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I'm about to give up.
On the one hand, I see countless people get loyalty cards and enjoy discounts on their purchases. They connect with friends on Facebook and Twitter. They use apps on android or apple smartphones to give them turn-by-turn directions, find out where their friends are, or find places of interest. Their e-mail is "in the cloud" where they can get to it from multiple places. They use services like dropbox to share files. They get their news on-line and read e-books. I could go on and on.
On the other hand, I see opportunities for tracking and profiling in every one of those activities. So much so that it seems like one would be under constant observation and surveillance. We are just data points to be sliced and diced and marketed to — a society of consumers rather than customers.
So, I've got a major "ick factor" knowing about these practices and yet I'm hard-pressed to explain any negative consequences to otherwise intelligent people. "I don't do anything that's THAT interesting." "I've done nothing wrong, so I don't worry about it." "I like getting the bonuses and discounts."
Yet, I see companies expend great amounts of money implementing tracking mechanisms such as cookies, super-cookies, clear gifs, as well as huge databases of purchases, travels, and interests. I don't believe they are doing this for purely philanthropic reasons.
In no particular order, I include these for consideration:
- "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." - Cardinal Richelieu
- "If you are not paying for it, you are the product."
- Joel on Software - Strategy Letter V: Commoditize your Complement
- Using Metadata to find Paul Revere
I use a variety of Addons while browsing the web using Pale Moon: a custom HOSTS file, Self-Destructing Cookies, Ad-Block Plus, Ghostery, NoScript, Better Privacy, Flashblock, and Ref Control. I have a firewall and use anti-virus products. "In real life" I prefer to use cash over charge cards for my purchases. I have no loyalty cards.
What say you Soylentils? Am I being unreasonably paranoid? Or not paranoid enough? What dangers, really, are there? Why not sign up for all those loyalty cards and social apps? What privacy protections do YOU use?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Justin Case on Wednesday May 13 2015, @11:14AM
Near the dawn of the internet I wrote a (paper) letter to the editor of a (paper) newspaper, and it got published with my real name. It still shows up when I google myself decades later.
Unfortunately, I strongly expressed a political opinion. More unfortunately, I used a phrase which today has acquired a distinct, and much different, political implication. So if you're thinking of hiring me, and do some googling, you might conclude I have a radical opinion that I actually don't, and never did, hold.
I learned. I stopped posting under my real name. But some hypothetical entity recording all my (unencrypted? future-decrypted?) traffic today might find something that is unpopular in the future.
Now suppose I ran for political office. Opponents could use this to discredit me. Even if they found statements that represent me accurately, anything can be taken out of context.
So perhaps thousands or millions of people just sit back and shut up. Which is of course exactly what our masters prefer.
I don't think you're paranoid enough. You can't possibly anticipate two decades of future tech progress or opinion change. Yet you have to build a profile now that will be acceptable in all those possible futures.
Use NoScript, pay cash... and you still can't avoid the trackers. They're everywhere!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2015, @12:47PM
> But some hypothetical entity recording all my (unencrypted? future-decrypted?) traffic today might find something that is unpopular in the future.
Hell, it might be unpopular today.
Privacy is a tool for self-exploration. It allows us to try on different ideas, different aspects of our personalities to see if they are a good fit or something we should discard. Think about teenagers who behave differently depending on what group of friends they are with. They aren't being two-faced, they are figuring out who they are.
Similarly, we are different people to the different people in our lives. We are one person to our mother, another to our wife and a third to our children. Some aspects of those personas need to stay within the confines of those relationships. When all of that information is collected in databases under 3rd party control it robs us of the ability to define our relationships with other people because there is always a risk that the information will be disclosed without your consent. And don't even get me started on that stupid "Transparent Society" bullshit from David Brin where everybody has access to all the data, that dystopian fantasy would obliterate what it means to be human.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2015, @12:58PM
You raise an excellent point. Those who claim that they have done nothing interesting have not yet seen any negative consequences to their being tracked. At the moment, the purchase recommendation technology is immature; what happens when they are better able to mine all that data and build a much better dossier on us?
An anecdote: Many years ago, someone filed a slew of false charges on me. Misdemeanors *and* felonies. I was in jail for the very first time in my life while awaiting trial. I had a public defender and the plaintiff had the District Attorney and all his office's resources. I was facing many, many years in prison if any of these charges stuck. After the third trip to court, the judge noticed inconsistencies in the plaintiff's complaint sufficient to realize that these were not plausible accusations and allowed me to get out on time served (at this point I'd been in jail over a month) if I plead guilty to a misdemeanor. Up until this point I had a clean record. I weighed the options and decided I had better take the plea. Who knows what data the DA could gather and take out of context in order to make a case? The judge did also order that if I remained 'out of trouble' for a certain period of time, that the record would be sealed. What if I had gotten a different judge? One who did not see through the BS and it had gone to trial? THAT scares me.
So, just how 'sealed' are those records? If someone scraped all the publicly-visible data on an-going basis, there may be some record of it out in some database out there, for sale to any and sundry. It has been many years since that experience and I've had a high-security job since then which required a background check, so the risk is very low at this point. Still, I cast a wary eye to any data gathering.
So back on point, at least in my own life, it has definitely had a chilling effect on my actions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2015, @03:05PM
So the judge realized the charges were nonsense, and told you to plead guilty to something you didn't do? What?
The attorney should lose their job for filing false charges and you should be able to sue them for everything they have.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday May 13 2015, @03:24PM
You clearly don't understand the legal system. Trials are not a means to find truth, they are a casino where sometimes you win and sometimes you lose and the results are often predicated on the most random facts you can imagine. Worse, in criminal trials the stakes are so high that losing is not an option. Taking the plea deal was probably a really smart thing to do, unless he was absolutely made of money. Then he could have bought all the justice he needed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2015, @06:02PM
You clearly don't understand the legal system.
Wrong. I fully understand the legal system as well as everything you said. Learn the difference between someone saying how things should be and someone telling others how things actually are at present.
Taking the plea deal was probably a really smart thing to do
However, it's unprincipled and ultimately harmful to society at large because letting them get away with it allows them to easily continue the practice.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday May 13 2015, @10:17PM
Well, it wasn't clear from your original post that you were talking about how things ought to be versus reality. Our legal system would be totally unrecognizable if it was about the pursuit of fair and accurate justice, but by the same token, one guy deciding to take a decade in jail to prove a point and make the prosecutor go to trial, certainly isn't going to move the system we have from where it stands. In that sense, your post come off sounding like unfair criticism of the GP. He was almost certainly right to make the choice he made because it was better for him, and even if he didn't take the plea, it would not have changed the legal system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2015, @12:20AM
Not one guy; everyone who faces such a situation. By letting them do as they please, our defeat becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Making plea deals worthless is but one means of victory.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2015, @02:53PM
Now suppose I ran for political office. Opponents could use this to discredit me. Even if they found statements that represent me accurately, anything can be taken out of context.
Ahhh... in 20 to 30 years time we won't have any liars anymore... and you have facebook to thank for that.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday May 13 2015, @07:24PM
By that time everybody will be within the party line or be packing their sled as the Russians used to say. In DDR there were a few people around to tell authorities if you uttered anything at anytime as being out of the party line.