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Comment by kh_hk | Hacker News Reader

Let me give you another example that goes on the line of your comment.

Days ago a friend showed me how after calling a restaurant (just a number) for doing a reservation and later the contact list displayed the name of the restaurant and an image of it.

Cool, right? Joe and Foo love this feature, but do not know the implications of it: a query is sent to Google asking for the info on a number (one must presume, tied up to your account id). Google now knows which numbers you are calling. and, Assuming they do this just for restaurants (how would they know, the query is sent anyways), they might even know your food preference.

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It would be interesting to create some sort of crowdsourced database for these types of anecdotes that could then be sifted through and corroborated. Something like that might bring a bit more transparency to the "deal" we all make with these types of services. I get the whole argument of "well you wanted to use the free service, so now they get to monetize your data", but what services collect and how the data is used is extremely opaque.

The most dystopic uses of data are the ones where you'll never really know it was sold on. Get turned down for a job in five years because the owner paid to run a search in a private database that has something about your illicit past? How will you know?

(Note: I'm not actually that worried about this -- I think society will adjust -- but I think collecting anecdotes only shames the people using your data in ways that are trying to be helpful to you.)

There are laws about pre-employment background checks; in general they can only be run with the consent of the person being investigated, and the person being investigated must be able to receive a free copy. So you will know.

In addition, the FCRA mandates the following cannot appear on background checks:

- Bankruptcies after 10 years

- Civil suits, civil judgments and records of arrest, from date of entry, after seven years

- Accounts placed for collection after seven years

- Any other negative information (except criminal convictions) after seven years

Detailed food preference means religious opinion.

I'm not talking out of my ass: someone who has one of the most innovative companies around shared a real problem they had because of that. If NSA was not completely overwhelmed by bullshit data, they would absolutely use supermarket data to target Salafists.

I would make this trade. Users should have the ability to opt out, but it should opt users in by default so that those of us who choose to use it can have a usable service and the company will have a profitable product.

Most people do not care. I am glad that some people do care, and I read the news actively.

As much as it sends chills down the spines of wary folk, for the time being, the government and the huge corporations have my trust.

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