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

41–50 of 390 posts

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#41

Post by egypturnash »

jtdev wrote: post #3
anm89 wrote: post #2

Explaining to people what they should do regarding matters that there are no ways to achieve the stated goals is the laziest, lowest value category of journalism. It's a plague.

Uhhh, you can stop using said services and software that abuse privacy, e.g., Facebook, Google, Twitter, TicToc, etc.

Here's another industry that relies on aggregating your data: Credit reports.

Go ahead. Figure out how to opt out of Experian, Transunion, or Equifax collecting everything they can about you, including pretty much every piece of data needed for identity theft, possibly confusing it with someone with a similar name, and then putting it in a badly-secured database.

No, really, if you can figure it out I'd love to know. Every now and then I am reminded they exist and that they are silently creating these vast troves of data without anyone's consent, and all I can do is hope that if my identity information is included in a data breach, I am both small enough and lucky enough to not be impacted.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#42

Post by Barraketh »

Honestly, I'm kind of sick of how bad a rap advertising gets. Now sure, companies knowing a lot about your personal life is creepy on an intuitive level, 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. The thing people SHOULD be worried about is stuff like the Experian leak, where credit companies collect your non-anonymized personal data.

Also, fact is that matching consumers with products that they like doesn't just have enormous business value, but is actually socially positive! If you can more easily reach a niche audience, you can build better more targeted products. And the open data exchanges were a great moat against platform centralization like FB. The fight against open data exchanges make the comparative advantage FB has in advertising to you larger. That's actually pretty bad, because FB has some pretty bad incentives wrt to the attention economy and optimizing for engagement. A world where advertising on independent websites is effective is a much better one - it would let websites put out better content, it would decrease the power of social networks, it could fund better journalism (which is being decimated right now), etc.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#43

Post by tomc1985 »

pascalxus wrote: post #33

The article implies a lot of risk for having so much personal data circulating around without our control. but the article, and many others like it fail to show how all that risk can adversely affect us. I mean, so what if my neighbor gets a different ad than I did? maybe he's into red shirts and I like blue shirts. so what if he got a cheaper plane ticket advertisement? I'm not going to buy a ticket unless it's chea…

The article itself explains this:

  Privacy is important because it protects you from the influence of others. The more companies know about you, the more power they have over you. If they know you are desperate for money, they will take advantage of your situation and show you ads for abusive payday loans. If they know your race, they may not show you ads for certain exclusive places or services, and you would never know that you were discriminated against. If they know what tempts you, they will design products to keep you hooked, even if that can damage your health, hurt your work, or take time away from your family or from basic needs like sleep. If they know what your fears are, they will use them to lie to you about politics and manipulate you into voting for their preferred candidate. Foreign countries use data about our personalities to polarize us in an effort to undermine public trust and cooperation. The list goes on and on.
There are quite a few stories that have cropped up over the last decade or two that show this is actually happening.... the most precient one I can recall was where Target outted a pregnant teenager to her parents before she even knew she was pregnant:

https://www.businessinsider.com/the-incredible-story-of-how-...

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#44

Post by codyb »

pascalxus wrote: post #33

The article implies a lot of risk for having so much personal data circulating around without our control. but the article, and many others like it fail to show how all that risk can adversely affect us. I mean, so what if my neighbor gets a different ad than I did? maybe he's into red shirts and I like blue shirts. so what if he got a cheaper plane ticket advertisement? I'm not going to buy a ticket unless it's chea…

The big issue to me was always the data falling into malicious hands.

Sure it's not a big deal if you buy a red shirt and I buy a blue shirt but it is a big deal if you can piece together the security questions (thankfully falling out of fashion as a recovery method) for my bank account.

It's not a big deal when you don't get an advertisement for your local university but if an authoritarian government roots out gay people because they have access to credit card data for Grindr subscription charges that's probably not great.

I guess my impression is that it's not what's happened so far (although certainly innumerable lives have been sullied for weeks, months or years at a time due to identity theft, credit card fraud, and the rest), it's the potential of what could be.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#45

Post by edgyquant »

Barraketh wrote: post #42

Honestly, I'm kind of sick of how bad a rap advertising gets. Now sure, companies knowing a lot about your personal life is creepy on an intuitive level, 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. The thing people SHOULD be worried about is stuff like the Experian leak, where credit companies collect your non-anonymize…

While I agree with this it should be easier to opt out without disabling JavaScript across the internet.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#46

Post by KyleBerezin »

Barraketh wrote: post #42

Honestly, I'm kind of sick of how bad a rap advertising gets. Now sure, companies knowing a lot about your personal life is creepy on an intuitive level, 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. The thing people SHOULD be worried about is stuff like the Experian leak, where credit companies collect your non-anonymize…

I want a system that tracks me and is 100% transparent to me.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#47

Post by fsagx »

SahAssar wrote: post #24
anm89 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't end the data economy. It sort of ends part of your personal interaction with the data economy.

If enough people end their own interaction with it it ceases to exist, right? If nobody gave their data to services that sell it on or use it for profit then there is no data economy.

A person would have to live a Kaczynski-like lifestyle to not interact with services that aggregate and sell data. No credit card, no cellphone, no internet. Cash only.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#48

Post by scyzoryk_xyz »

We can't really stop the Data Economy. If we're bleeding data all over the place then we can only maintain good habits of data hygiene. But then we know that will never be perfect. Some fingerprints will always remain, some breadcrumbs will always be hoovered up by the bots.

I use adblockers and vpns and other such things but then I have accounts with facebooks and whatsapps. Could I camouflage my 'scent' with perfume? What's more - could I feed misleading data in? I really wouldn't mind being a VIP in the eyes of these shitty algorithms.

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#49

Post by coldtea »

Barraketh wrote: post #42

Honestly, I'm kind of sick of how bad a rap advertising gets. Now sure, companies knowing a lot about your personal life is creepy on an intuitive level, 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. The thing people SHOULD be worried about is stuff like the Experian leak, where credit companies collect your non-anonymize…

>Honestly, I'm kind of sick of how bad a rap advertising gets.

Couldn't have happened to a worse industry

Re: Why we should end the data economy

#50

Post by arcticfox »

djoldman wrote: post #19

Anyone know of a confirmed instance of: > They generate profits by ... selling [your personal information] to ... prospective employers ... ? This one seems unlikely but who knows.

It's one of the top use cases listed for https://www.peopledatalabs.com/ (candidate sourcing).

And incidentally, PDL was the source of a 1.2-billion person data breach a few years ago: https://www.wired.com/story/billion-records-exposed-online/

Post reply on HN