Wacom tablets track every app you open

Actually, I'm interested in exploring more of your own view here. You seemed to take exception that he limited his findings to his apparent area of expertise and interest (software engineering, security/privacy). Is that still the case, or have your views evolved on this issue?

> What is it about their data processing that leads you to all of a sudden question their corporate ethics, diligence, compliance and trustworthiness?

Your questions for me are really best answered by the author:

1. Apparently, it defied a reasonable expectation that the purchase of such a minor peripheral of this type would lead to the manufacturer's attempt to obtain a regular stream of what applications he launched on his PC (and at what time, and from what partially masked IP address). He was a smart cookie. His tip-off was that it somehow needed a privacy policy. And he had the smarts to launch his own technical investigation.

2. When he finally saw what they were pulling from his PC, once again, he was shocked, because that seemed to conflict with his own understanding of what Wacom said they were doing. He hadn't just casually scrolled through the privacy notice. It looks like he read it quite carefully.

I suspect this might be what he took issue with:

> Information Automatically Collected – Google Analytics When You use the Tablet Driver, certain information as described below may be automatically collected for purposes such as improvement of the Tablet Driver, troubleshooting bugs, providing the functions of the Tablet Driver, managing the services and improving overall performance of the Tablet Driver. Such information includes aggregate usage data, technical session information and information about Your hardware device.

No, I'm not interested in pulling in more sections of text and going back-and-forth in a game of Internet Lawyer. Someone else here might be a more willing partner.

> So they are being up front about it, right?

That's the issue. Was Wacom clear and transparent? Or did Wacom manage to generate a body of text which obfuscates what they are actually doing while still maintaining legal compliance? Or did they overreach? As it turns out, the FTC has a special page to submit complaints regarding privacy policies. I imagine that corporate privacy policies are turning into a hot topic for the FTC right now. I guess there's enough interest here, so I'll go ahead and submit this issue to the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) and see if they want to help Wacom figure out the answer to your question.

Beyond that, you have some interesting questions about trust. Not my area of expertise, but I'll take a crack at it. Your boss might say that you're someone he trusts. He might give you authority over an application which processes millions or billions in yearly revenue. But he wouldn't trust you to take care of his kids for a week. Trust is not binary (yes/no), and it is not universal (trust in area X must equal overall trust or trust in area Y). That's as much as I've got. If you've got followup questions about trust, they might be better directed towards an online resource which focuses on that issue.

Hope this helps.

It's a whole attitude. They're aware of their limited lifespan and intend to either buy their way into more and better lifespan (if possible), but in any event become actually powerful and rich.

At least on a certain scale, they're not wrong. It does work.

This is not to say, however, that they're not slugs deserving of a good salting.

1. The uplift of targeted advertising is unbelievable until you see the actual statistics. It's like slowly sipping a cup of coffee to wake up versus waking up to snort a line of crack.

2. Advertisers were abused and defrauded by adtech. Which has inspired all kinds of surveillance hellscape because the advertisers finally caught wise and have renegotiated to pay for actual performance only -- not clicks -- actually closed sales. But adtech wants paid if you do your research online, respond to an ad online, and then buy in store. And a whole lot of adtech now allows for that. Attributing an in-store purchase with no customer interaction to a prior web session by that same party.

The benefit of those two factors to the advertisers is such that we can't have a serious discussion about this shit going away without a law which assigns criminal penalties for being a beneficiary of the scheme.

They don't pay for the paystub data. The employers give it to them.

Although it's an invasion of privacy, to be sure, it actually does have some benefits for the employee.

In places outside San Fran, where people actually get conforming mortgages, having your data in The Work Number's database automates and cuts out the employment & income verification so that you don't have to track down records and submit manually and can potentially skip multiple must-connect phone calls between the lender and employer.