I think a great example of why data privacy matters was the recent concern many American women had about whether data collected by their period tracking app could be used to persecute them for abortions. While you might believe that the data being collected about you is harmless, a government hostile to you could use that data against you with great effect.

An even more worrying account of data hoarding was when homosexuals were registered and later sent to concentration camps... (Yes, I've just invoked Godwin's law)

In my opinion data should be regarded as a liability by default.

We can't rely on a given corporation being benign, or not cooperating with a given regime forever.

Grindr is being abused by egyptian police to persecute gay and bisexual people: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/03/24/grindr-egypt...

Grindr was bought by a Chinese company. Gee, I wonder why a (I presume CCP backed) company would want a list of all the closeted gay US Senators?

This is precisely why Germany (and thus the EU) is the global leader in personal data protection and on-device ML requirements.

When I was at Apple getting iCloud off the ground, we had to carve out exemptions for all client-server syncing to allow phone-mac sync specifically for Germany. Because they know what happens when the government can subpoena your data.

No Godwin necessary. There are plenty of countries like Saudi Arabia or Uganda where in 2023 your sexual orientation can be a capital offense.

> a government hostile to you could use that data against you with great effect

A future government - one that is very different from the one currently in power or that you ever imagined possible - could use that data against you with great effect.

A foreign government hostile to you could use that data against you with great effect.

An institution hostile to you could use that data against you with great effect.

A corporation hostile to you could use that data against you with great effect.

A stalker could use that data against you with great effect.

And so on.

The case with foreign govts are expressly part of why I'm unlikely to ever visit certain countries. Being critical of a foreign govt online can get you in trouble if you ever need/want to visit. Best case, you get turned back... but can only imagine how bad a worst case could get.

Or, having your own govt take you out with a drone strike while on foreign soil.

One of my wife's friends was married to a senior Google engineer, and after a messy divorce needed help to avoid stalking by him. In addition to being a privacy roach motel, Google had shockingly bad controls and auditing to detect and punish abuse, not sure if that's still the case but I wouldn't be surprised.

A media outlet hostile to you could use that data against you with great effect - and it's already happened. The owners of Sanctioned Suicide were deanonymised by the NYT in part from illegally obtained data - the Epik breach.[1]

These were individuals who intended on staying pseudonymous, operated something that was legal-but-disagreeable-to-the-public, but yet fell victim to a hack that spilled their identity. And in spite of that, journalists felt it ethical to use illegally obtained data in part to "out" them. Nobody to my knowledge called out the problems with this - or that this same ethically fraught tactic may one day be used by organised harassers and right-wing outlets to deanonymise people seeking abortion or gender-affirming care.

Here in the US, the First Amendment makes any legal remedy to this hard to achieve. Yet still, we could be doing far better than to passively condone the use of illegally obtained data in investigative journalism to highlight unpopular, perhaps even vile, but legal activities.

[1]: https://archive.ph/eL4dS

Or the despicable doxxing by the NYT of Scott Alexander, author of the blog State Star Codex.

In a world where data is carelessly collected and insecurely stored, it won't just be prosecutors using it to obstruct access to abortion or gender affirming care. It will be organised online harassment campaigns as well, using ML to comb through combinations of legally and illegally obtained data - years and years worth - to build an instant dossier on anyone they deem a target, and highlight aspects of their personal life that they had never intended to come to light, or even thought would one day be angering enough to justify widespread harassment.

The article used Google Ads as an example. Let's say, god forbid, Google Ads suffers a breach, and it turns out they didn't anonymise the data used to build personalised ads at all. Any one of these organised harassment campaigns can pick out targets of their ire simply by what was recommended to them in ads.

That's an example of being concerned, though. That is, people imagine a possible future and they are concerned about it.

When we think about the future, this is the stuff of imagination, storytelling, and mathematical models. It's mental constructs, not something that actually happened.

Many examples used in privacy arguments are like that. If you instead look for things that actually happened, it's things like journalists, activists, doxing, crazy exes, and so on. And certainly if you're in a war, good opsec is important.

These are certainly things that happen, but it seems reasonable for many people to look at them and decide their own risk is low, compared to other disasters you could prepare for.

If you are gay, transsexual, or a woman, (or assist one of those groups with getting medical care) that "war" is upon you now.

And, this war has been foretold for decades now.

Yes, this depends on who you are and where you live. By war I meant actual war, like in Ukraine.

Also, I don't think Google is the problem for vulnerable minorities, and it might be part of the solution, because they do have good security?

Using Google isn't a good idea is you think law enforcement might take an interest and get a warrant, though.

I also think it's important to maximize personal liberty... even for those you don't agree with. It's disturbing how many people support overt censorship and thought crimes. Eventually it can and will be used against you. Govt in general will always abuse every power granted in the end, and everything you let it do to attack "the other side" can be turned on you.

This is a classic example of an ideological argument. But of course ideology is important to many people.

Of course it's an ideological argument. Censorship in general is almost always about ideology.

I think what's new here is that digital data can be store long-term easily.

In that case though the data collection is presumably required (to some extent) for the app to function. If you're tracking a users periods then you presumably need to store data about their period.

It's probably a case for why we should have anonymous users accounts for those kind of services. I don't know how practical that is.

Yes, that's a good one. I'll need to look for an article that describes that well.

I like that they directly tried to answer this question, but I still think the "so what" case is stronger, for me anyway.

I don't use an ad blocker and there are certain sites that are annoying, but I think the biggest influence on me is that I avoid those websites. I don't notice the actual ads very often (other than as an annoyance) and I don't buy very much. What I buy seems more influenced by other things like Wirecutter reviews. Should I stop reading Wirecutter because they influence what I buy?

We buy quite a bit through Amazon. Their problems with dodgy vendors and counterfeits are well known, but we're skeptical. My wife returns things for minor flaws fairly often. It's possible we're subtly harmed by something we bought, but I see ads playing a very minor role in this, compared to product listings.

Another example of influence is restaurant reviews. My wife and I both look up nearby restaurants in Google Maps and this is nearly all the information we use to decide which restaurant to go to. (Sometimes she uses Yelp.) How are we harmed by this? Maybe there's some restaurant we missed, but I think we eat pretty well anyway. I don't think we are harmed by using Google for that.

Most privacy arguments seem to be theoretical and/or ideological, not practical. I'm sure you can think of some, and I can easily anticipate them. It's a common trope. But if it's not a practical argument, it's not going to be very convincing to me.

There was a significant problem years ago, annoying to power users but dangerous to most other users, where I would be on a website reading an article and then all of a sudden I get redirected out of the article into "Hit 5 ducks and win today's prize" or "Your computer has malware and requires remediation" - intrusive scams seeking to deceive the user into installing malware.

This problem was bad enough that I installed Brave on my phone simply for the rootless adblocker. These redirects even came from reputable news websites like WaPo or NYT - they weren't confined to "literally who?" websites using "literally who?" ad networks.

Ever since then I've used an adblocker on both desktop and mobile simply for this reason. And I've recommended others install adblockers as well, because they may not be aware that it's not your operating system telling you you have malware, it's a website trying to get you to install malware.

If this problem has receded in recent years, I'd say, "Great!" and be a little more chill about it. But until then, I staunchly recommend ad blockers just as protection from malware redirects that Google et al seemed very unconcerned about or unable to deal with effectively.

Haven't seen it in quite a while so I think it must have been dealt with somehow.

Amazon really bugs me in that you can't filter by seller anymore... I would usually filter and buy only from Amazon. Makes it literally harder to use, and I've actually started using it less as a result.

For me, the bigger risk in the ad networks is the viral vector. It's way too easy to inject ads with viral outcomes into the ad networks, still. It's the same reason I disabled flash at home, when I found out I could get local filesystem access from some work projects. It's more about sanitation than anything else.

The fact that tracking has become wholy excessive is the other issue... when you start seeing ads for things mentioned only in voice conversation, it's creepy to say the least. And frankly, I'm done with it. uBlock origin, privacy guard, pihole all in place.

Not sure about viruses. Yes, ads have been used as a vector, and there are zero days, but I think mainstream OSes and browsers have pretty good security if you keep up to date? I suspect phishing attacks are a bigger issue.

It can be quite difficult to tell the difference between spooky coincidences and actual targeted ads. My money is on spooky coincidences, but it's a problem that many people imagine otherwise, and there's no way to prove it one way or the other because modern technology is basically magic as far as most users are concerned.

I’m skeptical. How do you think this has been proved?

in the long term you end up paying more because of all the returns. all for the privilege of being abused by countless fake and incorrect listings trying to fool you when trying to but something (with a 25% change the you will wait, spend time to return, and still not have the item)

yet you claim that you move away from sites that merely annoy you with ads. I'm highly skeptical.

If that's the cost, I think we're comfortable paying it, rather than not being able to return things.

It's not that I don't see ads, but I do tend to prefer websites like Hacker News more than ad-driven websites. I do see ads on linked news sites.

The real reason, which I don't hear voiced often, is because you're not getting enough value for your data. Your data has value to advertisers, but to many other entities, private and public. Your data has value, and Google has high profit margins on that value. To be able to extract more value from your own data for yourself, you need to be able to deny Google access to it, and then sell it back to them. If enough people do this, it becomes something like a collective bargaining tool, and then some of Google's enormous societal windfall actually gets returned...to society.

Maybe, but this is an example of a theoretical / ideological argument.

If we needed more money, it seems like there are easier ways to get it than trying to get a better bargain for information about us? We could be more careful about spending. I could shop around more. There are games with credit card rewards that I don't really play. I could invest better.

I think you're ignoring an important cost/benefit analysis. The upside may be small, on the order of 10's of dollars per month. But the downside is very large - scammers or corrupt governments tracking your behavior to fuel prosecutions, etc. The expected value (EV) of controlling your data is actually rather high when you look at the whole picture, and Google buying you off with webmail, videos and search no longer seems like such a good deal.

You do notice the ads, though. That's the whole point of visual ads: you are being influenced to buy certain brands in the periphery.

I don't think they influence me much? They might remind me of something I wanted to do anyway, but usually they are irrelevant.

At scale, ads do something, but what it is isn't very clear. Some people are convinced that ads do real harm but the evidence seems fairly shaky. There are lots of dodgy psychological theories out there.

Here's one dodgy theory (with little evidence behind it) about how ads might work:

https://meltingasphalt.com/ads-dont-work-that-way/

Also, how they work in general is different from whether they work in me. I think observing my own thoughts processes and behavior is better evidence than someone on the Internet telling me what they believe about ads.

Yes, I believe they do work in that respect. But when is being able to name brands harmful?

I'll probably get hate for this, but:

I've never used an ad blocker. I (generally) always "accept all cookies" from that European thing. I do use "incognito mode" sometimes -- but not often.

I've never gotten any malware or other things like that. I've never had someone show up at my door in a black coat. I personally think that most of the concerns people have about targeted ads is much ado about nothing.

I'll also say: my phone company knows everyone I've called. My credit card company knows everywhere I've traveled or eaten. And I'm pretty sure those guys *sell* my info. But people generally don't seem concerned about that(?)

Do you also avoid getting life insurance because you've never died before? For me, like the author of the article, it's not the targeted ads that are concerning, but the amount of data one company can have and aggregate in once place. Even if that data isn't being used in a nefarious way now doesn't mean that it never will be. Also, I AM concerned about banks and telephone companies selling my data, but that wasn't the topic of this article.

> Do you also avoid getting life insurance because you've never died before?

No, I get life insurance for free from my job ;)

But if your question can be translated to, "Do you avoid every possible risk in your life?" The answer is, "No. Ain't nobody got time for that. But I do try to be pragmatic about what risks I do take."

yeah I think thats the worry, all this information is being gathered and sold to whoever will buy it and combine it and reuse it for whatever they want.

say an insurance company wants to see who they can raise the prices on without losing customers, then they can look at the data and work out peoples personalities and single out some that fit a profile of someone who wont go looking for a new insurance company just because their insurance premiums went up.

Same thing for health care, if a company wants to see how people live so they can anticipate if their children will be healthy or at higher risk depending on how their parents lived then they can know who not to cover or who will be charged more to cover in the future. it can become the new credit score but one you cant change.

whatever happens I just assume it wont be for my own good but for the profit of others so I try and be mindful of privacy when I can

ironically, phone and CC have tons of laws that prevent them from selling your data. well, outside the usa and uk.

that's why you have all those reward cards, programs and such.

I directly benefit from my credit card company keeping tabs on spending for fraud prevention. Could say a similar thing for phone companies logging calls, in the case of e.g. someone spoofing your number and doing something illegal - authorities can request that info and find the call never came from you.

I can't imagine a scenario where random websites tracking my internet browsing benefits me in any way, other than maybe advertising a product I'd actually like?

This type of concentration of power in a privately held for-profit corporate entity is bad. There isn't any reason to trust a random Google employee - dozens of whom have been fired by Google for accessing personal data. Removing the temptation from an unaccountable giant corporation is the best approach, IMO. Abuse of power doesn't affect everyone; but we still have laws against many forms of it.

https://theprivacydad.com/what-is-your-isp/ I wrote about that here. I read my ISP's entire privacy policy and asked them for a report of all the info they have about me. It is a concern, but not the topic of this article.

You are not alone.

If they are collecting so much data why do the ads still suck? I bought a pixel 7a and I still get ads for it all the time. You would think that google would know that I already bought a google phone from them.

Exactly this. I tend to ignore ads that show up, because they're generally not useful for me. I've also noticed this most in Google News. If I search for one topic one time on Google (usually just to find some random bit of info), Google thinks I'm very interested in that topic and starts showing me news articles related to it. Or if I search for a song in Youtube Music, I get articles about that song or band. It's ridiculous. I've started using DDG for search now, and may move to Spotify. I need to find a good news aggregator, too.

Most likely, they have some data telling them this is a good strategy. Otherwise they'd stop.

This is giving Google too much credit.

Obviously in a very small minority here but I decided almost 10 years ago to give them as much data as possible because they were leading in AI and I want AI to have access to as much data on me as possible to make life easier when it gets smart enough. Hasn't panned out yet but I don't really regret it.

This is an interesting take:

>AI to have access to as much data on me as possible to make life easier when it gets smart enough //

And it would seem reasonable if Google's aim were to provide you good AI services rather than to extract as much money from you as possible (and no longer with the benefit of not being evil).

Doesn't OpenAI seizing a large chunk of the personal-services LLM market show that you should have just put all your data on the web to be included in Common Crawl? Or at least that Google (well FAANGs) unprecedented access to user data didn't result in them accelerating their AI dominance. I know Google have done a lot, BERT, TensorFlow and such, but that seems to have been orthogonal to having access to user PII.

OpenAI may be ahead in general LLMs, but I get a lot of additional value from Google Maps, Google Photos, and my Discover feed as a result of the data they've collected about me over the years.

haha :)

To me, the issue is not data collection, but quality of ad-driven services. To be able to show ads, they make rhe product worse: ads in youtube are known to make videos longer, so the authors get a mid-video ad; search is mostly dead, because the incentive is shifted towards relevant ads, not relevant results; ...

I find it tiresome that blogposts about privacy always end up devolving into a discussion about how data can be used against individuals. There is a flip side to that coin, which is the individual's free will. Every one of us here chooses our actions, every day. If we don't like what Google knows about us, maybe it is time to ask ourselves hard questions, and to learn to truly accept ourselves as well as improving where we fall short.

This includes phenomena such as polarizing news causing social strife. If we simply took the time to understand how things are connected as well as how things are not, we would not so easily fall victim to propaganda. We can't just use the excuse that since Google knows our search history that we have no control over whether we are polarized. We also can't assume that once we de-Google our lives that we are any more properly prepared against polarizing propaganda. Lessons of mindfulness toward our neighbors' struggles don't come for free.

On top of that, the author of the linked blogpost is fooling himself. Other than halfway proving a point, he hasn't solved much. By continuing to use Google Maps he essentially makes a great deal of his online activity discoverable, undoing much of his work to "de-Google" his life.

Furthermore, Google has settings to blunt ad targeting, which seem quite effective, and you'll end up learning about CNC machines and dental drills in between your YouTube binges. If there was someone I'd accuse of dark patterns with ad targeting, that someone would be Meta.

I'm mainly worried about a permanent record of a profile of a range of my online activities. A realistic first step is to break that up a little.

With the Google Maps mention I was suggesting it's ok not to go hard core privacy, because that really takes a lot of time an energy. I use google Maps maybe 4 times a month on my PC, in a browser dedicated to it with a Google account just for that activity. I use a VPN. On the road, I use Organic Maps on CalyxOS.

I was very unclear, sorry about that. The bulk of my comment addresses the content of the comment section here, not your article. Comments about how data collection can be used to manipulate behavior are woefully fatalistic. I want to challenge that mindset whenever I come across it.

As for Google Maps, I was under the impression that you used the app; I mostly use my phone for maps so I just assumed, and I may have misread your article.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll take a look at rewording that better. It's not clear, as you say.

> My supermarket has a savings scheme, in exchange for my personal information. The way it works is that the cashier asks: do you want to join this savings scheme?

They know all your personal info from the credit card you're using anyways. The phone number you provide at the supermarket is a formality.

The proof is in the pudding: When I buy stuff at home depot, there was one time I provided my email address for a receipt. Now every time it asks if I want my receipt emailed.

"Aha!" you say "You provided them your email address". They already would know, because they track you through the store with cameras.

https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2022/Adobe-Drives-P...

(As an aside, that quote in the article about "72% of consumers say that poor personalization decreases their trust in brands. " is 100% made up bullshit, lol)

What's in it for the supermarket then?

This is their legacy way of collecting that data.

The future is doing away with the discount program. The grocery stores near me briefly did away with those (before starting up again). I assume because the Adobe-type systems are still too expensive compared to the legacy methods.

Make no mistake - the future is taking your data without an exchange in value.

You could be right, but for now, those supermarket discount schemes are still going strong.

I still use plaintext email without images so every so often I get one of those emails (required by regulation, I think) telling me they are going to stop unless I click a link.

If I want to keep getting it, I reply and tell them if my reply isn't enough to drop me because I don't click links (if something interests me more than what is in the email I go to the site and find it) or load their tracking pixels.

This is how it relates: I tell them no one knows if I receive [1], open, or read postal mail so why should they know I receive, open, or read email unless I want them to? They can't target ads to you without reading content you consume and tracking you.

So, let's rephrase: So what if the FBI reads my mail? So what if the IRS bugs my house? So what if Costco follows my car around to see where I shop? So what if Home Depot flys a drone over my house to see if I use a rusty hammer so they can sell me a new one?

In what sense should my digital life be any different because it's possible and easy? Fork them is reason enough for me.

[1] certified etc excepted.

For me, the single most disturbing is when I see ads based on casual conversations my phone happened to pick up. Such as mentioning a piece of software I used to use a decade ago, and seeing ads for that software daily for a week after. Another, is the first time I saw a calendar reminder to "leave for the airport" not that I set such a reminder, but gmail had received the receipt for my airline tickets. The most disturbing is seeing a product on Amazon, where "your friend purchased this", fortunately it was a switch, but can only imagine something more personal being the case.

At this point, I have ublock origin, privacy guard and run a pi-hole at home. I use wireguard through home on my phone so that it forces the vpn's dns through pi-hole. On top of using Brave on my mobile device. I'm tired of it. More tiresome is the number of sites that are actually broken, especially purchases without the tracking events. More companies should ensure that their payment flows work without the tracking in place. When I have worked on consumer facing applications, I always tried to make sure the fallback display without ads and the workflows were friendly. No gaping holes where an ad would be and no waiting on tracking events for checkout flows.

I worked at Meta for many years. We extensively researched this phenomenon ("I was talking about XYZ, then 30 minutes later, I saw an ad for it! The mics must be on!")

The conclusion we drew was much more nefarious than "the machines are listening". It's that you, personally, are a very basic machine of patterns and habit. You took as input some signal that you were not concious of which STIMULATED you to talk about XYZ. That same signal was in your environment. It stimulated others who match your demographic profile. They made explicit search engine queries for it. Since you are almost exactly the same person as the people in your environment, you are a high-value user account to target that same ad to since the likelihood that it would be in your unconscious mind and thus trigger a buy-signal when you see the ad is higher.

TLDR, you are not special. You are a meat computer consuming the same environmental input data as everyone you know. You are almost the same in your behavior and desires as your peers. If this wasn't true, ad targeting would not be worth a bazillion dollars.

Take your android phone, and start talking to a SO, or friend about something completely unrelated to anything you are going to search for online... Such as talking to your SO (who isn't pregnant, or able to become pregnant) about having a baby, baby clothes, needing diapers... etc. Nothing online about that, no searches, no emails on the topic... because you aren't in fact having a baby.

Then pay attention to the ads you start to see. In my specific case, it was for a specific software I used to use well over a decade ago, and suggested against as it became a really crappy product. The circle I was talking with was a random group of strangers at a restaurant on an impromptu conversaion. It was not my friend group, or anything that was merely coincidence that I received ads for that specific software.

And what makes you think that I feel I'm a special case on this... your devices are absolutely tracking you, listening and intaking every bit of information Google, MS and Apple can acquire. It's nothing special about me at all.

Interesting take, thanks!

Privacy at its core is a preventative measure against being controlled. The state, a corporation or other individuals have an easier time exerting influence over you if they know more about you. Obtaining information is a largely automated task today.

And sure, your country might be fine now, but over the course of history a lot of people suddenly woke up to their government turning totalitarian. Same goes for your insurance, your school, your workplace: All can suddenly work against you and it is preferable to avoid giving them too much information to use against you.

That's exactly it: it is preferable to avoid giving out info if you can.

> I strongly believe the default should be opting out of data collection, and that users can then opt in by choice, perhaps in exchange for more storage, or for a faster help desk service.

Or using the service in the first place?

The big promise of answering "So what?" and it amounts to: it's fine if you are fine with it.

> As you can see, I'm not averse to using Google or other Big Tech companies' products, but I try to avoid putting my entire data life in just a handful of baskets.

So, it's not about using Google. It's about just using Google.

Yes to that last point. And also that there is quite a strong current in the direction of using many or all of Google's products.

This rhetoric is extreme. Do you feel the same?

Something the article doesn't mention is that your data is not only used to target you with ads. It's also used to target you with propaganda or any political or social agenda a person, organization or state is willing to pay for. Adtech is the perfect weapon of information warfare, and it's been successfuly used to influence public opinion, and corrupt democratic processes (e.g. Cambridge Analytica).

Both ads and propaganda have the same objective, psychological manipulation, and the difference is that one wants to manipulate you into buying a product, and the other wants to manipulate you into buying into an idea. These are insidious objectives on both a personal, and societal level.

One more thing: once adtech has your personal data, it is sold in perpetuity on shady data broker markets, and any company with access to it can exploit it and get rich from it. As with anything on the internet, once it's out there, it exists forever, except you'll have no control over who it's sold to, under what terms, and, of course, you'll never see a cent of profit.

All adtech companies should be paying users to use their services. "Free" is not only not free, but it's extremely profitable for the company you give your data to.

The fact that most people either don't understand any of this, or don't care, is deeply troubling for the future of our civilization.

Indeed. It's often said that's what's being traded away when using ad-supported products is attention, and that's true, but only partially. Users also trade away some amount of control over their own way of thinking and decision-making processes because whether one realizes it or not, no matter how hard they may try to firewall off external input, ads influence us.

Framing it that way, it becomes clear how unequal of a trade ads really are.

>Indeed. It's often said that's what's being traded away when using ad-supported products is attention, and that's true, but only partially. Users also trade away some amount of control over their own way of thinking and decision-making processes because whether one realizes it or not, no matter how hard they may try to firewall off external input, ads influence us.

I'd add that network bandwidth, CPU cycles, storage and RAM are being traded away as well, since the means to capture your data and attention also executes locally and are stored on your systems as well.

Which makes things even more unequal.

> All adtech companies should be paying users to use their services.

Sounds sensible. You need to pay a fee if you want to display an ad on a billboard. But they are pirating the space on our monitors for free. They really should rent it instead.

The main problem, imho, is that if one can describe the situation and make someone care even a _little_, it’s not enough. There are so many more important things to be worried about throughout one’s lifetime that data privacy doesn’t even register.

Being concerned about how one’s data is being sold is a very “first world problem”, and even in “first worlds” it’s not a very big one for the great majority of the population.

> Being concerned about how one’s data is being sold is a very “first world problem”, and even in “first worlds” it’s not a very big one for the great majority of the population.

It's really not. Propaganda is very effective in non-FW countries, perhaps even more so because of lower levels of education. Cambridge Analytica had successful campaigns all over Africa and the Middle East, which had a definite effect on the outcome of elections. It can be argued that the 2016 US election result was partially influenced by this, although the tricky thing with information warfare and propaganda is that the effect is very difficult to trace back to a specific cause. It leaves the victim in a state of confusion, with no single and clear source that caused it.

Since this affects society at large, it definitely _should_ be a general concern, and not a FW-only problem.

My worry is that we are lobsters slowly being boiled.

This 10,000%

It is a battle to explain this to my kids, e.g. in the context of why we scrutinize what apps they use; and one (of several) reason(s) we don't let them use various apps. The monkey-mind obsession with visible cause and effect is for certain one of the cognitive errors that will doom our civilization.

I would love for there to be hard reset in the premises of surveillance capitalism and our industry's starring role in it.

As with e.g. our collective non-response to climate change, glib shrugs in response to the methodical construction of total surveillance in defiance of passionate, funny, relentless criticism (Cory Doctorow comes to mind), give every appearance of being the sort of thing future generations would look back on with perplexity and justified anger. "How could they not just 'let' this happen, but enthusiastically drive it?" How indeed.

Please feel free to follow the blog. I write about parenting in particular.

While the post doesn't address it, ask yourself: What if you do have something to hide? What if your government was like China's or Russia's? If you let privacy vanish now, you'll be helpless when you need it. Data is power:

How pre-teens using metadata found a whistleblower in two hours - https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/how-team-of-pre...

Trust your instincts, you have them for a reason. If it was private investigators and spies following you around to gather what Google/credit cards/mobile networks know about you, you would immediately recognize it as malicious and dangerous. That it has now been automated doesn't change that.

The issue isn't just targeted ads though. This data, once in the hands of google, is packaged and resold to whomever google pleases, for whatever purposes those parties see fit - not even to mention inevitable breaches. Not google, but see the whole healthcare data fiasco lately with apps using facebook's analytics API's as an example.

See https://safety.google/privacy/data/

> We never sell your personal information, and give you controls over who has access

> We are committed to protecting your data from third parties. That’s why it’s our strict policy to never sell your personal information to anyone.

Out of curiosity, what are some examples of Google packaging and reselling data?

But what actual examples are there of this? Evidence that they actually do this. Facebook has had a number of big stories and leaks showing they sell info on to other parties, but Google seems to sell advertising access rather then the data itself, which is pretty legit to it's policies.

(And while I'd agree they seem to collect data from anything they possibly can, they seem to poorly underuse that data collection as far as I can tell. I use quite a bit of google stuff and their ads profile for me is still a total mess including things I actively hate. If they struggle with not targeting me for things I've told them I hate, it's hard to feel too worried about how they're going to factor in their passive microphone recording data)

> They then sell this data on dozens or hundreds of data broker platforms.

Oh? Which platforms? How did you come to learn that they were selling data to those platforms? Surely from either the platforms themselves or a respected news article?

> They then sell this data on dozens or hundreds of data broker platforms.

I wasn’t aware of this part specifically, so I’d like to learn more. Has this been covered in the news or something? This seems like a big deal.

I wrote a paragraph about this issue but cut it out for conciseness. I think it is worrying that if data is truly 'the new oil', it's really strange the names of the behind-the-scenes companies are not in the public debate.

Meh, I'm still not convinced.

I mean, I suppose I get possibly being creeped out that Google knows you prefer Pepsi over Coke and that you recently purchased an adult toy or whatever, but...meh? So they'll use that data to sell me targeted ads that I'm just going to block anyways.

I just don't see how it's actually harmful beyond the government access issue that's just dropped in as a single sentence at the end of one paragraph.

> A relatively recent example is PayPal blocking individuals from transacting or fining them for having the wrong politics.

Any time someone cries about being cancelled for having the wrong politics, I always think of this famous tweet:

https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/105039166355267174...

Conservative: I have been censored for my conservative views

Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes?

Con: LOL no...no not those views

Me: So....deregulation?

Con: Haha no not those views either

Me: Which views, exactly?

Con: Oh, you know the ones

My government certainly doesn't care what sex toys I buy; but there are some bronze plaques in the pavement around here, dedicated to victims of the earlier of the two times the government was evil and sent people to their deaths for such things; and I've been to the museum made from the headquarters of the people responsible for the second time it was evil and spied on anyone and everyone.

Public service announcement: the Texas government very much does care what sex toys you buy.

https://www.kxan.com/news/texas/the-texas-law-that-dictates-...

Legislation like this is not an abstraction confined to museums and history books. It's what the party of "Small Government" actively works to implement, day in and day out. It can happen here, along with much, much worse.

I went there (to the Stasi museum) for the first time a few weeks ago. Its an absolutely jaw dropping piece of (very recent) history.

The thing that struck me the most was how banal it all feels. Unspeakable acts of evil were committed in that building. There are office memos on display telling the story - complete with hand written notes on them like "recommend this (protester) be put to death". And around the memo is corporate filing codes and such to make sure the note is filed correctly. And yet, the whole office feels so generic. It could be any office building from the early 80s, complete with generic corporate orange/brown carpets, interdepartmental telephone systems and offices for the secretaries. You can just imagine the people working there coming in to work each day and bustling around like in any modern office. "Hello Janice. Sorry I'm late - traffic was terrible. Yes I got the memo! Blah blah blah"

Movies show evil acts being committed in evil lairs, clearly signposted with lava and torture chambers. But I think the truth is far more bland than that. On the surface, where we work and what we do there looks more or less the same, regardless of the effect our work has on the world. How many people's work harms the world today? I bet most people, when confronted, react more or less the same: "What? This job is wrong? Nobody told me. It wasn't illegal. And anyway, if I didn't do it, someone else would. I'm just trying to feed my family. Its not my fault."

I hope history holds modern data brokers in a similarly dim light. I certainly do.

I hope you're not a woman in a state with abortion bounties. Even buying a morning-after pill or a pregnancy test can end up on the wrong side of those stupid laws. The real concern isn't racists facing consequences for their public actions and statements but marginalized groups facing punishment for private actions or statements.

> I get possibly being creeped out that Google knows you prefer Pepsi over Coke and that you recently purchased an adult toy or whatever

Frankly, if I preferred Pepsi over Coke, I'd rather get ads (which sometimes include discounts/coupons) for Pepsi than for Coke.

Similarly, if I bought an adult toy, I'd rather get ads for similar adult toys than ads for <whatever the hell else the option for that slot would be>.

I'm definitely pro-privacy, but it's got nothing to do with "so I can't be shown relevant ads".

But being censored on a social media platform is not in the same league as being cut off from your own money. That's a real problem.

If you can find it, check the Murdaugh murder trial document of his physical movements on the night of the murder extracted from his phone and the phones of his contacts.

https://www.wjcl.com/article/hurricane-idalia-update-georgia... (set VPN to USA if not in the States)

Google employees can access this data too; and sometimes they get fired. Do you know anyone who has been the victim of online harassment or having personal data leaked online? Its a harrowing experience.

"My supermarket has a savings scheme, in exchange for my personal information. The way it works is that the cashier asks: do you want to join this savings scheme? If the customer says yes, they give you a form to fill in your details. If you say no, they leave you alone, and you miss out on the discount or gifts."

Hahahaha, yes, if you don't join their club, they don't collect personal information.

Or you just provide someone else’s information. Who says you have to share your true name with your supermarket? Unfortunately it’s very difficult to lie to google

The staff at the paint store got rather confused and couldn't really figure out what to do with me, or how to take my money, when I refused to join their club, saying that I'd rather pay the 20% extra. We only managed to proceed when my wife filled in the form.

Turns out you could just lie and fill out anything on the form.

One strategy I heard about is to get a local group of like-minded individuals together, throw all of your loyalty cards in a communal pile then take one back randomly. That mixes the signal up for any kind of targeted tracking while also getting you the discounts. Or you can just say "I forgot my card" and use the store copy that is usually at the register (at least for groceries).

What a great idea :)

If the company uses phone numbers to lookup accounts, (Local-Area-Code)-8675-309 almost always works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/867-5309/Jenny

This feels a bit like giving your name as "Prawo Jazdy":

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/7899171....

There was a turning point in 2010 when people stopped recognizing this number at checkout (new generation i guess). I still chuckle when I give the number and they diligently enter it.

Don't worry, depending on the state, they have plenty of other ways to personally identify you. No need.