401–410 of 494 posts
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In the US, you can’t use personal health information for marketing purposes. If you can prove this link, a lot of very large organizations could potentially be in serious trouble for HIPAA violations. https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/guidance...
The shop part (non-pharmacy) of a chemist isn’t a covered entity though right, so hipaa isn’t relevant at all?
March 2020, heydays of coronavirus paranoia. I came back home from somewhere, put my keys onto the dining table and went to the bathroom to clean up. My girlfriend, upon seeing the key-chain on the table started reproaching me for being careless about hygiene. When I returned from the bathroom I saw her washing the key-chain in the kitchen sink. This time I got angry and asked how come she hadn't thought that the usb…
Unfortunately, though this is an excellent story, this is just an example of a bias known as "frequency illusion". It happens with a lot of things, like seeing the clock at 11:11 more than you do at 11:09. Or seeing lots of your make/model car but being blind to the hundred of other variants on the road. How many times have you opened up your laptop and not seen a Facebook add for something you just did, or something…
I would agree with you last decade. This decade, I have my doubts.
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Many have tried. Steve Gibson (of GRC fame) did some wiresharking around one of his Amazon devices and found no abnormal networking traffic when he was talking to it, vs not.
Alexa devices have been extensively and repeatedly shown to not be "passively listening". The same cannot be said for phone apps.
I am pushing the boat out because I rely on my memory. But there were reports from Apple contractors about what they heard on Sirri. It is always on, always listening.
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I understand you have used Occam's razor to come to this conclusion. And its a perfectly valid point. But, this particular story has been repeated so many times around me that I am genuinely suspicious. But alas, the only way to know would be to look at the code. And even then we might not understand because its a blackbox type system which is ill understood by even its designers.
Why would Google be recording your mic and using it for ads where they would just be caught for doing it? I mean it's completely possible. But more likely just confirmation bias. Speaking of Occam's razor, we should just dump modern "technology" (smart phones, smart TVs, the web, IoT, even feature phones were no good). There's actually nothing hard about the concept of a mobile phone, it's just a computer (or could e…
Facebook has access to your mic if you ever use it for its voice com functions (do not do that) and do not explicitly remove the permissions to access teh mic (do do that).
They have been caught several times. Thing is people give them permission to record through the mic so it is legal.
Do not confuse legal with good, it is evil.
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Purchased a hard kombucha at Whole Foods last week, Ever since, about 1/3 of my instagram ads are for it. Never had an instagram ad for it before.
Maybe the subtle influences that led you to buying such a drink in the first place are directly related to increased advertising for them. Also Amazon has your Whole Foods purchasing data, so that probably trickled down somewhere.
The second "trickled down somewhere" is the point.
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This is the dumbest ad strategy ever. Why on earth would ads about a product you just bought be effective marketing material. This is like how you get a million ads about dishwashers the day after you Google around and buy one. At least wait for a short duration of time to let the target run out of medicine before adversiting new stuff.
The strategy is extremely effective, especially for high-priced but rarely purchased items like dishwashers, cars, flooring, etc. Consider: one of the hardest parts about advertising is figuring out when someone is ready to buy the product. That is why car companies bombard ads everywhere, just to catch you in the rare moment when you may be buying a car. Lets guess that maybe the odds of a random person wanting to b…
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So, then, completely different from what the GP suggested.
My comment was an expansion on GPs second bullet point. It’s not Google that knows about the purchase, but Google that “somehow” picked up contextual info from OPs environment linking OPs online identity to Voltaren as a product. Edit: the purchase could have been involved somewhere in the chain but it’s not necessary.
There's not really that much ambiguity in this sentence from the second bullet point.
Unless my mental model of online advertising is wrong, your physical in-store purchase should not be landing you in some Google advertising bucket.
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Alexa devices have been extensively and repeatedly shown to not be "passively listening". The same cannot be said for phone apps.
Untrue. I am pushing the boat out because I rely on my memory. But there were reports from Apple contractors about what they heard on Sirri. It is always on, always listening.
These 2 sentences may not necessarily need to both be true. As I recall, one could opt in (or was it opt-out?) to an Apple program to upload bits and pieces of spoken word for its people to parse "humanly" for it to improve its speech to text.
I'm no Apple fan, but I'm not sure one implies the other, here.
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Selling cocaine is a great way to efficiently increase revenue, but it's not a legitimate way
Selling cocaine is a legitimate way to increase revenue. If the cocaine is real (i.e you aren't selling flour) then why wouldn't it be legitimate? It might not be legal , but CocaCola is allowed to import coca leaves by the millions.
(which is to say, thanks for encouraging me to learn about this)
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So here's the thing - I don't understand the liability thing. At least here in the UK I have disputed transactions on my debit card several times and every single time the charges were reversed during the phone call, I had the money back instantly. Is that only available for credit cards in the US?
That is correct.
AFAIK the main reason people prefer CC’s over debit cards for fraud prevention is simply that with a debit card your money comes out immediately if it is used by someone else, whereas with a CC there is a 30-day buffer.