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How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

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Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#31

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

guitarbill wrote: post #19
nihonde wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has GDPR meaningfully changed enforcement of rights? I’m familiar with the law itself and the details of it. (IAAL who practices in this area.) I’ve seen these regulatory pushes toward consumer-oriented privacy in the past, and they seem to serve the consulting industry above all. The consequences of breaking the rules are laughably impotent so far, despite more or less well-meaning words passed as binding legislatio…

> People don’t even seem to punish the offenders by shifting their spending habits Well, if that was viable, we probably wouldn't have needed such high fines in the GDPR. Two scenarios: A) It's hard to move away because of dominance, e.g. Google. You either have to buy an offensively expensive iPhone, or root an Android phone. Even then living without the Play store is hard. Moving e.g. email providers takes years no…

It’s almost like the reason iPhones are so expensive is that they Apple makes money from selling hardware rather than ads...

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#32

Post by angf »

forgotmypw wrote: post #24
chronid wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If google is the issue maybe - but I seriously doubt they are the issue: they sell their ability to target you, and selling your data to third parties would essentially be against their interest. This kind of FUD has been repeated ad nauseam here and everywhere in tech sites (against Facebook too usually), but that's not the way their business model works. If it's your doctor or your pharmacist, or the shop you bough…

The source of the information could also be a rogue employee at any of those places, especially for something shady, like robocalls. In most places, it is not difficult for an employee, especially someone like a sysadmin or a DBA, to simply siphon the data into a CSV. Chances are that no one will ever figure it out. I think that once law enforcement catches up, slow as they always are, they will start creating honeyp…

The FANG company I work for has stringent controls in place as a check against employees attempting to do this. These controls are more comprehensive than those I've seen at other companies.

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#33

Post by TomMckenny »

13of40 wrote: post #8

I had a related thing happen a couple of months ago: I started getting some lower back pain that I thought might be kidney stones based on a couple of Google searches. Went to my doctor, who prescribed a muscle relaxant, which I got at the pharmacy across the street. It went away. Over the next few weeks I got several robocalls on my cell phone from a pain clinic offering me relief for my "chronic pain", so it was ei…

If your ISP is using permacookies then that would explain it.

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#34

Post by Avamander »

zachlatta wrote: post #29
Avamander wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that at least being aware how your data is abused is not a good thing?

I'd bet if you surveyed Europeans they wouldn't be more aware of how data is being used pre vs. post GDPR. When I watch my non-technical friends use websites, they dismiss the prompts without reading or understanding them.

> When I watch my non-technical friends use websites, they dismiss the prompts without reading or understanding them.

That's a problem in general in IT. The nice solution would be websites respecting DNT option in browsers and every browser asking if they want to be tracked on the web or not. Or well, we could just purge 3rd party cookies from existence for starters.

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#35

Post by thanosnose »

dwaltrip wrote: post #10
13of40 wrote: post #8

I had a related thing happen a couple of months ago: I started getting some lower back pain that I thought might be kidney stones based on a couple of Google searches. Went to my doctor, who prescribed a muscle relaxant, which I got at the pharmacy across the street. It went away. Over the next few weeks I got several robocalls on my cell phone from a pain clinic offering me relief for my "chronic pain", so it was ei…

Does anyone know how effective incognito mode is at preventing data and privacy abuses like this? I've been using it more and more, but I imagine there may some clever ways of tracking even across incognito sessions (or between incognito and regular).

> Does anyone know how effective incognito mode is at preventing data and privacy abuses like this?

Incognito mode really doesn't do much. It only prevents storing browsing data locally on your computer. Your ISP, your search engine and the websites you visit can store your info on their servers.

> but I imagine there may some clever ways of tracking even across incognito sessions (or between incognito and regular).

Browser fingerprints, IP address, etc are used to track you. Your ISP doesn't even need to be clever since you are dependent on them for your internet connection. There are ways to "hide" yourself from websites, search engines, etc but it's nary impossible to completely "hide" from your ISP.

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#36

Post by zachlatta »

Avamander wrote: post #34
zachlatta wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd bet if you surveyed Europeans they wouldn't be more aware of how data is being used pre vs. post GDPR. When I watch my non-technical friends use websites, they dismiss the prompts without reading or understanding them.

> When I watch my non-technical friends use websites, they dismiss the prompts without reading or understanding them. That's a problem in general in IT. The nice solution would be websites respecting DNT option in browsers and every browser asking if they want to be tracked on the web or not. Or well, we could just purge 3rd party cookies from existence for starters.

Unrealistic. Economics drive the internet and ignoring DNT / having 3rd party cookies is vital to monetization.

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#37

Post by vinni2 »

fghtr wrote: post #15
dwaltrip wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone know how effective incognito mode is at preventing data and privacy abuses like this? I've been using it more and more, but I imagine there may some clever ways of tracking even across incognito sessions (or between incognito and regular).

Not effective. Use Tor Browser instead. https://panopticlick.eff.org/

I always use Tor Browser + ddg for searching symptoms or embarrassing questions. But I am still worried someone can link those searches by deanonymizing Tor or some security flaw

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#38

Post by antibland »

13of40 wrote: post #8

I had a related thing happen a couple of months ago: I started getting some lower back pain that I thought might be kidney stones based on a couple of Google searches. Went to my doctor, who prescribed a muscle relaxant, which I got at the pharmacy across the street. It went away. Over the next few weeks I got several robocalls on my cell phone from a pain clinic offering me relief for my "chronic pain", so it was ei…

Can you check with your doctor and pharmacy as to the possible distribution of your data? If they both deny sharing your data and you fully believe them, the mystery is closer to being solved.

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#39

Post by 013a »

One of my "wake up" moments was when I searched for the phone number of a local physical therapy office on Google. Within the day, I started getting Youtube video recommendations for massage techniques to relieve shoulder pain.

Google and all of its employees who make products like this are on the absolute wrong side of history. Society will only take so much before breaking; they need to figure out their business model, and fast.

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#40

Post by tw1010 »

013a wrote: post #39

One of my "wake up" moments was when I searched for the phone number of a local physical therapy office on Google. Within the day, I started getting Youtube video recommendations for massage techniques to relieve shoulder pain. Google and all of its employees who make products like this are on the absolute wrong side of history. Society will only take so much before breaking; they need to figure out their business mo…

This seems like a fairly easy thing to test rigorously (in a statistically significant way). Just create a fake account and do a search and see what the effect is on other places on the web. Are there services that does this automatically, so we don't have to rely on anecdotal "I searched for X here and now I see recommendations for that on Y, and I think it was because of X, but maybe it's just coincidence"? A site that rigorously confirms secret data links between e.g. google search or gmail plain text and other places (e.g. youtube or even amazon recommendations). If it doesn't exist, it seems like a cool thing to create, as a sort of service to the world.

It'd probably reveal a lot of hidden data links that aren't obvious (or which companies promise doesn't exist).

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