This piece looks likes little more than propaganda from the credit reporting agencies. Shame on you Bloomberg.
Unless you're careful to guard against it, you're loading up Facebook and Google's trackers on just about every site you visit. Registering for an account is not a prerequisite for them to build a profile on you.
I saw this post and immediately thought "propaganda" as well.
As others have said, google/facebook are opt-in. I have knowingly given them the information they have on me. Equifax is not opt-in. I have never used any of their services.
Did you knowingly give them your credit card transaction data, too?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/05/23...
Did you "opt-in" to being tracked across most of the web by Google Analytics?
Say you never signed up for Facebook but don't block their tracking stuff, or maybe you do block trackers but also have some friends who use facebook and have unwittingly shared a bunch of information about you. Someone can know just enough to fraudulently sign up for a Faceook profile in your name, and Facebook will helpfuly make suggestions and pre-populate bits of the profile with stuff they already know about you. That person knows a lot more about you now.
It's also not a stretch to imaging Facebook or Google profiles being used as ID for credit and other financial institutions in the future, there are already many online services which allow this and we already have things like Android Pay.
This shit's complicated, I think we're massively underestimating the risk of trusting these companies just because they haven't leaked user data. Making dismissive and oversimplified statements about it doesn't help anyone.
And of course you can be refused a job based on your social media profile, or whatever comes up when people Google for your name.
I used to spend some time in some car enthusiast forum back in the early 2Ks and after a few years I lost interest, so I stopped visiting. 10 years later, I decided to visit again and noticed that many posts had been made in my name (thankfully, just with my nickname), with horrible things being written "by me". Of course I had no way of knowing that their servers had been hacked years ago, and no recourse.
I can only imagine if there was my real name used on a random server somewhere with some dirt written, uncovered by someone googling my name...
"If it's on the internet, it must be true" is a scary thought.
It's big brother implemented through the people around you.
No, it's not propaganda, it's regular journalism.
Google and FB are both 'large corps' whom journo bosses would be weary of offending, so no.
Whenever a journalist 'names names' of big companies, they're probably doing regular journalism.
The bad stuff happens when stories are suppressed to avoid upsetting advertisers.
The first two words of this title are "Forget Equifax ..." An imperative. This is exactly propaganda.
>"Whenever a journalist 'names names' of big companies, they're probably doing regular journalism."
What? Since when is using proper nouns a defining characteristic of "regular journalism"? That is a ridiculous statement.
>"The bad stuff happens when stories are suppressed to avoid upsetting advertisers."
Do you see many ads for Google on Bloomberg? No. There is zero risk there at all. Bloomberg is not in the ad business.
The real bad stuff happens when propaganda masquerades as journalism.
Bloomberg is a fairly respectable entity, they just don't do the bidding of arbitrary 'big corps' against other 'arbitrary big corps'.
As far as 'Google not advertising on Bloomberg' - my friend - Google owns the internet. Every web site on planet earth is 100% beholden to search results. Bloomberg lives and dies on Google results.
Google has been known to fuddy with search results for direct competitors, so if Bloomberg needs to be afraid of someone, it's Google - moreover - they have nothing to gain from doing a 'pro Equifax' propaganda piece.
There is corporate influence and national propaganda in journalism - but this is not it.
This is just regular journalism.
And I for one support the premise.
Equifax is irrelevant.
Google and FB together, are almost 100% of the risk. They have 'everything' on us.
Firstly there is not one "Bloomberg." There are many different Bloomberg companies and Bloomberg News regularly publishes questionable and fluffy pieces. See:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-nelson/bloomberg-news-ref...
You might also want to look up Randolph Hearst and the term Yellow Journalism if you are so naive to believe that "respectable newspapers" whatever that means don't publish propaganda. See also Judith Miller and how the NYTimes, another "respectable paper" sold the Iraq War if you're still not convinced that propaganda pieces are a real thing:
https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2014/07/01/how-the-iraq-wa...
>"As far as 'Google not advertising on Bloomberg' - my friend - Google owns the internet. Every web site on planet earth is 100% beholden to search results. Bloomberg lives and dies on Google results."
I am not your friend and honestly you seem like a troll. Bloomberg does not need Google. Bloomberg is foremost a very successful financial services company and software company. And as distant third a media company. Bloomberg L.P does billions of dollars in revenue a year selling service to the financial industry. They do not need Google search results at all. Maybe you should read up on Bloomberg L.P a bit. So no, they don't "live and die by Google results."
Technology today is more like language than product. There is no law requiring that you speak, or even learn how to speak; but if you choose not to speak you consign yourself to an underclass of mutes.