Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mad at Meta? Don't Let Them Collect and Monetize Your Personal Data

eff.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 104 posts

Re: Mad at Meta? Don't Let Them Collect and Monetize Your Personal Data

#51

Post by ericjmorey »

dylan604 wrote: post #42
exmadscientist wrote: post #22

What happens if you've never been a Meta user? I have never had any kind of business relationship with Meta (so far as I know), and have never agreed to any contract or terms of service. What can I do, under US law, to minimize what they store about me and my behavior, or at least keep tabs on them?

Is this rhetorical? Nothing. Every website that adds their code will be tracking you. Every friend, acquaintance, or anyone that you’ve shared your contact with for what ever reason that has given them access to their contacts has provided your info for you. There’s nothing you can do about it. At the rate we’re going, it will soon be law that you have to allow them to track you. The Zuck just hasn’t figured out yet…

How does Meta track me when blocking the JavaScript from Meta controlled urls?

Re: Mad at Meta? Don't Let Them Collect and Monetize Your Personal Data

#52

Post by esperent »

exmadscientist wrote: post #22

What happens if you've never been a Meta user? I have never had any kind of business relationship with Meta (so far as I know), and have never agreed to any contract or terms of service. What can I do, under US law, to minimize what they store about me and my behavior, or at least keep tabs on them?

It's almost certain that you've agreed to privacy terms somewhere (even if just a misclicked cookie box) that has the lines:

"You consent to processing... by us and our partners..."

Where the partners list includes 400 or so companies, one of which is for sure Meta.

Would this hold up on court? No idea. But I'm sure Meta will happily take you consent and run with it, as will all the other companies.

Re: Mad at Meta? Don't Let Them Collect and Monetize Your Personal Data

#53

Post by ranguna »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #47
amatecha wrote: post #45

IMO, skip all the "FB settings" shenanigans and instead just block all Meta (and Google while you're at it) properties using a Pi-Hole on your whole network. VPN into your own LAN with Tailscale and use the Pi-Hole for DNS resolution and never see that shit on your phone again, either. If you want to go a step further, you could do this blocking at the router/firewall level, if you have hardware capable of this.

So how do I make my mom do this? /s Seriously, even I would have to spend a day or two to figure this out. We need something simple for 99.99% of people to use.

Once you have things running, all you have to do is connect your mom's phone to your vpn.

Re: Mad at Meta? Don't Let Them Collect and Monetize Your Personal Data

#54

Post by ericjmorey »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #47
amatecha wrote: post #45

IMO, skip all the "FB settings" shenanigans and instead just block all Meta (and Google while you're at it) properties using a Pi-Hole on your whole network. VPN into your own LAN with Tailscale and use the Pi-Hole for DNS resolution and never see that shit on your phone again, either. If you want to go a step further, you could do this blocking at the router/firewall level, if you have hardware capable of this.

So how do I make my mom do this? /s Seriously, even I would have to spend a day or two to figure this out. We need something simple for 99.99% of people to use.

Setting up a piehole at your mom's house would require your mom to do nothing. But it will break a lot of things that she'll prot complain about.

Re: Mad at Meta? Don't Let Them Collect and Monetize Your Personal Data

#55

Post by yoaviram »

exmadscientist wrote: post #22

What happens if you've never been a Meta user? I have never had any kind of business relationship with Meta (so far as I know), and have never agreed to any contract or terms of service. What can I do, under US law, to minimize what they store about me and my behavior, or at least keep tabs on them?

If you live in one of the states that has strong privacy regulations send Meta a data deletion request. Or if you are curious about the data they have on you, send them an access request to get a copy of your data, and then a deletion request.

In some cases Meta ignores these requests. If that happens to you then complain to the state regulator. Both sending requests and complaining is easy as sending an email / filling in a form.

Re: Mad at Meta? Don't Let Them Collect and Monetize Your Personal Data

#56

Post by ericjmorey »

mikae1 wrote: post #30
TheEnder8 wrote: post #6

The thing is, its not just Meta. It's anyone with a square inch of pixels that you can slap an ad on. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. Meta gets a lot of flack, but it's easy to stop using Facebook. It's a lot harder to stop using Google or Amazon.

As a Swede, the Amazon comment is funny. They came here perhaps two years ago and everybody I know agrees they suck and can not compete with our local alternatives. They're not cheaper and the website is an utter mess of auto translations and dark patterns. Order flash storage and pray it's not counterfeit. We use Prisjakt[1] to compare prices and price history between shops. About Google... Yes, YouTube is hard for…

It took 20+ years for Amazon to supplant the retail infrastructure in the US. They may just be getting started in Sweden.

Re: Mad at Meta? Don't Let Them Collect and Monetize Your Personal Data

#57

Post by tokioyoyo »

Eh, I personally gave up and accepted that I lost the war. It’s kinda nice to be a normie who doesn’t care about much about it. Basic ad blocking, and just generally not caring about what happens with my data. Does it sound awful? Absolutely! But it feels weirdly free, compared to my 2020-self.

To be very fair though, I just use WhatsApp because that’s the messenger of choice for basically everyone in the world. And Facebook marketplace/groups.

Re: Mad at Meta? Don't Let Them Collect and Monetize Your Personal Data

#58

Post by aqueueaqueue »

ericjmorey wrote: post #51
dylan604 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this rhetorical? Nothing. Every website that adds their code will be tracking you. Every friend, acquaintance, or anyone that you’ve shared your contact with for what ever reason that has given them access to their contacts has provided your info for you. There’s nothing you can do about it. At the rate we’re going, it will soon be law that you have to allow them to track you. The Zuck just hasn’t figured out yet…

How does Meta track me when blocking the JavaScript from Meta controlled urls?

Your face on a geotagged photo.

Re: Mad at Meta? Don't Let Them Collect and Monetize Your Personal Data

#59

Post by hulitu »

exmadscientist wrote: post #22

What happens if you've never been a Meta user? I have never had any kind of business relationship with Meta (so far as I know), and have never agreed to any contract or terms of service. What can I do, under US law, to minimize what they store about me and my behavior, or at least keep tabs on them?

> What can I do, under US law, to minimize what they store about me and my behavior, or at least keep tabs on them?

Nothing. They just make shadow profiles. You can sue them (see Google), but they get a pat on the back.

Post reply on HN