Whose Internet History Should Be Purchased First? | Hacker News Reader

Whose Internet History Should Be Purchased First?

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45 pointsmalloryerik38 comments

Buying internet history requires a seller. Even with 47 CFR 64(U) removed, nothing compels selling of data. ISPs would be crazy to sell internet history of people in power to activists. They would even be crazy to make a clear marketplace.

Selling of info is going to be shady back deals invisible to consumers, not a store where you can buy the history of whatever subscriber you like.

Money talks.

Yeah, and the funding is already up to $165K in 4 days...

That's exactly why the cable companies wont sell congressional data. Why would they shoot the goose that laid the golden egg?

Just buy up all the DC data and filter it. It won't be that hard.

Agreed. Assuming the ISP would let you buy all data on men in DC between 40 and 70 y/o, that have moved there within the past 6 months. You could then easily deanonymize it by sorting out which users have gone to which local newspaper website (ie Someone from dallas is likely to have gone to dallasnews.com or www.nbcdfw.com). Should be pretty easy to find a few congress members, or at least congressional staffers.

Because money talks. I used to play a game when I really wanted to bargain hard on something: I'd change my money to as many notes of the lowest possible denomination, and show up with a huge stack of notes.

You're be surprised what a huge stack of notes can do. It triggers something in the recipient of said huge stack of notes. It's deeply psychological. People stop thinking when faced with a huge wad of money.

People will do anything for money, including bad longterm decisions.

ISPs are not 5 year olds.

They are not going to intentionally fuck over the congresspeople that voted for this for chump change. It's incredibly stupid to think they would.

You're incredibly stupid.

Go through minimal effort to set up a sham company, some new startup, so on and so forth. Are they really going to look into it when there's a big pile of money?

Help me out here: where is this notion that anyone will be able to buy personally identifiable browsing data coming from? Isn't it likely to be (more) aggregated or partially anonymized data about browsing behavior and habits? I'm upset by this bill, but I've yet to find any information to suggest you could ring up AT&T and request to buy a specific person's data.

>where is this notion that anyone will be able to buy personally identifiable browsing data coming from? Isn't it likely to be (more) aggregated or partially anonymized data about browsing behavior and habits?

I guess that depends on whether you think these companies care or do not care about the actual users.

I know which way I lean...

I certainly do not think they care. I would also love to see those who voted for this affected by it, if it's possible. But that's what I'm asking, what would be the means for this to happen?

The plan seems to be to use geolocation data and ip addresses to reasonably identify individuals from within the data.

"Once the law is signed by President Trump, geolocation data along with browsing history data will again be on the market for ISPs. That means a company with dedication and resources could likely, with a reasonable degree of certainty, pinpoint Blackburn, Pai, Ryan, or anyone they seek to take down based on their browsing data and IP address alone."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/03/29/this-politi...

> "Once the law is signed by President Trump, geolocation data along with browsing history data will again be on the market for ISPs."

The law repeals protections that are not in place yet. Those protections were already removed last year.

Because there is no such thing as anonymity on the internet, especially if you're able to buy browsing history.

AOL released a slew of anonymous search results in the early 2000s as a dataset. It took a few weeks (months maybe?) to start to determine who these people were based on patterns found in the data.[1]

Even with aggregate or partially anonymized data you're going to be able to identify individuals based on habits and patterns.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_leak

I recall a similar situation with New York taxi trip data.

Have you noticed how large companies often do a poor job on security and tons of personally identifying information gets stolen? Or how data that is supposed to be anonymised isn't, very?

That's true, but hasn't that always been a risk? No doubt they've been keeping all this data already. It's a risk, but not a new one because of this change.

When data is the subject of frequent transactions then the opportunities for malfeasance rise.

If the data is being collected, organized, and distributed to be sold, yes there iwill be a higher chance it will be hacked. After being sold, there is a chance it will be hacked from the buyer. And even if it isn't hacked, there will absolutely be people (buyers) that will do what they can to de-anonymize it

Great point, I hadn't considered that. Of course it was only recently we learned of the Netprospex leak which was likely this very scenario.

I would question the idea that AT&T or whomever will simply sell you the copyright or an unrestricted global license. I would assume that all these sorts of databases require you to sign a license mandating you to keep the data (anonymized or otherwise) secret/private, precisely to prevent this sort of shenanigans. To OP: good luck, but I suggest reserving the bulk of donations for legal fees...

The creator of Cards Against Humanity has vowed to do the same. https://twitter.com/MaxTemkin/status/846437803164684290

Was just thinking someone really should do this.

Hope it works. Or at the very least makes some of those politicians squirm while they wait to find out if it works.

Think I'll at least throw a few $$ at the gofundme.

Why would the cable companies sell the data to a group hoping to get legislation changed that they just lobbied to enact? I don't know all the details of the bill--is there anything that requires a company to sell data to the highest bidder? My limited understanding was that the bill allows them to sell, but at their own discretion, just like any other monetized data.

It seems wildly unrealistic that this will accomplish anything. I applaud the sentiment but I fear this is wasted money and energy.

The bill text: https://www.congress.gov/115/bills/sjres34/BILLS-115sjres34e...

All it says is that the previous FCC rule no longer has any effect.

It does not layout anything about regulations or consequences of removing those privacy protections.

An unintended benefit of this law passing is moving a common practice closer to the user. Let's not forget that Google and Facebook already normalize your traffic and sell it without your consent. Now ISPs can enter that market directly and completely bypass Google and Facebook.

Don't you consent to let them use your data when you sign up for their services? You don't need to use Google and Facebook to use the Internet. You do need an ISP to use the internet.

Google will track even on non-Google products by virtue of their various media and analytics products that are prolific on many sites. No consent required. A couple of years ago they were caught collecting private home wifi traffic from their map/photo cars.

I thought the concept of purchasing history for a specific person was not possible? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13992953

I suppose an upside of this is it affects everyone: including those who voted Republican and for Trump. We ought to make sure they understand what's happening too.

It's a peculiarly American conceit to assume that people of opposite political views lack understanding of an issue. In reality, some people lack understanding, while some understand an issue perfectly well but have a different value system. They may regard privacy as genuinely unimportant because they are authoritarians, or they may consider themselves to be qualitatively different from their political opponents and therefore wish for different treatment for themselves and for others.

Except that this is an opaque issue that the general public often does not understand. Most people probably couldn't not explain what happens when you visit a webpage, let alone what data exists around that and what can be done with it. I would also assume most Democrats don't completely understand either, but they didn't vote for the majority of people who passed this measure.

>they may consider themselves to be qualitatively different from their political opponents and therefore wish for different treatment for themselves and for others.

Of course, but what they wish and what is reality is not always the same. The will not be treated differently.

Republicans tend to be opposed to government intrusion into their lives and privacy. In this case it is not the government doing the intruding directly, but it's not a far cry. Lastly, rural Republicans usually don't have much love for giant corporations weaseling their way into their lives to begin with.

I don't mean his to be snarky but your comments strike me as naive given the daily displays of cognitive dissonance in matters political.

Unfortunately I am well aware of the cognitive dissonance. Many voters might also be single issue voters as well.

I don't take it as snark, your point is very valid. And to be sure, I'm not immune from biases. That said, the issue I did take with your point is that generalized it to all issues, then applied it to me, while I am merely talking about understanding of a single issue. A rather technical issue that American voters of all parties probably don't understand in depth. Again, the reason I focused on Republican voters in my comments is because it was primarily Republican politicians who voted for this measure.

I really want to agree :-/

the fact that the info is stored at all makes it possible for someone to use it. in the holocaust records was used to kill people.

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