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Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

theregister.com

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Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#171

Post by limagnolia »

hk__2 wrote: post #118
limagnolia wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article directly addresses this concern: "If you’ve flown Spirit and worry that Google will soon know about a testy conversation you had with the airline’s call center, you’re being told not to worry. The court filing says the data was deidentified before being put on sale and Google has promised to scrub any PII it finds in the trove."

> Google has promised to This part is worrying.

Well, it also says that the data was already scrubbed. Arguments have been made that this is insufficient.

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#172

Post by al_hag »

I must be naive. I was under the impression Google wants this data to learn from a universally hated company's worst processes and practices, i.e. to teach their AI what not to do. It seems people are worried about their pii or that Google is curating a blacklist of customers?

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#173

Post by girvo »

limagnolia wrote: post #165
jordanb wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"De-identified" data is trivially easy to re-identify, especially by google. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/a-face-is-expo...

Sure, you can argue that its a bad deal, shouldn't be allowed period, etc. But that is a different argument than saying that there is no scrutiny.

The argument is that the scrutiny is in practice not sufficient, as usual in these cases.

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#174

Post by nubinetwork »

poszlem wrote: post #147
oarsinsync wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something about circles of control in this, that makes the difference. If I publish information about myself, that's about me, and it's in my control. If someone else shares information about me, without my consent, and someone uses that to nose in on me, that feels creepy and problematic.

If you find that concerning, I recommend asking Claude or Codex to analyze all your HN comments and build a profile of you (I recommend that to everyone, not trying to single you out btw.) It takes about 20 minutes. It was eye opening and somewhat unsettling how accurate it was when I ran it on my own data. Even worse, there’s NO way to delete your old HN comments.

Everybody makes mistakes, it's unfortunate that many people on the internet are psycho and won't let the past be the past...

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#175

Post by DanielHB »

RajT88 wrote: post #148
DanielHB wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to dispel some Brazil myths: 1) +95% of the population live on the coast very far away from the Amazon. Most of the population has not been there. Most of the coast has a very different jungle biome called Mata Atlantica and the countryside close to the coast is not that different from temperate forest of Europe. That is what most all Brazilians are used to. There is a significant population in the arid northeas…

I would not be offended by the blood donation thing. They generalize based on administrative regions (Amazonas in this case) and not whether you visited a big developed city or not. I had a similar blood donation issue for visiting a particular island in the Philippines, and could not donate for 4 months.

It is funny there is no similar treatment about TBE (tick disease) which is predominantly an European disease and very dangerous and much more common than Malaria is in most (all?) South American countries...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tick-borne_encephalitis

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#176

Post by barrenko »

echelon wrote: post #26
js2 wrote: post #10

> Google bought itself 100 million emails and 500 million items from Microsoft Teams, 17 million OneDrive files and 20.5 million items from SharePoint. The search giant also now owns over 30 million recorded customer service calls, and more than 15 million customer service chat records. 600,000 ServiceNow tickets are another element of the collection, along with 13.7 million active emails addresses from Oracle’s Resp…

"This call is being recorded so that Gemini can decide which purge wave to assign you to. Obedient humans will be carried over for further cycles until no longer needed. If you are scheduled for termination this cycle a disposal representative will be with you shortly." I kid, but... It's probably the precursor to insurance denials and job screening. I got banned from r/technology a few weeks back for decrying tracki…

I think I'm starting to feel like I'd prefer living through WWIII as opposed to whatever it is we are living through now.

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#177

Post by dukeofdoom »

xrd wrote: post #19

About twenty years ago, I was taking a flight back from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to the US. In the middle of the night the pilot got on the loudspeaker and said "hi! Having some engine trouble, so we are landing in Manaus." Manaus is in the middle of the Amazon. Needless to say, a bit scary to hear that, but we landed without issue. They told us we had two choices: the nice hotel with a shared room, or the lesser nice…

I never understood this attitude, like I feel like being able to fly in airplane is one of the most amazing human achievements, yet people will try and save down to the dollar booking a flight like it was breakfast at Dennys, and come out huffing and puffing as soon as anything goes wrong demanding their money back. Airlines like Spirit catered to the worse of these type of customers.

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#178

Post by KellyCriterion »

xrd wrote: post #19

About twenty years ago, I was taking a flight back from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to the US. In the middle of the night the pilot got on the loudspeaker and said "hi! Having some engine trouble, so we are landing in Manaus." Manaus is in the middle of the Amazon. Needless to say, a bit scary to hear that, but we landed without issue. They told us we had two choices: the nice hotel with a shared room, or the lesser nice…

- if they could put me on the no-fly list. -

ahhh, there seems to be different no-fly lists? The one Im aware of is the one for terrorists and moneylaunderers, and usually they will not tell you who put you on that list :-D

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#179

Post by goalieca »

limagnolia wrote: post #165
jordanb wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"De-identified" data is trivially easy to re-identify, especially by google. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/a-face-is-expo...

Sure, you can argue that its a bad deal, shouldn't be allowed period, etc. But that is a different argument than saying that there is no scrutiny.

Insufficient scrutiny would be more apt.

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#180

Post by dandellion »

mynameyeff wrote: post #110
pm215 wrote: post #29

I see from the court PDF that the process here involves Spirit giving the data to a "Deidentification Agent" (a third party firm that Google selects and pays for) who is responsible for stripping out things that would link data to any particular person before passing the data on to Google. Is that a standard thing, such that everybody in this transaction would have said "yes, put in the usual clauses about deidentify…

That's interesting that the name of this 3rd party's company is anonymous.

It'll be a little startup from San Francisco called "El Goog".
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