Being the Product

[Vander]

So the other day, I woke up and checked my phone for email received over the night. In the notification bar, there was a notification for a Fantastic Four theme for my phone, with the helpful text “In theaters 9/15” or whatever the date was. An ad. In my notification bar. I was not pleased about this. HTC changed me from a customer into a product. I paid HTC $600+ to buy a device they are using to sell my attention to a third party.

This is angering, but it’s ultimately pretty mild, in the grand scheme of things. It’s at least obnoxiously visible, and not discernibly targeted. Google Play Services tracks hundreds of metrics about me through my phone, so they can sell targeted ads. Apple does the same. And this is just my phone. When I browse the web on my computer, ad networks track my web browsing. When I watch TV, my DirecTV DVR is monitoring my viewing habits. At the grocery store, my purchases are tracked by my “loyalty card,” and I hear they also want to track my progress through the store based on the wifi MAC address in my phone.

I read today that the run tracking app I had purchased has been purchased itself by Adidas. Adidas now owns all the metrics of my morning runs.

All of this data is gathered on me. It sits in vast databases, some anonymized, some not. I have no control over this data about me, I have no idea how much there is or what is in it, and it’s being bought and sold by people I’ve never met.

This is disconcerting to me.

I don’t even know where I’m going with this little rant. I guess I’m just uneasy about about being a product.

How do you feel about advertising and “Big Data?”

[Ferno]

Just for the hell of it, I pick something at random, that usually isn't even in my character, and search for it. Then I spend a good hour looking for related stuff.

If they want to track my habits, they'd better have a seat when they see what kind of messed up things I look for sometimes. Just my little way of giving back, knowing what they're doing and screwing with them at the same time.

[vision]

How do you feel about advertising and “Big Data?”

I feel like I'm waiting for the right tools to come along to make the data useless. That is to say, I would like some applications on my devices that deliberately send junk to the data collectors, rendering those apps useless.

[Tunnelcat]

How do you feel about advertising and “Big Data?”

Welcome to "Big Brother" and it ain't the government who's the bad guy either. Orwell's vision in his book 1984 has arrived, albeit a little later and with a totally different boogeyman.

What frosts me is that I only have a landline and I'm getting 3 or 4 scammers and crooks calling me a day. Dammit! You know, the ones that claim the IRS is looking for back taxes I need to pay, or the claim that they're from Microsoft and my computer is infected, or I've won a vacation to some island somewhere. If I don't recognize the caller, I do an instant hangup on every weird or blocked caller ID I receive. Too bad they don't get charged for those few seconds I have the phone off the hook. Jerks.

My Samsung Pad is not even registered in my real name. They can hunt and follow all they want, but I'm not who they think I am, other than my location, which I usually have turned off.

[Spidey]

I thought big business was the government in this country…

........

To the OP…privacy went extinct with the steam loco…get used to it.

[Flatlander]

Just released, haven't tried it yet myself:

Privacy Badger 1.0 Is Here To Stop Online Tracking!

I currently use Ghostery, NoScript and Adblock Plus.

[Tunnelcat]

I thought big business was the government in this country…

........

To the OP…privacy went extinct with the steam loco…get used to it.

Their databases are not connected and their motives for using those databases are different, but they're pretty much wed together and living in separate houses with different jobs. If the 2 ever merge and use their data for the same reasons and goals, we're officially screwed. But why do people in this country freak out about government spying and NOT freak out about corporate spying? If they're in bed together, people should be fearful of both equally. They're both invading your privacy.

[Tunnelcat]

Just released, haven't tried it yet myself:

Privacy Badger 1.0 Is Here To Stop Online Tracking!

I currently use Ghostery, NoScript and Adblock Plus.

More about Ghostery.

http://www.itworld.com/article/2732600/ ... ckers.html

http://lifehacker.com/ad-blocking-exten ... -514417864

I got soured on Ghostery when an advertising company bought it. I'm using Blur, which was formerly DoNotTrackMe. Not sure what changed during the process and if it was for the worse. Bummer. Gotta research that one. On a different vein, anyone try out Malwarebyte's Anti-Exploit for browsers?

[Vander]

I use Ghostery. It's low maintenance in that it doesn't completely break webpages, and I don't have to spend a lot of time blocking or allowing scripts. I don't know how thoroughly it blocks tracking, but it does a great job at removing ads.

Give the Lightbeam addon for Firefox a look. It monitors the various connections your browser makes, and then presents it to you in visual form, allowing you to see the interconnected web of tracking going on when you browse.

I guess what irks me about this, is more the unavoidable nature. I mean, if I were going around clicking the Facebook Like button on random pages, or uploading all my pictures to Facebook, I'm pretty much opting in. But I don't do that. The mere fact that the Facebook Like button gets loaded on a webpage I visit opts me in. So few know how these technologies work or how to properly thwart them to effectively opt out, you're going to end up with vast amounts of data before most even know what's going on, much less consider it an issue.

If you ask 100 people what Facebook or Google do, 95 will say they run a social network or a search engine. That is NOT what they do. They run data harvesting operations to profile and package a product for their customers. I know exactly what Google does, and that's why I think for me, this is where Orwell's 1984 really reverberates. It's not the surveillance, it's the double-think I subject myself to. I happily enjoy the convenience of my Android phone, I use the Chrome browser, my personal email is on Gmail, and I use Google for searches. I push the profile Google has on me out of my thoughts. Google is a search engine.

[Ferno]

I run adblock edge with firefox here. Not only do I not see any ads, it k-lined any of those dammed annoying non-skippable ads youtube loves to use.