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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: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2015, @01:31PM
Is that a serious question?
The government could identify you as a person of interest and you find yourself on the bad side of our legal system, even if you did nothing truly wrong. Even if they don't succeed, the entire experience will likely leave severe mental scars and possibly property damage (depending on how they searched your property). The government could (And this has been attempted many times. For example, MLK and the warrantless wiretapping.) destroy people who challenge the status quo. Since the government has to maintain some level of secrecy, we need whistleblowers to tell us ("us" meaning The People, not some officially-approved channel that sweeps things under the rug.) when the government is doing something wrong. Mass surveillance threatens whistleblowers because it makes it far more simple for the government to find and destroy them before they can inform us of the government's wrongdoing, which undermines democracy and human rights. It enables corrupt people in the government to harass people of interest (such as ex lovers). It enables future police states by handing everything over to them on a silver platter when they emerge.
This is all true even if you give up your privacy yourself, because as we've seen, the government will just retrieve all of your surrendered information from these companies; businesses are almost always all too happy to comply. And I would argue that having your privacy violated is harm in and of itself, and your information flowing to people you didn't want it to flow to is inevitable when you give up your privacy. This includes the government and other companies, no matter what they tell you.
As for what companies themselves can do to you, the other guy's reply is good.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Wednesday May 13 2015, @02:51PM
Don't forget the NY City cop, Gilberto Valle who used a Federal database to stalk women he planned to kill and eat -- the conviction has been overturned, but not on the database charges. Anyway, the women he stalked -- I believe he even had lunch or met with one -- may have had an internet history comprised solely of watching cat videos. What people fail to realize is that the risks of pervasive surveillance are not limited to being caught being bad. It gives bad people power over you even if you are a Miss Priss 40 yo virgin who won't say "darn."
I have to get ready for work, so I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to find better citations -- obviously the cannibal part of the story gets all the news play, not the part that reveals how a public service worker abused our surveillance state to either engage in cannibalism or the fantasy of cannibalism:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/12/nypd-cannibalism-cop-guilty-verdict [theguardian.com]
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2831130/Sentencing-set-ex-officer-dubbed-Cannibal-Cop.html [dailymail.co.uk]
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday May 13 2015, @11:21PM
What people fail to realize is that the risks of pervasive surveillance are not limited to being caught being bad.
Those women deserved it, for behaving in such a provocative manner. I don't have to worry about that -- I'm not very tasty, plus I'm mostly gristle, anyway.