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Comment by uiri | Hacker News Reader

I don't see why anyone would treat places that they go carrying a smartphone as private data. The phone has the data and cell phone networks (in the US, at least) do collect the data (or used to)[1]. Giving Facebook the data basically just de-anonymizes it since it seems perfectly conceivable and natural that some of the collectors of this data would take it in aggregate, anonymize it, and sell it to companies, if for no other reason than they can make money off of this data. The solution to this kind of tracking (if it bothers one) is to not use a cell phone. And if you don't want facebook to know anything about you then you should not use facebook (instead of or in addition to, not using a cell phone).

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/cellphone-companies-will-...

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My bank knows about most of my purchases, but it is still considered private data. My health care provider knows about my medical history, but it is still considered private data. Why should a cell phone provider be any different?

I see no reason why banks couldn't in principle do the same thing with purchasing data that carriers do with location data. There ought to be a distinction between private as in confidential and private as in "confined to multiple parties each of whom the data's subject knows of". Health data is so sensitive that it is protected under various laws and in most developed countries (the US being the largest exception) health care is run by the government rather than private companies. Unlike with health data, it is possible to avoid having banks and cell phone carriers collect data about you - always use cash and don't have a cell phone. In addition to being a very paranoid course of action, this is impractical for most especially when the privacy trade off is likely to be worth it in most cases. When those who already have your location data is considered, giving up your location data to Facebook oughtn't be too big of a stretch when they already know about birthdays, weddings, funerals, your friend network, etc. Retailers will already piece together private information about you from purchasing data that they can collect[1] and this is the position which apps seem to currently be in - neither Facebook nor Target want to make guesses at the rest of your private life but it is impractical for Target to make a request directly while Facebook has no qualms about doing so.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targe...

> Health data is so sensitive that it is protected under various laws

There is no reason we can't pass laws preventing Facebook from tracking and using such information. We don't have to settle for "don't use a cell phone" or "don't use Facebook."

I upvoted you even though I disagree heartily with what you are saying; and I would like to point people to pg's essay http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html to remind them that this site is not reddit, and that the downvote should be used rarely, and mostly to quell noise and abuse.

That said, one should not have to give up using a cell-phone to avoid being tracked. Nor should ones willingness to use facebook to talk to family be taken as a blanket permission to mine your personal data stream for every last bit of value in it.

What you describe is not supposed to happen on Reddit either. But idiocy takes over whenever a group of people gets large enough.

if you have a core group which is caring about the health of the community then you might have not this problem. but if the community gets overuned by trolls the admin should take some steps to prevent it. (kick the trolls, close registration temporaly, etc.) (sorry, if my english is broken. i'm a german guy)

Hard to kick people for downvoting stuff, would have to be done manually and that doesn't seem feasible. Cheers from another German;)

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