Our data isn't safe. Resist giving it up whenever you can
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
You shouldn’t need specifics about my device info or browser for your site to work. And you certainly should make it easy to opt out of whatever data you’re selling on me when I use your services, unfortunately we seem to be in a race to the bottom there.
Insurance is highly regulated in most places to prevent frivolous price increases, so.. yes. Absolutely it would be "screwing you", which is why it got regulated
I think the point is that a consumer’s insurance rate may go up based on an arbitrary KPI the insurance company chose, of which the consumer was not necessarily (made) aware, based on information the consumer never opted to share, information that comes with a considerable lack of context, no less. We’re not necessarily talking about accidents, or breaking laws, either. It’s determined by the insurance company using proprietary algorithms, and you have no recourse if your rates go up. It’s privatized tyranny.
It was a single example I provided. You can find many others without looking very hard.
Took less than a minute reading the TOS to know to stay the hell away from it and Mazda's ability to sell my data to 3rd parties. He tells me "you won't be able to remote start without it, warm your car up in the winter". He only gave up when I told him I'll just leave if forced to install.
I also turned off connected services from the cars infotainment screen but I get a prompt to turn back on every time I start the car.
Who knows if any of this actually makes a difference. They may still be collecting my driving data and selling it without my consent.
One of the worst outcomes is going to be "if you don't let us collect your data then we have to set your insurance prices high because you're an unknown"
I think this is pretty likely to happen. The same way if hiring managers can't find your LinkedIn or Facebook they might think that's suspicious behavior instead of just privacy conscious
The former is understandable but the latter presents a risk because it's harder to fully know a closed book, harder to exploit a closed book. What's he/she thinking? It's sad having to treat every institution one deals with on a day to day basis as an adversary by default, but I think we have enough evidence to justify it.
Im more concerned that my writing style is the same as when I was a 13 year old Republikan lover and die hard believer posting on gamefaqs, reddit, facebook, etc.... I'm ~20 years older and those are some embarrassing things associated with an old username.
I'm sure AI will connect the dots using stories I posted and writing styles. I have a story about coke and mentos I posted for decades. THAT coke mentos story is going to be what unravels my US presidential campaign.
There are three reasons that a company wants your SSN. One is for tax-reporting reasons. For those, it's possible to get and provide a taxpayer ID number to use instead of the SSN.
Another is when they're going to need to file reports with Social Security itself. For those, they really do need your SSN.
A third is that they just want an ID number and are being lazy. I've found that in the majority of cases, just telling them that you don't provide your SSN for that purpose works. They'll generate their own number to use instead.
That said, perhaps I should have made it clear that this isn't my field of expertise. I'm assuming the downvotes I got are because someone knows I'm wrong? I very well could be! I'm just reporting what my personal experience has been.
Finally, how does that help the millions of SSN fraud victims who aren't me and have no idea they don't have to give their SSN to get medical care? Like, I can learn self-defense against any number of dangers I might encounter - that doesn't mean I'm ok with those dangers being proliferated by our biggest and most critical institutions. So those are probably the two main reasons people are downvoting.
If you cannot understand why those things are dismissed without question, you have zero business being anywhere around them. Some systems just should not exist. Their mere existence, plus the temptation to abuse them, is basically irresistable to exploit once they do exist. Both of the systems you mention fall into that category.
I don't see how that can be improved without either 1) a national ID system seen in other countries or 2) beaming into average people's brains an understanding of unique cryptographic identities that they are in charge of maintaining and using.
Once given that "out", no employee has ever felt the need to argue that their company's computers are somehow secure.
Perhaps your hypothesis is incorrect.
Monero for more privacy, or use the former currencies after exchanging from Monero.
Now, I don't expect a newspaper to go to such lengths, but it is nonetheless ironic for an article that tells me not to give up my information to ask for my information in the same breath.
It is possible, and even admirable, for companies to do this. The only reason to hoover up as much identity data as possible is to maxmimize earnings, reselling harvested data to the highest bidder exclusively, or to the greatest number of purchasers.
It's not necessary or good to contribute to panopticon surveillance. The game being played is not anywhere close to informed consent or educated consumers making rational choices. It's universally deceptive and the underlying intent of the system is to maximize the amount of money being extracted from consumers while minimizing the cost, creating chains of middlemen and operators inflating the price of a good or service without adding value to the end-user.
It's not a valid free market tactic - it is not morally or ethically justifiable, despite the endless rationalization and dodginess muddying the water.
If it's not illegal, it will be done. If the penalty doesn't outweigh the profit, it will be done even if it's illegal.
We need some serious protections of consumer data, with c-suite decision makers going to prison, billion dollar companies shut down and liquidated, and a ruthless FAFO regulatory system put into place. Our current laws are oriented around 1980s notions of computer security and our data protections are rooted in quill and parchment era verbiage. We need to recalibrate and relegislate based on a modern understanding of personal data, with principles of ephemerality and cryptographic protections baked in that protect and support individual citizens first and foremost.
It's not a hard problem to solve, once you set the requirement that you don't need you need a person's real information to let them use your product.
It's also something that should be mutable for any given account (yeah, that is a direct contradiction of the above, but still), which a UID should not be.