101–110 of 124 posts
> My supermarket has a savings scheme, in exchange for my personal information. The way it works is that the cashier asks: do you want to join this savings scheme? They know all your personal info from the credit card you're using anyways. The phone number you provide at the supermarket is a formality. The proof is in the pudding: When I buy stuff at home depot, there was one time I provided my email address for a re…
For me, the single most disturbing is when I see ads based on casual conversations my phone happened to pick up. Such as mentioning a piece of software I used to use a decade ago, and seeing ads for that software daily for a week after. Another, is the first time I saw a calendar reminder to "leave for the airport" not that I set such a reminder, but gmail had received the receipt for my airline tickets. The most dis…
I worked at Meta for many years. We extensively researched this phenomenon ("I was talking about XYZ, then 30 minutes later, I saw an ad for it! The mics must be on!") The conclusion we drew was much more nefarious than "the machines are listening". It's that you, personally, are a very basic machine of patterns and habit. You took as input some signal that you were not concious of which STIMULATED you to talk about…
Privacy at its core is a preventative measure against being controlled. The state, a corporation or other individuals have an easier time exerting influence over you if they know more about you. Obtaining information is a largely automated task today. And sure, your country might be fine now, but over the course of history a lot of people suddenly woke up to their government turning totalitarian. Same goes for your i…
> I strongly believe the default should be opting out of data collection, and that users can then opt in by choice, perhaps in exchange for more storage, or for a faster help desk service. Or using the service in the first place? The big promise of answering "So what?" and it amounts to: it's fine if you are fine with it. > As you can see, I'm not averse to using Google or other Big Tech companies' products, but I tr…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazon really bugs me in that you can't filter by seller anymore... I would usually filter and buy only from Amazon. Makes it literally harder to use, and I've actually started using it less as a result. For me, the bigger risk in the ad networks is the viral vector. It's way too easy to inject ads with viral outcomes into the ad networks, still. It's the same reason I disabled flash at home, when I found out I could…
Not sure about viruses. Yes, ads have been used as a vector, and there are zero days, but I think mainstream OSes and browsers have pretty good security if you keep up to date? I suspect phishing attacks are a bigger issue. It can be quite difficult to tell the difference between spooky coincidences and actual targeted ads. My money is on spooky coincidences, but it's a problem that many people imagine otherwise, and…
As an experiment, start talking about needing baby supplies regularly, not in any other format (assuming you aren't and don't have one)... you might just be surprised about the outcome.
Something the article doesn't mention is that your data is not only used to target you with ads. It's also used to target you with propaganda or any political or social agenda a person, organization or state is willing to pay for. Adtech is the perfect weapon of information warfare, and it's been successfuly used to influence public opinion, and corrupt democratic processes (e.g. Cambridge Analytica). Both ads and pr…
The main problem, imho, is that if one can describe the situation and make someone care even a _little_, it’s not enough. There are so many more important things to be worried about throughout one’s lifetime that data privacy doesn’t even register. Being concerned about how one’s data is being sold is a very “first world problem”, and even in “first worlds” it’s not a very big one for the great majority of the popula…
Something the article doesn't mention is that your data is not only used to target you with ads. It's also used to target you with propaganda or any political or social agenda a person, organization or state is willing to pay for. Adtech is the perfect weapon of information warfare, and it's been successfuly used to influence public opinion, and corrupt democratic processes (e.g. Cambridge Analytica). Both ads and pr…
This 10,000% It is a battle to explain this to my kids, e.g. in the context of why we scrutinize what apps they use; and one (of several) reason(s) we don't let them use various apps. The monkey-mind obsession with visible cause and effect is for certain one of the cognitive errors that will doom our civilization. I would love for there to be hard reset in the premises of surveillance capitalism and our industry's st…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
this is a serious question? Google collects anything and everything they possibly can, from every user who touches any of their software, platforms or devices. They then sell this data on dozens or hundreds of data broker platforms. Data includes your web browsing history, location history, passive microphone recording history and email history ("anonymized" but still meta data)
> They then sell this data on dozens or hundreds of data broker platforms. I wasn’t aware of this part specifically, so I’d like to learn more. Has this been covered in the news or something? This seems like a big deal.
For me, the single most disturbing is when I see ads based on casual conversations my phone happened to pick up. Such as mentioning a piece of software I used to use a decade ago, and seeing ads for that software daily for a week after. Another, is the first time I saw a calendar reminder to "leave for the airport" not that I set such a reminder, but gmail had received the receipt for my airline tickets. The most dis…
I worked at Meta for many years. We extensively researched this phenomenon ("I was talking about XYZ, then 30 minutes later, I saw an ad for it! The mics must be on!") The conclusion we drew was much more nefarious than "the machines are listening". It's that you, personally, are a very basic machine of patterns and habit. You took as input some signal that you were not concious of which STIMULATED you to talk about…
Then pay attention to the ads you start to see. In my specific case, it was for a specific software I used to use well over a decade ago, and suggested against as it became a really crappy product. The circle I was talking with was a random group of strangers at a restaurant on an impromptu conversaion. It was not my friend group, or anything that was merely coincidence that I received ads for that specific software.
And what makes you think that I feel I'm a special case on this... your devices are absolutely tracking you, listening and intaking every bit of information Google, MS and Apple can acquire. It's nothing special about me at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure about viruses. Yes, ads have been used as a vector, and there are zero days, but I think mainstream OSes and browsers have pretty good security if you keep up to date? I suspect phishing attacks are a bigger issue. It can be quite difficult to tell the difference between spooky coincidences and actual targeted ads. My money is on spooky coincidences, but it's a problem that many people imagine otherwise, and…
You'd lose that money... it's been shown time and again that your phone is tracking your conversations for ads, especially android and the home devices. As an experiment, start talking about needing baby supplies regularly, not in any other format (assuming you aren't and don't have one)... you might just be surprised about the outcome.