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

Why we should end the data economy

thereboot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 390 posts

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#131

Post by amelius »

matz1 wrote: post #123
cs702 wrote: post #54

No one sane would ever want their relatives, friends, work colleagues, and neighbors to be able to know (quoting from the OP): > who you sleep with because both you and the person you share your bed with keep your phones nearby > whether you sleep soundly at night or whether your troubles are keeping you up > whether you pick up your phone in the middle of the night and search for things like "loan repayment" > your…

No, I am okay for them to be able to know. Them knowing is not the problem. Them using it to harm me is the problem. These are different thing, latter is a problem, former is not. Let pick this one example : 'your restaurant visits and shopping habits' Just them knowing is not problem, in fact them knowing can also benefit me: e.g when they want to give me gift.

They will frame it as you harming yourself.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#132

Post by shkkmo »

whatever1 wrote: post #93
infogulch wrote: post #65

Somehow organizations get an immense amount of value out of tracking everything you do, say, think, and buy; everywhere you go; and everyone you meet. Two questions: 1. Why should they profit off of my data without my consent? (Hint: they shouldn't.) 2. Why is it so hard for me to get value out of it? Shit, if it's gonna be collected, aggregated, and analyzed anyway, I should just do it my damn self and actually get…

You are getting free searches, email, messaging, photo storage etc

I get free searches from DuckDuckGo without paying with my personal information. It is absolutely possible to provide free services, supported by ads, while collecting little to no personal information.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#133

Post by fuckyouriotshit »

Barraketh wrote: post #99
drocer88 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"but the fact of the matter is that cookie tracking data has NEVER been associated with any leak or data breach that resulted in personal harm" Do you have a link for this?

Well, it's hard to prove the absence of a negative - I think that it's on the people claiming harm to provide some examples. However, I'm not even sure what a cookie data leak would look like. The large advertising brokers are handling petabytes of cookie tracking data per day. To gain any insight out of it you need to run jobs on giant clusters. The volume of the data makes it basically impossible to exfiltrate. So…

> The large advertising brokers are handling petabytes of cookie tracking data per day.

Citation needed.

Also, you don't need a copy of every single byte that a tracking company collects; summaries are more than enough to be useful to track individuals across the internet.

> The volume of the data makes it basically impossible to exfiltrate.

An attacker doesn't need to try to exfiltrate a large fraction of collected data; only the data that's likely to be interesting to them.

See Facebook/Cambridge Analytica [1] for an example of just how incompetent a technically-sophisticated company can be when it comes to protecting their users' (and their own!) data from potential adversaries.

[1] In particular, the comments from Alex Stamos, the CSO who said “We have the threat profile of a [...] defense contractor, but we run our corporate networks [...] like a college campus" (from https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/19/facebook-security-chief-alex... )

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#134

Post by amelius »

Swizec wrote: post #87
cs702 wrote: post #54

No one sane would ever want their relatives, friends, work colleagues, and neighbors to be able to know (quoting from the OP): > who you sleep with because both you and the person you share your bed with keep your phones nearby > whether you sleep soundly at night or whether your troubles are keeping you up > whether you pick up your phone in the middle of the night and search for things like "loan repayment" > your…

> your life expectancy based on how fast you walk, as measured by your phone Shit I would love to know this for myself! Is there a service or app that can crunch the numbers and tell me?

They only know in a statistical sense. Useful for insurance companies, but not on a personal level.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#135

Post by toss1 »

cs702 wrote: post #54

No one sane would ever want their relatives, friends, work colleagues, and neighbors to be able to know (quoting from the OP): > who you sleep with because both you and the person you share your bed with keep your phones nearby > whether you sleep soundly at night or whether your troubles are keeping you up > whether you pick up your phone in the middle of the night and search for things like "loan repayment" > your…

>> Many of these companies call themselves “data brokers.” I call them data vultures.

Perfect. Except it is insulting to vultures, who at least put carrion back in the food chain.

This is straight-up theft of our data and privacy, for profit, and it needs to be both outlawed and shamed.

Seriously, but these slime should be more despised than common burglars (tho maybe a notch above mobsters). Seriously, these people are not respectable, and should not be respected or tolerated in polite society. So, don't.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#137

Post by hh3k0 »

slver wrote: post #110
cs702 wrote: post #54

No one sane would ever want their relatives, friends, work colleagues, and neighbors to be able to know (quoting from the OP): > who you sleep with because both you and the person you share your bed with keep your phones nearby > whether you sleep soundly at night or whether your troubles are keeping you up > whether you pick up your phone in the middle of the night and search for things like "loan repayment" > your…

From reading this list, I can deduce OP just made up most of them, because over half of them contains details that are total BS. Also I happen to think we'd be a better society if we all knew everything about each other. Instead of discouraging companies from analyzing us, encourage them to publish everything all the time. Let governments join in on the fun. Everyone should be tracking an analyzing everyone else. Sol…

> From reading this list, I can deduce OP just made up most of them, because over half of them contains details that are total BS.

Care to specify which list entries you have trouble believing?

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#138

Post by amelius »

ianai wrote: post #85
amelius wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too late. You already clicked "I agree" on that EULA.

Since the civil war, you can’t sign ownership of yourself over to another. The ownership of data that intensive seems the same thing.

Ownership is the wrong word, since you will always own your data. The problem is others claiming to own it too.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#139

Post by virtue3 »

donatj wrote: post #119
cs702 wrote: post #54

No one sane would ever want their relatives, friends, work colleagues, and neighbors to be able to know (quoting from the OP): > who you sleep with because both you and the person you share your bed with keep your phones nearby > whether you sleep soundly at night or whether your troubles are keeping you up > whether you pick up your phone in the middle of the night and search for things like "loan repayment" > your…

> No one sane would ever want all their relatives, friends, work colleagues, and neighbors I'd happily share basically all of that information with that specific group of people - except maybe my neighbor that keeps reporting me to the city, they don't need to know my life, but if in turn I could know who was googling city ordinances in the middle of the night it might make up for it. At worst I get a funny look for…

But how would you trust any company to properly respect who you share stuff with? There's a multitude of anti-patterns that make some things public already with social media.

I think we should all be looking at this as either they're getting -all- of your data and sharing it with -everyone- (because that means more $$$) or they're NOT getting your data and they CANT share it cuz they don't have it.

We cannot trust companies to respect our privacy because it goes against their core value of turning a profit.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#140

Post by mancerayder »

cs702 wrote: post #54

No one sane would ever want their relatives, friends, work colleagues, and neighbors to be able to know (quoting from the OP): > who you sleep with because both you and the person you share your bed with keep your phones nearby > whether you sleep soundly at night or whether your troubles are keeping you up > whether you pick up your phone in the middle of the night and search for things like "loan repayment" > your…

Add to this... everything you said is a forever kept thing. So over decades this stuff can be mined and a tiny needle can be found if it's meaningful to the searcher. It's terrifying.
Post reply on HN