161–170 of 311 posts
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Pretty sure it's the same across the world, really. Try getting your medical records expunged in Cuba or your search records expunged in China. I bet you have the same success as in the US.
Maybe you should look at free people in mostly free countries, instead of dictatorships. For instance, the EU and Switzerland.
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Value is derived from the potential application of data. Ads as an application isn't worth much since you can still be shown ads just fine without any personal data targeting. Black market data is worth way more because it's often more personal than just demographic markers and interests, and can potentially lead to large sums of money.
Well no that's incorrect. A targeted ad is worth significantly more than one without targeting. I buy ads at a $0.25 cpm and a $40 cpm, the only difference is targeting data.
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Value is derived from the potential application of data. Ads as an application isn't worth much since you can still be shown ads just fine without any personal data targeting. Black market data is worth way more because it's often more personal than just demographic markers and interests, and can potentially lead to large sums of money.
Personal information is less valuable on the black market due to the difficulty in monetising and extracting the cash. If I have your bank account login details I can move cash out of your bank, but almost no hope of sending cash from a U.K. Domestic savings account to my friendly philapines bank over the web UI. That's why Nigerian Princes still send out emails - the find the one idiot willing to walk into his bank…
These criminals trade data because it makes them money, otherwise there wouldn’t be much of a makrket.
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Wait for the day that Facebook is hacked.
I'd be pretty surprised if an attacker could actually get away with a lot of sensitive, actionable bulk user data from Facebook. DMs would probably be way too big in total, unless they just looked for DMs of high-profile people. As for passwords, they're probably not stored in a very crackable format (probably some kind of super-bcrypt-esque algorithm with a pepper). Of course, they could hijack the login procedure a…
Facebook makes it really hard for people to log off. Unless one is using a shared computer, I doubt she types her password more than a couple times a year.
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It depends. It's possible a company could catch a breach while the data is being dumped to s3/russia/wherever and cut it off before everything is extracted. Another possibility is that only one particular system is breached, which wouldn't actually affect all users of a given company. If Facebook were hacked, it's possible that only the ad-buy system is compromised and not their entire user store, for example, thus e…
> Another possibility is that only one particular system is breached, which wouldn't actually affect all users of a given company And a third possibility, especially given today's trend to distributed systems, is that the attacker gains access to one shard (or its dump) only.
I think the issue right now is that private user information is viewed as an asset, not a liability. If we could find a way to make it more of a liability, companies would be less likely to collect it just for the sake of having it, and they would be more proactive in securing it.
Alternatively, if it's truly an asset, can it be taxed as an asset? If I give a company a car, that is taxed. If I give a company my data which is worth more than a car, it isn't. Is it possible that current accounting/tax law can be interpreted so that these are viewed similarly?
3 billion - we live in an age where half the population of the earth can exist on a service, and everyone is vulnerable. Yes, a good chunk of these are probably duplicates for business / spam / anon accounts, but this is where the world is trending. How long is it until facebook or google have a massive breach?
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Well no that's incorrect. A targeted ad is worth significantly more than one without targeting. I buy ads at a $0.25 cpm and a $40 cpm, the only difference is targeting data.
You can still show the ads and there are a lot of other signals and context to use. Also other than Facebook or google with strong identity, 3rd party data on the open web is next to useless. If you’re paying $40cpm for data, you’re getting ripped off.
For example, that 40cpm is to reach a pool of <1000 users who are in charge of purchasing for networks of hospitals, and my ads are for MRI machines. 3rd party data is unbelievably valuable, probably $1.5 million of my budget goes to data costs alone.
I think the issue right now is that private user information is viewed as an asset, not a liability. If we could find a way to make it more of a liability, companies would be less likely to collect it just for the sake of having it, and they would be more proactive in securing it.