread that shows how many people this fact has made unhappy.

Are you on their database? If any one of the hundreds of your contacts including your friends, colleagues or the cable guy uses Truecaller to avail their database, your number has been harvested onto it via their phonebook.

Now the question is how to get yourself rid of this privacy issue and remove yourself from the Truecaller data base in order to keep your information safe including telling your name to simply anyone who has your number? To unlist yourself, the Truecaller website provides an unlist option. You can go to their unlist page and remove your number from their database by entering your number in the following format: +923001234567

Academic circular debt

I had written before, years ago... This time I knew what it was, which is why I quit it before in a few months of using it to hone my skills. But now I was at its doorstep, again, or more accurately on the thin line between research writing and writing (others') research. I always had this desistance in mind and denied such service to atleast those who asked for it to use in Pakistan - but to what end? Now when I faced it again, I thought of writing this article. To make sure that I wrote on it some time or the other, I saved this title in my drafts only to wait on it. Today I happened to read the quote, "public enemy # 1 when it comes to writing is procrastination"; I knew what it meant and the first thing I did is to start writing this article.

In writing great, creative, scientific and omni-relevant diverse research, what could offend a writer so much? Was ghost writing the reason? No, most writers write by pen names or ghost write for real people - it never mattered to be known, it only mattered to make known. It was the fact that it was being done for others, students, who would then submit this "plagiarism-less", written-for-them work to an institution as their own to get an MS or a PhD degree. The irony was not lost on me... I was, then, a dropout, writing get-an-A-grade-or-a-refund dissertations and research papers for MS and PhD students of atleast 20 different disciplines on daily basis for a firm.

With this being in a distant past now, I got a call last year while I was busy culminating my startup's recent jump in work flow. They told me they had shortlisted my CV as a research writer. In my subconscious reluctance, "it's weekend, is Monday okay?" is all what I could say to the interview offer. To my wariness, he agreed. Monday, I called back and apologized in advance for non appearance due to fuel shortage hoping he'd cancel it, though I had put off getting fuel in time deliberately. He pro-actively moved it to Tuesday. I couldn't say no to incoming "blessings" now... so decided to go.

Tuesday, on entering the glass office, I was met by the "HR" crew member who took me to write a "test" sample, something I had loathfully endured on numerous content writing job interviews that had brought me to the conclusion that they made all the interviewees write for their clients for free only to hire one, instead of an actual test. After all, this one had inherently crossed the line of morality by their business model. I wrote it anyway only to publish it on my blog, as soon as I got home so that it would get detected as plagiarism if they sold it.

I was then interviewed by a panel of school and university professors (instantly making me loathe the teaching profession for a while). I was right in not assuming it to be an "actual" research organization inspite of giving it the benefit of doubt, but unlike what I had seen before, this was not a firm taking orders on pretext of "not-to-be-copied-help-papers" and getting them written by offshore, overqualified, underachieving freelancers... this was a a fully functional office with cafeteria, rest room, workstations of a 50 writers, based on this industry ready to churn out research articles, thesis, assignments for rich foreign students, paying in dollars online, who didn't / couldn't do their own work due to their disinterest / incompetence.

Speaking of reasoning again, content writers create SEO content under alias and generate leads under company identity, fellows write research for their employers, scholars for universities. Many don't get credited while their organizations profit in some way. Yet the desistance comes when it's done for students. At the same time it's deemed a legit practice to copy edit for a non native scientific researcher; the reason why people like me join, oblivious to the thin line that they would be made to cross by first copy editing, then writing the paper from scratch and then even doing the complete research eventually finding out what it would be used for.

It's a circular debt never spoken of. I pay huge sums of money for my education, carry out and write your research for money, you get a degree based on my work. There is no end being accomplished by the mere exercise of researching on behalf of another, no benefit to the professional world or to the world of technological advancement - the purpose of academic research is fulfilled from the institutional perspective, primary research is still being produced in the same way but in the name of a person who will never be able to develop on it. This is something worse than a scam pyramid scheme that is based on selling "schemes" to reselling customers (you see the recurrence) instead of actual services or products. Money is not the only thing at stake this time, rather the society's intellect as a whole is. When the pyramid collapses just like it eventually does for all Ponzi schemes when the last of the bases get consumed, in this case when there are no more truly educated writers to research for them, the echelons will be as uneducated as the rest and this house of cards will fall... and not beautifully like dominos, it will crumble under its own weight with the linchpin unknown.

Sand beach table

Beach table and sofa setting made of sand.

Gave you a black eye (i)

Pissed off the IT guy, and he said he was going to give me a black eye... and I laughed. Looks like he put me in my place. Touche IT guy.

Foxy through wall grill

An old foxy body rigged up with a false broken wall design with bonnet used as a BBQ grill.

Railway sleep juggaar

Space hack in a train (when you can't find a sleeper).

Yurt

A yurt is a portable home akin to a caravan van.

Yurts are common in Central Asia. Image courtesy: Kamran On Bike.

Fund raising through arcade games

Collecting charity via arcade games.

A stone house in Pakistan

A stone house, somewhere in Pakistan.

Ugly killer pram

Seems a good fit for a Halloween baby.

Kettle lamp

Use a broken kettle as a study lamp for covering up the bulb and avoiding glare. The inner lining of the kettle, originally purposed to prevent heat loss through radiation, will reflect the light well.

Do IM and SMS contribute to decay of language?

Considered to be retrogressive, the short message service might not have survived logically (Crystal). Yet, by the year 2001, the 160 character limit service which could be seen as a hinderance to open expression rather became widespread. 250 billion SMS had been sent globally by 2001. This much reliance on the short messaging resulted in debates over how it would affect the literature. Spread like a wildfire, the debate focuses on whether SMS would be the end of the civilization or a boost to learning. Some aspects of the short message service have helped children to acquire a better literary understanding (Crystal) but might also be used to mask dyslexia, incorrect spelling or simply laziness to write rather than optimizing the text per se. The ultra conciseness of the words tailored for the short message service and instant messaging on the internet chats has taken the shape of a new English dialect.

The massive increase in SMS has boosted up the mobile company earnings significantly. Britain, in the English speaking world is responsible for amounting up to 6 billion text messages a month (Huang) while Pakistan has taken one of the top positions after Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia for sending the most short text messages in the world adding up to 151 billion in the year 2009 alone and moving up to the third highest SMS sender in the year 2010 (Malik). This puts a new angle to the point of views debating the influence of IM and SMS on the literature and language. A developing country like Pakistan that has English as its second official language and to be used mostly in the higher education, hence being a notable part of the English speaking world, will be affected in a unique way by the way of SMS. The largely less educated population or atleast not as much educated and affluent in the English language have rather learned the language by the use of quick SMS messaging. The extremely low rates and encouraging services by the service providers have further ensured that the SMS trends leap ahead in a cut throat competition (Malik). It might be noted that the phonetic, orthographic and optimized approach of the SMS language makes it easy for even the relatively uneducated individuals to learn or process the English language (Chim). While this was not yet enough to be dealt with by a likely opponent of the SMS language, the new smart phones that come with the feature of predicting the next words and spell correction or auto completing ensure quick growth and ease of SMS (Chim). These features might be seen as only creating more laziness among the individuals and the society as a whole but, infact, they are also responsible for informally teaching the language to those who previously didn’t know even the formal writing. The ‘de-education’ of the literate might be an overrated accusation in this regard when the use of SMS is rather promoting a language.

On the contrary, instant messaging and short message service have been largely responsible for ‘romanization’ and ‘phoneticization’ of other languages (Chim). For English, where it is being considered mere ‘decivilization’ of the language by the technology, this might be interpreted as a hostile advancement or vandalism of other languages by pushing them to be written in English alphabet, with English itself standing the blame. In such a scenario, the SMS usage predominantly having english alphabet, English has been put on the side of the jargon itself as a language. By this approach, the SMS trend of writing billions of short messages in English alphabet means to re-evaluate the situation in an English versus all other languages scenario. Let us take Urdu, Pakistan’s national language, to be our example of comparison with English in terms of SMS related romanization. Urdu, which has itself been formed by a horde of languages becoming mutually intelligible to many over hundreds of years, is one of the most welcoming languages to the introduction of new words from other languages. It has infact taken most of its words from other languages and only a few that were developed natively over time. Comparing Urdu with English, and keeping it inline with the fact that Pakistan has achieved 3rd highest SMS usage in the world, proves that the language has influenced the use of SMS - Urdu written in roman alphabet - and made it easy to text even for those not much fluent in English. This means more and more english slang and words will be incorporated into Urdu over time as it merges with the SMS extensive usage by the population. The SMS texts employ elimination of vowels and the unnecessary syllables and sometimes uses numbers and letters to denote the phonology (Chim). It would be interesting to note that the Urdu alphabet and writing itself is already used in the same way. Urdu text does not contain any vowels or unnecessary syllables (being phonology oriented), rather the vowels are placed on the top of the letters as symbols like punctuation. These vowels are then omitted in general and literary writing when written for the native speakers as they are extremely obvious to be understood by the context or even the words themselves. This might be another reason that the SMS usage and romanization of Urdu has been very effective resulting in such a high usage of SMS in the country.

The use of SMS romanization seems interesting and welcoming, especially in case of languages like Urdu, as far as the concepts are concerned. But when looking at the facts that the alphabet that are being used are still English, even Urdu speakers might find it hostile for the de-education of their children; the gain of better grasp of language concept itself versus the loss of native alphabet, spelling and prose which is highly regarded in languages like Urdu. Vietnamese and other tonal languages have faced similar situations, their own script has been seen less and less as compared to the romanized versions (Chim). It is essential to find out whether or not the SMS romanization is a threat or will it be able to co exist with the native scripts of other languages.

If taken by the true global and neutral approach and not only being narrow visioned so as to only take English into account, the instant messaging and the short messaging service have largely amounted to decay of multiple languages in the world. The trend has not only put English on a hostile or imperial stance once again, but also become a threat to the global diversity. As far as the romanization can be kept separate from the actual literature and education, including general usage in media and magazines, it might survive the criticism of the host languages - but staying the course, SMS has been extremely detrimental to most scripts even including English. Such decay of language by the technology which happened to be progressive or simply easier to use in the English language might be overcome by introduction of local keyboards and keypads to supplement clear fonts of all the world languages. This is likely to introduce SMS jargon of its own for each language or somewhat make them mutually intelligible still - but after all, that’s what evolution is.

• Crystal, David (09 July 2009). Txtng: The Gr8 Db8. ISBN-10: 0199571333. Oxford University Press. Print.
• Huang, Lily (Aug 1, 2008 ). The Death of English (LOL). Newsweek Magazine. Web.
• Malik, Yasmin (November 15, 2011). Tech Society: Generation Text. The Express Tribune. Web.
• Chim, Chong Seck (March 9, 2004). SMS creating a virtual new written language. New Straits Times. Print.

Caravan car from before it was cool to have one

Seems like it is not a novice idea after all.

Converting obsolete phone booths to public libraries

Convert the obsolete phone booth into public libraries.

Pipe house with door

Heard of the homeless living in pipes? Looks like this one decided to get comfy and decorative.

Juggaar raft used for regular crossing of Indus river

Rigged up juggaar rafts are often used to regularly cross the Indus river by villagers instead of boats to save on costs.

Channa stand

Channa stand and corn stand... the most popular ad hoc shops and street hawkers in South Asia.

Ad hoc shop

An ad hoc shop in South Asia shows the penetration of juggaar culture in the population.

Mailbox juggaar

You can use your CPU as a BBQ rig, flower pot, and now as a physical mailbox. See also two other rigged up mailbox for ideas ;)

Shades of humour

Too many shades of humour to account for...