81–90 of 628 posts
> Why do they need to know my screen brightness, memory amount, current volume and if I'm wearing headphones? This is clearly adding entropy to de-anonymize users between apps, rather than to add specificity to ad bids.
_removing_ entropy, by adding more information bits
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Got a source on retailers actively doing this?
Word of mouth: retailers in China have been using face recognition technologies to identify key customers so that they can be greater by name when delivered their favorite drink upon entering the premises.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ugh. Eye roll on the whole “make the world better”. So few SV products remotely make the world better. The purpose of the vast majority is to make money at all costs. I also disagree with what most people claim is making the world better. All in all, I think social media is a net negative for the world for any good that might be found. Every SV thing after that is just chasing the recketship to the moon dream.
I believe this was parodied multiple times in season 1 of Silicon Valley.
People commonly point to Mozilla's research regarding vehicle's privacy policies. (https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/privacy-nightmare-on-...) But that research only states what the car company's lawyers felt they must include in their privacy policies. These policies imply (and I'm sure, correctly imply) that your conversations will be recorded when you're in the vehicle. But, they never drill down into the real technical details. For instance ..... are car companies recording you the whole time and streaming ALL of your audio from ALL of your driving? Are they just recording you at a random samples? Are they ONLY recording you when you're issuing voice commands, and the lawyers are simply hedging their bets regarding what sort of data _might_ come through accidentally during those instances? Once they record you, where is the data stored, and for how long? Is it sent to 3rd parties, etc? Which of these systems can be disabled, and via what means? Does disabling these systems disable any other functionality of the vehicle, or void its warranty? Lastly, does your insurance shoot up if you have a car without one of these systems? etc ...
The list of questions could go almost indefinitely, and presumably, would vary strongly across manufacturers. So much of the privacy news out there is nothing but scary and often not very substantiated worst case scenarios. Without the details and means to improve privacy, all these stories can do is spread cynicism. I'm really glad to see this level of discourse for the author.
A while ago a co worker told me "why would you care about your privacy? all my data is already out there anyway and what can even be done with it anyway". What would be the ideal response to such an absurd comment? At the time I found it hard to answer because she surprised me with that opinion. Edit to note: the explanation should be compatible with a professional context. I don't want to scare my co workers or appe…
And then if you use a commercial VPN with DNS ad-blocking enabled, how much more does this help?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Word of mouth: retailers in China have been using face recognition technologies to identify key customers so that they can be greater by name when delivered their favorite drink upon entering the premises.
The trouble with "word of mouth" is that you can't tell whether something is actually real, or vaporware that some account executive dreamed up to close a deal.
A while ago a co worker told me "why would you care about your privacy? all my data is already out there anyway and what can even be done with it anyway". What would be the ideal response to such an absurd comment? At the time I found it hard to answer because she surprised me with that opinion. Edit to note: the explanation should be compatible with a professional context. I don't want to scare my co workers or appe…
Snowden in one of interviews talks about exactly this kind of tracking with Amazon example (ts 01:18:00) https://x.com/JohnStossel/status/1885382675810181612
Basically, all these companies, ad networks, data brokers, big tech with absence of basic privacy laws (not to be confused with 4th amendment that binds Fed and State gov only, but does not restraint companies) act with wilful conspiracy with US government regulators, washing each other hand like a monopoly. This data gets enriched and collided and is perpetually on a permanent record.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_Record_(autobiograph...
So next time you talk about totalitarian regimes around the world look in the window.
> was shocked by the amount and types of data sent with the bids to ad exchanges. Can this data fall into the hands of "evil" state actors, and why is Congress OK with that and not with tiktok?