Please understandnim asking this question from a genuine place. I dont want the quora answer, i want the tech savvy, security expert minds of my fellow lemmings. If thats ok?
What happens to this data? What can/do they do with it? and why are so many people concerned about google tracking them?
Do i as an average user need to be concerned?
If so, What sorts of things can i do to avoid being tracked? Preferably without too much comprimise.
People don’t realize how much data is collected, how it’s analyzed to determine things about you, and how it’s given out to nearly anyone. Here are some concerning examples that hopefully speak for themselves.
Data from fitness app Strava was used to locate secret US military bases in Afghanistan and Iraq by some random guy on Twitter. He did this by pointing out people running in squares in the middle of the desert. Imagine what America’s enemies could do with this information that this company will sell to anyone.
Ad company Xandr allows you to target audiences with labels like “Recently purchased a pregnancy test”, “Has a large gambling debt”, and “Has depression”. Once again, this is freely available for anyone to purchase. These tracking companies find out things that are very personal to you and then sell that info to people who might not have your best interests in mind.
Last but not least. Governments and law enforcement can access this information at any time for any purpose. Do you really want the government and police agencies to have a database of people grouped by their religious and political beliefs or their sexual orientation?
Hopefully you can see why the information being collected and given out to anyone is concerning. As to how to avoid it, I’m not sure there is any way besides government regulation. Maybe someone else has some answers!
If your friends have Facebook, and they share contacts on their phone, and they communicate with you Facebook has a shadow profile for your phone number. They still track you even without the app or an account.
Joke’s on Facebook, all my friends are either Amish or live in anarcho-syndicalist communes
(Rumspringa can be a problem tho)
Yes, that’s why I have two phone numbers. One with an official work number that I give to friends and business partners - Its basically a requirement to have a public phone number if one runs a company where I live, so no hiding there anyways. And then I have a separate number I never give out, for data only.
Oh, you tried to call me but I didn’t pick up? Sorry, I was busy/tired/generic excuse. But if you get on Element I’ll give you my private account. Think of it as a backstage pass, you’ll get in when nobody else does. You’ll be special.
Kindergarten level psychology that works surprisingly well.
I watch a YouTube channel called The Hated One. He explains a lot about how to stay safe on the net. Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like it’s possible to be completely safe and to be even a little bit safe is a HUGE PITA.
I remember reading something about a guy that went so hard at being anonymous that the FBI almost arrested him since it looked like he was doing something criminal to want all this anonimity.
I couldn’t find the source now
Has everyone already forgotten about Cambridge Analytica, which scraped data from tens of millions of Facebook users and used it to microtarget swing voters in several countries with propaganda and misinformation to get them to either vote for right-wing candidates or stay home on election day?
I don’t think many people comprehend the impact. Most people don’t think they can be manipulated, and they are all wrong.
It’s funny, the more likely you are to admit you can be manipulated the more likely you’ll notice when it’s happening. So I just go around telling everyone how easy it is to manipulate me.
Well the other crazy thing with voting is how narrow the margins are.
It doesn’t have to convince everyone. Only a small percentage across the country mixed with a few people in key locations and you can change everything.
Miami-Dade and Palm Beach says hello. A 537 vote margin in a few Florida counties decided the 2000 US Presidential Election.
One wonders how different the world would be today if George W. Bush didn’t get that first term.
(Fun fact: the usual chicanery to depress Democratic votes also happened in 2000 - voter roll purges, roadblocks in Democratic areas, too few voter areas in cities… In many ways it was a trial run for the bullshit Republicans pull now)
Of course not. But in peoples defence, you can’t forget if you never knew. And I seem to have the impression that this was a thing and then it’s was pretty much gone again. Not brought up again and again over years like other, less important topics may have been.
Non-interested people would have been left with the impression it was bad, but it must have been fixed or else we’d hear more about it.
Just a personal story to bring one example into focus.
I got sober 8 years ago and never talked about it online until I was about 4 years sober. Never saw a single promotion for anything related to alcohol…
Until the day I made a single comment on Reddit telling my story to help support another person who was just starting their own sobriety journey.
And like magic, all promoted communities to me were alcohol related. Even though I’m an ublock user, when I would selectively disable it every advertisement I saw online was related to booze.
So even though there are ethical applications for my data, I found that it was used in an attempt to target me based on human frailties.
I think that’s just really shitty targeted advertising, not surprising on Reddit lol
I found that it was used in an attempt to target me based on human frailties.
This doesn’t even make sense. It’d be much more lucrative to target multiple things you speak fondly about it or have expressed personal interest in by actively searching.
If you enjoy something you buy it occasionally. If you are addicted you buy it every day, every time you have money, you think about it all the time. That’s way more lucrative, it’s the whole business model of the tobacco industry too.
An example of this I use on occasion is:
You date someone years ago and no longer are. You’ve moved on, but that person then goes and commits a heinous crime. The police decide that since you dated years ago, and that record of your personal info is stored on some database they have somewhere, they no-knock warrant into your house, and shoot you dead in your own bed (Brianna Taylor - Louisville KY.) because they think there’s a possibility he was there.
I don’t like the idea that if history repeats itself, a powerful entity can force the data vaults open and see who they should send to the showers. I could be on the “correct” side at that time yet something I did or said last year has the system deem me unfit for the noble breed.
