How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#1

Post by yepthatsreality » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 3:34 PM UTC

How to See What the Internet Knows About You
nytimes.com

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#2

Post by j_s » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 4:47 PM UTC

Michael Bazzell is an expert on (both sides of) Open Source Intelligence (OSINT: data collected from publicly available sources).

https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Bazzell/e/B007GNUI92/

He maintains a virtual machine "pre-configured for online investigators" and a podcast.

https://inteltechniques.com/buscador/index.html

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#3

Post by dublinben » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 5:25 PM UTC

This site also goes into a lot of detail about the digital tracks you leave online, and how to minimize them: https://myshadow.org/

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#4

Post by komali2 » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 5:31 PM UTC

>start with this neat and medium-scary site, which our friends at Gizmodo flagged, that shows you everything your browser knows about you the second you open it. (clickclickclick.click)

"Subject has entered the website. Subject has 4 cores..." followed by a bunch of notes about my mouse moving around, or me making the window inactive.

Hardly terrifying.

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#5

Post by losteric » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 5:33 PM UTC

Is the issue ad targeting, or data collection?

For me it's the latter. This is what Google thinks I like: http://imgur.com/a/g8Q7l - reasonably accurate, and I don't care if it's public or used for targeting non-intrusive ads. I like those topics, I buy things, go ahead and show me your products.

My objection is over the data used to learn those interests. I don't want Google tracking my search and page views across the internet, I don't want my credit card company tracking my purchase history, and I certainly don't want my ISP/phone provider tracking my "metadata".

I feel like this article glossed over that aspect. Google's "Ad Personalization" page controls what Google uses, not what it knows. In this age of state, corporate, and foreign surveillance/hacking, I'm far more concerned about the latter.

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#6

Post by owlninja » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 5:37 PM UTC

These companies know "more about your life than you do", but yet the targeted ads continue to be pretty useless. The ad on this site was an Amazon ad for a pool filter I bought on Amazon about a week ago. It should know that I don't need these for like another year now. The other was for a cruise which I just got back from last week. Maybe some after-sun lotion or something vehicle related for the fact I drove 6 hours each way? The ads I always see just never seem that smart given the terabytes of data that everyone supposedly has on me. They really just seem to reflect my search history.

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#7

Post by Swizec » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 5:42 PM UTC

owlninja wrote: post #6

These companies know "more about your life than you do", but yet the targeted ads continue to be pretty useless. The ad on this site was an Amazon ad for a pool filter I bought on Amazon about a week ago. It should know that I don't need these for like another year now. The other was for a cruise which I just got back from last week. Maybe some after-sun lotion or something vehicle related for the fact I drove 6 hour…

Hint: they don't care. It works well enough.

I use remarketing and it definitely annoys some people and they complain that I'm following them around. But you know what? They buy. Without remarketing they forget.

I would love to turn it off after they do buy, but it's too hard to configure and hey, it reminds them to actually use the thing they bought. Customers are great, but only users tell their friends,

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#8

Post by jpdaigle » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 5:48 PM UTC

owlninja wrote: post #6

These companies know "more about your life than you do", but yet the targeted ads continue to be pretty useless. The ad on this site was an Amazon ad for a pool filter I bought on Amazon about a week ago. It should know that I don't need these for like another year now. The other was for a cruise which I just got back from last week. Maybe some after-sun lotion or something vehicle related for the fact I drove 6 hour…

I'm asking for something even more basic from ad targeting: as a Canadian, with a Canadian IP address, don't advertise products/services to me that are US-only.

You'd think the web advertising industry would at least figure out how to never show me an ad for Hulu or Blue Apron, seeing how those companies don't do business outside the US so the ROI on having me click that is zero.

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#9

Post by jcoffland » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 5:52 PM UTC

Most of what the article complains about can be solved with an ad blocker. The rest by staying off of Facebook.

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#10

Post by gaius » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 5:52 PM UTC

owlninja wrote: post #6

These companies know "more about your life than you do", but yet the targeted ads continue to be pretty useless. The ad on this site was an Amazon ad for a pool filter I bought on Amazon about a week ago. It should know that I don't need these for like another year now. The other was for a cruise which I just got back from last week. Maybe some after-sun lotion or something vehicle related for the fact I drove 6 hour…

The purpose of these ads is not to sell you stuff. Its to sell advertising to companies that don't understand this internet stuff but are terrified of being "left behind". The ads need to be plausible, thats why someone has to see them, but who that is literally doesn't matter.