"taking action" is personal: just don't give personal information, like your DNA (!) to anyone.
You can't control what your relatives do, unfortunately.
You can't control what your relatives do, unfortunately.
- Stop using credit cards and taking loans, or go through every payment processor's arcane process to stop them from sharing my transaction data with advertisers
- Learn what a "tracking pixel" and "device fingerprinting" is and install browsers/extensions to block these technologies, breaking several websites in the process
- Stop receiving images in my emails
- Decompile and screen all my mobile apps to make sure they don't use something like Foursquare's Movement SDK, which allows app developers to create location-aware apps at the cost of sending their users' location data to Foursquare, who then sells it. Foursquare is just one of a half-dozen companies who do this and probably the most transparent, so I've got my work cut out for me.
- Gather a list of all major customer segment providers (companies like Neustar and Claritas) and figure out where and how they get their individual-level data (this is often a fiercely guarded trade secret) so that I can avoid making it into their data collection funnels.
- Find a mobile carrier who won't sell my cell phone data.
- Find a pharmacy who won't sell my aggregated prescription data to IQVia or one of its competitors
- Stop voting (voter rolls are often public or buyable and include your address)
- Never donate directly to a political campaign
- Only buy a house via an LLC with a registered agent
- Only deal with merchants who won't sell my transaction history
Yeah, this seems easier and more tenable than privacy legislation. Definitely.
‘Privacy Nightmare on Wheels’: Every Car Brand Reviewed By Mozilla — Including Ford, Volkswagen and Toyota — Flunks Privacy Test - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37443644
For example, I have largely cut Facebook and Google out of my life (Facebook lingers for keeping up with a few people but its access is severely limited).
However that does nothing to stop my data that may happen to be on my friends phones (like my cell phone or chats for example) from being gobbled up by both of these companies if they allow it.
There is basically no way for me to stop Google from buying my credit card information. Just saying use a different card really isn't a realistic option.
These laws are necessary because there are many instances of a complete lack of consent on my part for these companies getting my data.
In a perfect world, nobody would worry about their ethnic or racial information leaking. If you know how to get to that world I suspect lots of people would be interested in going.
But we should also support others being able to have privacy even for those things we aren't personally worried about. It's almost certain that there are other things they don't worry about, but that you do.
Cops don't need to go illegal.
I would straight up say they need to be regulated as a healthcare provider and be subject to the security provisions of HIPAA. That would be a start.
That’s exactly what laws are for. Making “best practices” enforceable. Imagine if not killing people was just considered a “best practice” rather than something you would face severe consequences for.
In this case the best practices need to be enforced against 23andme and their ilk.
Apparently 23 and Me bought Lemonaid at some point. And I only ever used Lemonaid to get prescriptions for medications that really shouldn't even need prescriptions but the United States healthcare system is insane.
It's just a comedy of late stage capitalism. And isn't the one privacy law the US does have HIPAA? So shouldn't this run afoul of that somehow?
I can certainly see that changing now because it is utterly absurd that they are not subject to such regulations.
To be fair I had to look up what the acronym stands for.