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from the you-mean-sombody-hadn't-realised? dept.
The New York Times published an article on Sunday confirming what we've all assumed — that internet privacy policies are so full of loopholes as to be meaningless. They found that of the 100 top alexa-ranked english-language websites, 85 had privacy policies that permitted them to disclose users' personal information in cases of mergers, bankruptcy, asset sales and other business transactions.
When sites and apps get acquired or go bankrupt, the consumer data they have amassed may be among the companies' most valuable assets. And that has created an incentive for some online services to collect vast databases on people without giving them the power to decide which companies, or industries, may end up with their information.
"In effect, there's a race to the bottom as companies make representations that are weak and provide little actual privacy protection to consumers," said Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit research center in Washington.
Original Submission
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @06:05PM
I use a junk email address (Hotmail) and junk phone number (Google Voice) on every webform that requires an email & phone. It's nice not getting spam in my personal email or spam calls to my real phone.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday June 30 2015, @06:17PM
And here's the thing:
They still know it's you. Network evercookies, CDNs, identity resolution tables, whathave you.
They still have an approximate person who those junk numbers and addresses belong to. And when they resell whatever is personal to their site: the networks store it with your correct identity, usually plucked from places you can't lie, like paper forms, census data, ISPs, cell phone companies, ATMs, or brick and mortar stores.
What's more troubling is that they still get it wrong. Your giant marketeer file probably has 10% false information that they collated from best-guess sources. It's creepy-as-fuck and all I've got to defend me is browser extensions that barely work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @06:45PM
There's a difference between being cautious and wearing a tinfoil cap.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday June 30 2015, @06:59PM
I worked at a company that did the ATM to CRM data collection for retail companies. That part, at the very least, I can vouch for being totally real.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 30 2015, @07:11PM
How did they get at the data? or make the connection..
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Tuesday June 30 2015, @07:18PM
Bank tracks your withdrawals, they track the serial numbers of the currency emitted by the machine, bigger chain stores take their cash register contents, scan them at end of the day.
A couple lookup tables later, and they have a pretty good idea of who bought what.
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Tuesday June 30 2015, @08:45PM
Or more precisely, whose hooker and dealer bought what.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @10:06PM
So, you pull $100 out of the ATM, loan it to a friend, he spends it on condoms and a hooker, but you get tagged for it. I see no way this could be used in court and it's to easy to launder the money by buying a pack of gum at 7/11 and getting change. I call BS on the ATM to big brother tracking the cash. There's a better way to track each note... http://www.wheresgeorge.com/ [wheresgeorge.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bytram on Tuesday June 30 2015, @10:40PM
Separately, if cash serial numbers *are* tracked, what's a person to do so as to be able to make anonymous transactions?
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday June 30 2015, @10:56PM
I don't know for sure.
Get change elsewhere first? Acquire your currency in person in a bank, since they can't scan the cashing leaving drawers the same way they do the dispensers?
I don't know about validating it. It was just in the tutorial literature for the CRM application I was working on a tiny piece of.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday June 30 2015, @11:41PM
since they can't scan the cashing leaving drawers the same way they do the dispensers
Says who? They could scan the packets placed into the drawer in the morning.
Most banks don't co-mingle deposits of cash with the content of the drawer. So deposits of cash never make it to the drawer to mess up the serial number order.
But Basically I've never heard one single case of serial number recording on dispensed cash from a cash-machine. Such would have found its way into news paper stories about catching crooks, or court testimony. I suspect its apocryphal.
Such a system would be useless in proving chain of transactions, because If you and I swap hundred dollars bills for street goods, and then someone swapped that money for a bar tab, or for a lap dance, nobody would be aware of those transactions.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday July 01 2015, @01:00PM
Right, and that's why bad data gets into these systems about people. They're imperfect.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday July 01 2015, @04:38PM
Yet, I challenge you to find one authoritative source that says Cash Machines record who gets which serial numbers.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday July 01 2015, @08:27PM
I cannot do this. I'm half considering revealing the name of my previous employer, and their product name, and half realizing that would be an impotent measure to impress internet strangers that hurts my professional ethics.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday July 01 2015, @10:32PM
Still, even without violating your employers NDA, there would be dozens of such references on the net if it were true.
It would have appeared in court testimony.
It would be in news papers.
There would be people moaning about it on privacy grounds.
But all you ever see is people speculating without a single on line reference.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @08:37AM
OK, so based on the serial number, you can say that I probably bought some stuff at the larger shop ("probably" because I could as well have given that same bank note to a taxi driver who used it to pay a hair cut at a small shop, where the same note was later given as change to some other guy who used it to pay a hooker who then gave that note to the pimp who finally used it to pay in that larger shop). There's no way to say whether I (or whoever got the bank note) bought cheese, socks, cooking equipment, a DVD, a computer keyboard, a computer magazine, a newspaper of some bicycle equipment (yes, all those items are sold in that same shop).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @08:39AM
err ...
s/of some bicycle equipment/or some bicycle equipment/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @07:40PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @08:03PM
Good idea if you carry a cellphone in your pocket, unless you want future politician kids.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday June 30 2015, @08:41PM
Why would brick-and-mortar stores need your data? And why can't you lie to them?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.