Time for third-party data brokers to emerge from the shadows?
theconversation.com
theconversation.com
Even after the Snowden revelations, not much really happened to the government or the NSA. Even after the Experian breach, the credit rating agencies are still making good money.
The underlying reason for this is that except for minorities, most people in these countries never really experienced the downsides of this type of loss of privacy. This is in contrast to Europe, especially Germany where people in living memory experienced first hand how the government could use your private information to literally cause you and/or your family to be imprisoned, tortured, or even killed. Hence, there is a much greater appreciation for privacy in Europe and especially Germany.
It is for these reasons that I am pessimistic that the United States and Australia will really take privacy seriously at all in the near future.
Once this acceptance of zero privacy cemented and we had the Snowden revelations a lot of people seem to have just capitulated: "they already know everything, why bother fixing it" which itself is a fallacy that only results in sort of fulfilling itself.
But you can look at the national do not call registry in the US, and it's popularity to see that when there are options, people are happy to use them.
The average person thinks that, at worst, they'll just see ads that are more intelligent or targeted. Who cares, right?
The do NOT realize that these troves of data are going to be used to someday deny them health insurance, get them fired or not hired for some job, get screwed in job pay and benefit negotiations (due to companys like Experian selling you pay history to employers), be charged more than other consumers for the same product (due to being able to pay more), getting denied for loans or charged higher interest rates, not accepted to a school, refused entry in establishments because you're not a 'good' customer, etc.
And that is just what big business will do.
Wait 'till big governments around the world see just how much power the Chinese are able to exert over their populace playing the same data games.
I mean c'mon...."Refused entry into establishments"? Unless the Civil Rights Act of 1964 somehow gets repealed I don't see this as very likely.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2018/01/17/578422668/heres-just-how-litt...
This reeks of elitism. I'm not sure it's clear what the average person thinks and one could hope that the average person is smarter than this and wouldn't guess what the average person thinks. To not only guess what we, the average, think but to also so confidently predict the future to me demonstrates below average reasoning.
Wouldn't it be great if all this data aggregation/privacy invasion business reaches a point of diminishing returns just because the subject of the manipulation has developed an immunity to all of it?
We need an online behavior randomization gadget that turns our valued personal data trail into garbage, obfuscation to the rescue.
On the other hand the only thing that counts is the credit card purchase history of a person - and it is impossible to randomize that one (short of sharing the card with your kids)
Most people don't care nearly as much that a telemarketer knows their name and that they have an above average chance of being interested in refinancing their house as they do about the fact that the call interrupted dinner.
The do-not-call registry stops people being bothered by unsolicited calls. It does nothing at all to protect privacy.
People care about the annoying calls, go on the do-not-call registry and they stop so as far as they are concerned the problem is fixed. But the companies keep collecting the data. There is zero change in privacy,
It's kind of expected that calls that are criminal before considering whether there are restrictions on unsolicited commercial calls would not be significantly inhibited by the DNC rule, only legal (but for the rule) telemarketing.
That being said, I have heard that idea a lot --and again, I see how it could be a logical conclusion in certain (or even numerous) scenarios-- and I think that it might be fundamentally flawed.
Sometimes "but they don't care" sounds more like a line people use to avoid actually addressing people in a meaningful way than an actual summation of the situation.
It's in part because it's very hard to grasp - so I don't blame them.
But this is why the burden can't be on the end users. The burden has to be on those that create the tools and set the defaults. Apple's decision to include content blocking on iOS was a good step in the right direction. Having isolation between tabs in firefox is another.
The next logical step is enabling everything by default. Having what amounts to a full "don't track me" setup (The equivalent to a full uBlock origin+ghostery+tab isolation whatever else an "aware" person might do) being the default in any new browser and smartphone would go a long way.
Whatever "nuclear options" exist for those that have them, such as browser vendors, need to be used, quickly. I have very little worries for "breaking the web" or putting a sizable fraction of struggling web sites out of business because nearly every visitor suddenly sees no ads. If your business model was creating content and financing it via showing ad-network ads with third party scripts and cookies for targeting - your business model was never viable and you should find another business model or just shut down.
I'd even go so far as to suggest that mozilla and others should start actively and specifically targeting dark patterns and problematic things on specific web sites. This would be enormously controversial - but just like my browser will show a huge red warning if there is something wrong with a certificate, it should do the same thing to the average user if they click "what's your mexican wrestler name?" on facebook.
The average european does not pay attention to his/her data. Facebook & al might be seen as "bad" by a small minority but google the name of the next person you'll meet and you'll get everything from the name of their kindergarten to the name of their current & past love interests.
Experian is one the largest marketing email provider in Europe and next to no one, even in the marketing space, has heard about the extent of the breach they suffered on their credit rating operations in the US (arguably more sensitive than a mere list of emails: if they fail on credit rating god knows what their marketing operation looks like...).
The only one big difference between Europe & the rest of the world is the GDPR but, again, only professional have heard about it. Many companies are finally addressing their shortcomings thanks to the impeding doom they perceive the GDPR to be.
And we still have a majority who is for gun control. I think part of the reason is how police / state forces are perceived: in Europe people see them as professional so "they're dangerous with data but they're also good at their protecting job". In the US "they're just obese donut eaters who can't do shit to protect you and would not know what to do with data".
You can thank the medias for all the propaganda.
You seem to think that the rich minority will always win out. But sometimes the poor majority can change the system. For example in the USA in the Great Depression, and after WW2, government tended to favor the working classes much more than it does now.
This cigarette will feel great I'll smoke it, I might get cancer in 40 years
I need this cupcake now, I might be diabetic in 10 years
I want the app now, so I'm going to accept all those spurious data access requests that might be used to con/trick/rob/profile me later.
If it would hit you straight away, light the cigarette BOOM dead, eat the cupcake BOOM gained 40 pounds, install the app BOOM 10K gone from you bankaccount, people would understand the trade-off.
As it stands, most humans are by themselves not equipped to deal with fuzzy delayed negative feedback.
True. But that says far more about the Mainstream Media than anything else. Most people dismissed the issue because it was never really made an issue.
We can debate / discuss why that was some other time. But, as we now see, the MSM drives public option.
Are SM the ripples in the societal water? Absolutely.
But who / what is the rock that generates and maintains the narative of those ripples?
The MSM is like Top 40 radio. That is, the public wants what the public gets. No one changes the station. They just keep whistling along to the tunes being played - regardless of how bad and mindless. Most people are simply regurgitating brain-worms. They do that on SM.
p.s. The fact that SM was relatively silent (compared to say Stormy Daniels) is a great example. Which did the MSM "play"? And which was ignored?
There are no ripples without a rock hitting the water.
On the other hand, it's exactly the kind of research I expect from privacy protection institutions.
For FB to stop being the devil/cancer they are now, they have to drop all the current practices and burn many bridges/income with any outsider, and make a living with "just advertisments".
They will still make a good living from that, but greed is in human nature.
It's a lot of trust to place in one company, whose motives inevitably won't align with your own, and who realistically you can't hold to account.
Maybe the problem is that nowadays alter egos and nicknames are seen as edgy stuff and not as the true joy of living on the Internet.
I switched away from Gmail and Google Calendar a couple of weeks ago. I also disconnected my Google account from my phone. I haven't regularly used their web search in years.
I've used an email address at my own domain for years, precisely so I wasn't tied to Gmail, and therefore I haven't needed to spam my contacts or change a load of user accounts to a new email address.
It's almost a shame Google+ never took off, because then the non-tech media might be talking about Google in the same way as Facebook.
This new organization will be much more honest than the current ones!
IMO For this to happen correctly it has to be decentralized, perhaps blockchain style.
adj.
Playfully jocular; humorous: facetious remarksI wonder how much it would take for people to wake up. Maybe if Microsoft came out in full support of Donald Trump maybe then people would start writing and caring about their privacy.
[1] blackviper.com