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Verizon is Selling Your Personal Data

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Re: Verizon is Selling Your Personal Data

#41

Post by overbroad »

Maybe opting out is not how to stop this abhorrent practice of selling personal information. There is much more at stake than sites just selling email address lists. There is much more detailed information involved.

Perhaps what would work better is flooding these marketers with false information. This is what hampers email lists. Most the addresses do not work.

As it stands the few (or many) people who fail to "opt-out" (or fail to use proxies) may make this sort of personal information sales market worthwhile because the information gathered is detailed and reasonably accurate. It's not just a list of disposable email addresses. It's higher quality.

Re: Verizon is Selling Your Personal Data

#42

Post by ilaksh »

biturd wrote: post #37

Will using https prevent them from doing this? I imagine it would stop data gathering and referrer gathering but the source URL request they would still be able to see? A VPN would be the only option to keeping them completely blind? I can set up a VPN on an Amazon micro instance for free. The amount of data used should be nothing or mere pennies per month to Amazon. The only trouble is keeping a VPN up. I find on an…

I think eventually the answer is to move away from centralized and for-profit providers and network architecture, both for the hardware side of the network and the software side.

http://www.reddit.com/r/darknetplan

Re: Verizon is Selling Your Personal Data

#44

Post by MichaelApproved »

andrewljohnson wrote: post #18
danilocampos wrote: post #17

Unrelated, but having had to log in, I'm now reminded of a VZW security issue: Can someone explain the doubtless backward and sloppy thinking that would convince Verizon that they should forbid their users from including symbols in their passwords?

I've taken to flagging all comments like this. I don't think it even remotely adds to the discussion to pick some usability issue and harp on it. These kind of comments crop up for every story. Easy way to score points, not useful, buries better comments. I think a good rule of thumb is that if you didn't need to read the article to make a comment, it's not a good comment.

That's exactly what the down-vote is meant for. If you think a comment is off-topic, down vote the post and perhaps add a comment as to why you think it deserves to be down-voted.

Flagging is expensive, in that it requires mod (human) attention. It should be reserved for spam and other egregious posts. Let the mods spend their valuable time on more important tasks.

Re: Verizon is Selling Your Personal Data

#45

Post by andrewljohnson »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #44
andrewljohnson wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've taken to flagging all comments like this. I don't think it even remotely adds to the discussion to pick some usability issue and harp on it. These kind of comments crop up for every story. Easy way to score points, not useful, buries better comments. I think a good rule of thumb is that if you didn't need to read the article to make a comment, it's not a good comment.

That's exactly what the down-vote is meant for. If you think a comment is off-topic, down vote the post and perhaps add a comment as to why you think it deserves to be down-voted. Flagging is expensive, in that it requires mod (human) attention. It should be reserved for spam and other egregious posts. Let the mods spend their valuable time on more important tasks.

I wasn't aware that flags required moderator attention. I assumed that once an article was flagged enough times, a mod would be alerted, but not that each flag would trigger an alert.

I would very much like to get moderators' attention or feedback on this. I don't think these kind of comments should be banned, but I think they would be curbed if there was a community guideline.

Re: Verizon is Selling Your Personal Data

#47

Post by overbroad »

ilaksh wrote: post #42
biturd wrote: post #37

Will using https prevent them from doing this? I imagine it would stop data gathering and referrer gathering but the source URL request they would still be able to see? A VPN would be the only option to keeping them completely blind? I can set up a VPN on an Amazon micro instance for free. The amount of data used should be nothing or mere pennies per month to Amazon. The only trouble is keeping a VPN up. I find on an…

I think eventually the answer is to move away from centralized and for-profit providers and network architecture, both for the hardware side of the network and the software side. http://www.reddit.com/r/darknetplan

Noncommercial internet. Original style.

Make the internet more like the telephone network, not the TV network. People do not like to be hounded by telemarketers day and night.

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