See also: "How advertisers became NSA's best friend"[1]. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/12/5204196/how-advertisers-...
NB: 2013 (as is suggested by the URL).
Do you think this effort was somehow scaled back?
FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies
311–320 of 359 posts
Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What intellectually honest reason do you have for why it would be wrong if I’m watching you while you sleep? If I inventory your house while you’re away, and sell this information to the highest bidder? This is an interesting idea, but it's a pretty far analogy from app telemetry or ad data collection. If you're really saying, "would it be wrong for me as a camera app developer to collect the videos end users recor…
So basically your argument is everything is fine because consumers can opt out. Another tired old argument where even the people saying it don’t really believe it. You can’t even rent a hotel room without giving them an email and a phone number they don’t need, and are looking to sell. If this works for you.. the person at the counter probably faked it rather than arguing with you. Some people will be happy when menu…
All you have to do is tell me how you are harmed by your email sold for marketing by a hotel room. The flashlight thing sounds like a bad actor that doesn’t have anything to do with anyone’s opinions about privacy, and it doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with Meta or YouTube. I’d be most interested in naming a specific harm in something that their app telemetry does.
Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies
#313To me, what's missing from that set of recommendations is some method to increase the liability of companies who mishandle user data. It is insane to me that I can be notified via physical mail of months old data breaches, some of which contained my Social Security number, and that my only recourse is to set credit freezes from multiple credit bureaus.
> To me, what's missing from that set of recommendations is some method to increase the liability of companies who mishandle user data. As nice as this is on paper, it will never happen, lobbyist exists. Not to be tinfoil hat but why would any lawmaker slap the hand that feeds them. Until there is an independent governing body which is permitted to regulate over the tech industry as a whole it wont happen. Consider t…
While I also worry about lobbying, we'll have to lobby harder.
Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies
#314To me, what's missing from that set of recommendations is some method to increase the liability of companies who mishandle user data. It is insane to me that I can be notified via physical mail of months old data breaches, some of which contained my Social Security number, and that my only recourse is to set credit freezes from multiple credit bureaus.
Shared secrets are criminally negligent security architecture in 2024. We can authenticate identity and authorize payment without giving the relying party a token to leak or abuse. The energy behind this problem is good, but "everyone try harder to protect the shared secrets entrusted to you" would be a tragic waste of it.
Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies
#315Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that surveillance is going on in here!
Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies
#316To me, what's missing from that set of recommendations is some method to increase the liability of companies who mishandle user data. It is insane to me that I can be notified via physical mail of months old data breaches, some of which contained my Social Security number, and that my only recourse is to set credit freezes from multiple credit bureaus.
Shared secrets are criminally negligent security architecture in 2024. We can authenticate identity and authorize payment without giving the relying party a token to leak or abuse. The energy behind this problem is good, but "everyone try harder to protect the shared secrets entrusted to you" would be a tragic waste of it.
> [...] would be a tragic waste of it.
The first time would have been a tragedy, from then on it has been farce after farce.
Imagine a world where companies would have to prove the necessity of storing specific factoids. It would only take 1 security researcher to prove it being unnecessary, invalidating that class of "legitimate interests".
Today this value judgement happens in human brains, like the (correct) judgement in your comment. If we want to scale it objectively we would have to switch to formal verification. A whole industry of compliance checking could come to exist where a company wants to get its operations screened for compliance issues, so as not to suffer criminal negligence penalties.
Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_SHAMROCK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_and_Mitchell_defection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON Et cetera. These aren't new issues. The obsession with Snowden as a messianic figure is unhelpful in contextualizing the information.
>The obsession with Snowden as a messianic figure is unhelpful in contextualizing the information. Damn the gall, give it a rest. Again, methods and scope. Which one of those exposes PRISM, XKeyScore and the NSA infiltrating Google servers? Which one of those exposes the companies that willingly "integrated" with the NSA? Which of those exposes US government spying on allied governments, recording private conversatio…
Weird take. You have all these aspersions to cast on me and saying I'm trying to "sway public opinion by minimizing" when I'm literally telling one person to learn more about these subjects so they'll be less ignorant.
Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really? Peril? We’ll be in perilous danger if we don’t maintain targeted, invasive ad tracking? Get a grip.
I am saying that we should not destroy a major source of prosperity. Targeted advertising is far more effective than untargeted because it lets you show ads to people who might have any interest in what you're selling.
That can be done without the massive accumulation of data on each of us.
You join a Facebook group for fashion? Ads for fashion.
You join a Facebook group for woodworking? Ads for tools.
See how that doesn't require any personal information?
Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies
#319Ever stop and think it's funny that Meta, Google, etc. are worth billions because they figured out how to legally fill a database with information about you? In any other time in history some might call it spying, but well they figured out how to do it legally, and it's worth billions. Meanwhile from a technical standpoint, remotely logging your data is a trivial thing, with consent of course. It's like, we made this…
Wait --- the emperor isn't wearing any clothes?!?!?
I wouldn't say that. If it meets our needs/wants and we are willing to pay for it, that represents value, no matter how silly it sounds. People pay money for plenty of nonsense: cosmetics, junk food, DLC. The fact that it's artificially derived (laws begetting paid workarounds) doesn't change the value proposition. For data gluttons the investment in data acquisition pays off. There are plenty of people paying money to work around laws, especially tax laws. Tax decisions have a scale from wisdom (an individual making prudent financial decisions) to deviance (a company playing shell games with businesses and bank accounts) but the line can be blurry.
I do think the situation is dystopian though. Sharing data without explicit case-by-case consent should be disallowed.
Re: FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shared secrets are criminally negligent security architecture in 2024. We can authenticate identity and authorize payment without giving the relying party a token to leak or abuse. The energy behind this problem is good, but "everyone try harder to protect the shared secrets entrusted to you" would be a tragic waste of it.
> [...] would be a tragic waste of it. The first time would have been a tragedy, from then on it has been farce after farce. Imagine a world where companies would have to prove the necessity of storing specific factoids. It would only take 1 security researcher to prove it being unnecessary, invalidating that class of "legitimate interests". Today this value judgement happens in human brains, like the (correct) judge…
The problem here is the payments industry (continuing to issue and accept "credit card numbers") and the voters (refusing to authorize a proper national ID). An individual entity that has to conduct business under these circumstances has no real alternative.
You are not being harmed by the storage or leakage of a few bytes, that's ridiculous. You are being harmed by the financial industry and government's insistence that knowledge of these bytes is sufficient to take your property or hold a debt against you.