Probably, the most scary part of personal data mining/collection is not the knowledge itself, and not the ads you see, but a possibility to influence your decisions - exactly what was reportedly done by Cambrige Analytica.
Because there’s nothing worse than being “influenced”, yes? It’s not as if the average person is exposed to several thousand advertising and “informational” messages daily, ranging in degrees of subtlety, and often from sources with competing agendas... But let’s all lose our minds over a fraction of those incoming messages from Facebook because clearly individuals are incapable of determining what is in their own best interest and cannot ignore any of these sources competing for our attention.
If you have not listen to the Apple insider pod cast on this subject, you should.
Everyone wants too blame Facebook since it is easier to blame someone else, but most need to look no further than their own mirror. I never bought in to the Facebook thing and always felt it would be bad. I also valued my privacy over getting free things.
I learned a few things from the pod cast, basically anyone who is pissed off your own information may have been used against you, you have to remember you got something free and you gave facebook the right to use your information the way they like. They never had to ask you if it was okay to allow third parts to use your information, you gave up that right by creating that account.
If you want to protect your information. Then stop using free stuff, and pay for your services.
Paying for something doesn't make the "selling you" issue go away.
Between retailers sharing your purchases, banks/credit card providers sharing your financial history, your cellular provider sharing your use data, the government sharing your driving, ownership, and legal history, pharmacy's sharing your prescription history, schools sharing your education history, and recent sharing issues even within Apple (China and likely Russia too, data sharing with publishers within Apple News and targeted ads within the App Store, and the new Apple supported Cloud Act that eases and simplifies the sharing of personal data with "friendlies") this whole conversation about "privacy" is little more than marketing fluff IMHO.
All those paid services don't "protect your privacy" if the provider sees value in sharing it, economically or politically, more so than in keeping it to themselves. Words are easy. Actions are just a tad more difficult.
Please. The sum total of everything you listed pales in comparison to what Google or Facebook know about you. Also funny how you slip Apple into your list to imply they are somehow on the same level. They aren't.
This is going to come back to bite Google and Facebook in the ass. Hard. It was only a matter of time before something happened that would bring privacy issues and data collection out into the public eye. Apple is going to come out of this smelling like a rose while Google and Facebook will smell like the piles of horseshit they are.
Sum of all of them pales in comparison to Google? Have you ever bothered to look at what Google thinks they know about you? Probably not IMHO but you can anytime it tickles your fancy. Then you don't have to make stuff up, you can base it on actual knowledge.
Instead it looks to me like you prefer the lazy (or is it disingenuous) route to FUD-rush, that an evil Google with evil intent factually knows more about your personal life than Experion, or Acxiom, or TransUnion, or a hundred other data aggregators who mine, partner, and outright pay for access to everything from your sexual and religious bent, to your psychological and medical conditions, to the layout of your home and your neighbors homes, to the demographics of your entire extended family and more? They aren't in it to place an ad based on anonymised baskets of web visitors like Google is. They're in it to sell pure data, your TV and on-line viewing habits, your banking and employment and income, where you go, what you do, what you eat... Just selling your personal data for any purpose the buyer wishes to use it for.
Facebook? I'm not sure what they know or the extent of it, that's one I need to pull my data profile from before claiming anything based on any actual knowledge of it. I would suspect they know far more personal verified information in general than Google considering how they collect it but I could be wrong.
So before posting things that may or may not be true but you want to present as fact, why not do the forum a favor and look and when it's simply your opinion make it more clear? IMHO we all have far more to fear from the Acxiom's and Equifax's of the world than an online ad purveyor. Your minimizing the privacy danger isn't particularly helpful to a common consumers understanding, nor is inferring that Apple has entirely clean hands and if you just faithfully trust them then your world is safe from intrusions on your personal life. There is no privacy safe house anymore, particularly so in a digital world.
Gator,
Since we all know you only know what you read on the internet verse actually knowing facts from inside these companies or direct experience, you're are the one who thinks what Google is doing is okay and acceptable practices. As I said before, if you are only interested in getting stuff free which I have to assume you are one of them since you love everything which google gives free, then you deserve everything that happens to you. You seem not to care about your privacy, but as I have asked you in the past please send me all your email accounts and password and let me decide if what you are doing really deserves privacy.
I am not going to defend the credit history companies, yes they will sell your data, but they sell it to companies who want to do business with you like your bank who would like to give you a car loan or give you a credit card. The credit history companies are not analyzing what you are doing, just how much debt you are willing to take on. In there case because they have my credit history which is perfect, their information has saved me lots of money, since I get really good interest rates. Those companies provide me a benefit. Also, remember you and I never paid these companies for their services, the banks created them so they can give you credit, without them who would let you barrow their money. Remember if you use someone else's money it comes with strings attached. Even my kids know this. If you deal in cash then they would not have your information.
It is not the fact they have the information it is what they are doing with the information which makes it right or wrong. Yes your college sells your graduation information to insurance companies in hopes they can sell you some insurance at group rate for everyone who went to that college. It is illegal for any pharmacy to sell your drug purchase history, I guess you have not read HIPAA.
Yes there are aggregators out there trying to piece information together, but most do a very poor job of it. Best example of this I have is when I graduate with my Master, I got a letter from Ford congratulating me on my recent graduation (my university sold their graduation list), and they said I owns a new Ford which I bought two 3 yrs prior (Ford had this information since i bought it new from Ford and finance it through them) and was offering me a first time new car buyer deal for new college undergrad and I could trade in my Ford. Ford's data aggregators could not figure out I was not eligible for a first time new car buyer program for new undergrad since I had a Masters which also was not eligible. But they new i was the same two people.
I shared this before and you said I was wrong, but Google reads everyone emails, even emails of companies who use their email services instead of having an outlook server. How do i know this, simple, my stupid company began using gmail servers for company emails then then google ads showing up solely based on an email exchanges I had with a particular company I did business with. Never did a search on them. Never did anything on the internet relative to this company. The only connections was the email address from that company.
I had another one just last week, Ads showing up on my work computer for a college my Daughter was looking at. I do not do any personal activities on my work computer, I never did anything related to that College even on my personal computer. I do not use any Google products on my work computer, but some how Google has now connected my daughter to my work computer, there is no reason for those specific ads showing up on my work computer. I do not think my daughter would be happy to know that Google has now connected her online activities to me, imagine if she was looking up something which she really did not want he dad to know about.
BTW the only connection is the fact I do bring my work laptop home and both my computer and her computer uses the same public IP address to the outside world and since I tend to block my activities as best I can, Google only had the public IP address to go from and figure her and I were probably the same person. Think about this, the same can happen at other places.
@maestro64 ;;, I have zero doubt that Google uses web searches to help determine "your" interest in a product or service. I would never tell you you are wrong for believing they do, because they really do.
They do NOT farm your company's GSuite account and or corporate GMail for data to be used for Google advertising purposes much as you'd like to believe they do. They also stopped scanning even personal GMail accounts for keywords to be used for advertising sometime back. Scanning for spam and malware is of course a different matter and you should be happy if they do. Apple does. https://gsuite.google.com/faq/security/
As for how your daughter's college search ended up attracting ads it could have come from the college directly, or their data partner who could be any number of analytic companies, or a cookie partner of which there are thousands out there besides Google, or a Bing search, or a Yahoo search, or a smartphone search, or heck nearly anyplace. Maybe originating with Google, maybe not. Who knows.
Probably, the most scary part of personal data mining/collection is not the knowledge itself, and not the ads you see, but a possibility to influence your decisions - exactly what was reportedly done by Cambrige Analytica.
Because there’s nothing worse than being “influenced”, yes? It’s not as if the average person is exposed to several thousand advertising and “informational” messages daily, ranging in degrees of subtlety, and often from sources with competing agendas... But let’s all lose our minds over a fraction of those incoming messages from Facebook because clearly individuals are incapable of determining what is in their own best interest and cannot ignore any of these sources competing for our attention.
Right?
Wrong....
What CA did, does and will do cannot be compared to Charmin advertisements...
They first use sophisticated data gathering techniques to identify a person's or group's weak points. or sensitive spots and then, using sophisticated techniques, target their propaganda to effectively brainwash them to do things or believe things that they would not otherwise or normally do or believe.
It's a new form of information/cyberwarfare that was not previously available because it uses modern technology to gather the information and disseminate the propaganda.
And, CA (or at least their parent) is neither Republican nor Democrat. They are mercenaries who sell their services to the highest bidder.
Comments
Right?
Gator,
Since we all know you only know what you read on the internet verse actually knowing facts from inside these companies or direct experience, you're are the one who thinks what Google is doing is okay and acceptable practices. As I said before, if you are only interested in getting stuff free which I have to assume you are one of them since you love everything which google gives free, then you deserve everything that happens to you. You seem not to care about your privacy, but as I have asked you in the past please send me all your email accounts and password and let me decide if what you are doing really deserves privacy.
I am not going to defend the credit history companies, yes they will sell your data, but they sell it to companies who want to do business with you like your bank who would like to give you a car loan or give you a credit card. The credit history companies are not analyzing what you are doing, just how much debt you are willing to take on. In there case because they have my credit history which is perfect, their information has saved me lots of money, since I get really good interest rates. Those companies provide me a benefit. Also, remember you and I never paid these companies for their services, the banks created them so they can give you credit, without them who would let you barrow their money. Remember if you use someone else's money it comes with strings attached. Even my kids know this. If you deal in cash then they would not have your information.
It is not the fact they have the information it is what they are doing with the information which makes it right or wrong. Yes your college sells your graduation information to insurance companies in hopes they can sell you some insurance at group rate for everyone who went to that college. It is illegal for any pharmacy to sell your drug purchase history, I guess you have not read HIPAA.
Yes there are aggregators out there trying to piece information together, but most do a very poor job of it. Best example of this I have is when I graduate with my Master, I got a letter from Ford congratulating me on my recent graduation (my university sold their graduation list), and they said I owns a new Ford which I bought two 3 yrs prior (Ford had this information since i bought it new from Ford and finance it through them) and was offering me a first time new car buyer deal for new college undergrad and I could trade in my Ford. Ford's data aggregators could not figure out I was not eligible for a first time new car buyer program for new undergrad since I had a Masters which also was not eligible. But they new i was the same two people.
I shared this before and you said I was wrong, but Google reads everyone emails, even emails of companies who use their email services instead of having an outlook server. How do i know this, simple, my stupid company began using gmail servers for company emails then then google ads showing up solely based on an email exchanges I had with a particular company I did business with. Never did a search on them. Never did anything on the internet relative to this company. The only connections was the email address from that company.
I had another one just last week, Ads showing up on my work computer for a college my Daughter was looking at. I do not do any personal activities on my work computer, I never did anything related to that College even on my personal computer. I do not use any Google products on my work computer, but some how Google has now connected my daughter to my work computer, there is no reason for those specific ads showing up on my work computer. I do not think my daughter would be happy to know that Google has now connected her online activities to me, imagine if she was looking up something which she really did not want he dad to know about.
BTW the only connection is the fact I do bring my work laptop home and both my computer and her computer uses the same public IP address to the outside world and since I tend to block my activities as best I can, Google only had the public IP address to go from and figure her and I were probably the same person. Think about this, the same can happen at other places.
They do NOT farm your company's GSuite account and or corporate GMail for data to be used for Google advertising purposes much as you'd like to believe they do. They also stopped scanning even personal GMail accounts for keywords to be used for advertising sometime back. Scanning for spam and malware is of course a different matter and you should be happy if they do. Apple does.
https://gsuite.google.com/faq/security/
As for how your daughter's college search ended up attracting ads it could have come from the college directly, or their data partner who could be any number of analytic companies, or a cookie partner of which there are thousands out there besides Google, or a Bing search, or a Yahoo search, or a smartphone search, or heck nearly anyplace. Maybe originating with Google, maybe not. Who knows.