SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the give-me-six-lines-penned-by-the-most-honest-of-men... dept.
Cracked Labs has just released a report on Corporate Surveillance in Everyday Life:
Report: How thousands of companies monitor, analyze, and influence the lives of billions. Who are the main players in today's digital tracking? What can they infer from our purchases, phone calls, web searches, and Facebook likes? How do online platforms, tech companies, and data brokers collect, trade, and make use of personal data?
In recent years, a wide range of companies has started to monitor, track and follow people in virtually every aspect of their lives. The behaviors, movements, social relationships, interests, weaknesses and most private moments of billions are now constantly recorded, evaluated and analyzed in real-time. The exploitation of personal information has become a multi-billion industry. Yet only the tip of the iceberg of today's pervasive digital tracking is visible; much of it occurs in the background and remains opaque to most of us.
This report by Cracked Labs examines the actual practices and inner workings of this personal data industry. Based on years of research and a previous 2016 report, the investigation shines light on the hidden data flows between companies. It maps the structure and scope of today's digital tracking and profiling ecosystems and explores relevant technologies, platforms and devices, as well as key recent developments.
While the full report is available as PDF download, this web publication presents a ten part overview.
The online paper has 10 sections on everything from "Analyzing People" through "Towards a society of pervasive digital social control?"
In short, these companies are relying on information asymmetry — they know what they are getting and what they plan on doing with data about you, while you are left to your limited imagination as to what they might be planning.
(Score: 2) by pvanhoof on Monday June 12 2017, @06:17PM (6 children)
The problem that I can't control what others post about me, remains. And sad for the social media fans, but it's my right to be left alone. Besides, increasingly is social media (any kind) becoming a HR tool. Soon, if not already, it'll be the tool used by insurance companies to define your insurance fees. I can't remove other people's wall posts. So I decided to be online incognito as much as possible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @07:31PM (2 children)
OK, I'm with you 100% on that.
Hmmm, I'm not quite as sure about that. I could come up with arguments both pro and con for that one. For example, I think anyone has a right--short of libel or slander--to say nasty things about you. You, on the other hand, have every right not to read it. I guess I would say that you have a right not to participate in social media. FWIW, I don't have a facebook account, etc., either. I see having a facebook account as a whole lot of annoyance and liability with very little upside.
Again, I'm right there with you on this one. As I said, I see facebook et al as a whole lot of liability with very little upside to it.
This last part I find truly weird, pvanhoof. I'm guessing If I truly wanted to that I could trace your pseudonym back to a real person, no? You are a whole lot less incognito than you appear to suppose. I, on the other hand, always post here as AC. I'm sure that law enforcement have the tools to trace this post back to a real person if they really felt the need, but it would probably cost more time and effort than it would be worth for any but the most serious of law enforcement issues. Your average poster here on SN would have a much tougher time finding me IRL. Not exactly incognito but about as close as necessary for most practical purposes. Just sayin'.
(Score: 2) by pvanhoof on Monday June 12 2017, @07:41PM (1 child)
Fair enough that I post non-AC here. But the things I said today, here, are all said under the assumption that they will not form a big liability for me in future. That might be a naive assumption, but it's one I made nonetheless. Also, soylentnews.org is relatively unlikely to ever be a source of data mining. As there are much more easy (and cheaper) platforms to data-mine customer behavior and the likes from.
ps. I would, however, welcome it if soylentnews wouldn't put a big emphasis on non-anonymous comments and posts. For example letting initial scores start lower for AC-posts while, especially at this time and here on soylentnews, there is almost no problem with anonymous posters. So to be honest, I don't see the need for such an emphasis or push to let people post non-anonymous.
ps. Yes, I'm easy to track. My handle even contains my real surname.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @10:51PM
Well, yes and no. For example, I haven't noticed you personally making any sort of incendiary comments on this website. On the other hand, at least a few posters (I'm looking especially at you, Runaway, VLM, and jmorris) have posted some things to this website that I wouldn't be at all surprised catch up with them in rather unfortunate ways.
I must admit to being of two minds on this. I always post as AC because I want people to receive my comments based solely on their merits, rather than making assumptions about what they think I really meant with my comment based on my prior posting history. In short, I would rather that any disagreements with my comments be directed at what I said rather than at me personally. As such, I find posting as AC tends to keep the conversation focused on content. On the other hand, some posters have a certain reputation for spewing garbage; having a name attached to their post makes it that much easier to filter them out as noise. Of course, YMMV.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 12 2017, @09:26PM (2 children)
But you can control what you tell them.
(Score: 2) by pvanhoof on Tuesday June 13 2017, @06:31AM (1 child)
Well ... Having been unwillingly the center of some heavily visited article on the green website, because I said something on a then popular OSS mailing list to RMS, I can tell you that no matter how politically correct you were; people will make up huge huge huge piles of bullshit about you as soon as you talk to their God-like idol. And those imaginative concepts, those ideas and the hearsay they came up with, will define the narrative. Not what you really said. Not at all.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 13 2017, @12:50PM
Always say things anonymously so that you can leave the imaginative rumor people swim in their own pool of shit. People of normal intelligence and insight can't handle real names(tm).