J3FF3R00 Posted September 27, 2019 Share Posted September 27, 2019 I don’t know if there’s a thread about this already, but lately I’ve been feeling helplessly suffocated by how it seems almost everything in daily life has been modified to take advantage of you or study you or market stuff to you with the use of profiling and algorithms. Every device or application that you buy or use somehow finds a way to either listen in on you or collect your personal information in ways that are anything but apparent. I’ve deactivated my Facebook account, I hardly use any other social media app, I’ve restricted all of my apps on my phone to the best of my knowledge from accessing my microphone and I limit (to the best of my abilities) how my phone tracks me and shares my information, but my guess is that, as long as I have a phone / use a debit card / use email accounts / etc, I’m unable to prevent multiple companies from using and exploiting my personal info without my direct permission. I guess this is now just the way of the world, but it really bothers me. I’m not sure if it bothers me more because I’m a “Gen X/Y-er” and have memories of life prior to the Internet/cellphones/etc but I know I’m not alone. Anyway, I’m hoping that some of y’all share this frustration and we can use this thread as a way to not only vent these frustrations but share tips and tricks on how to best prevent this kind of thing from completely taking over our lives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drillkicker Posted September 27, 2019 Share Posted September 27, 2019 There's nothing you can do about it short of cutting yourself off from all human interaction and living as a hermit in the Altai Moutains, so I find it better just to ignore it. Nobody's sucked my soul out yet and I don't see it happening, so it doesn't really matter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlemflolia Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 I suggest you research Richard Stallman's software philosophy, and the Free Software Foundation which he created. He is a well-known programmer who created GNU (half of Linux, or as it should be called according to him, GNU+Linux), the GNU General Public License (GPL), GCC(the Gnu Compiler Collection), GNU Emacs (text editor), and the Free Software Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman The Free Software Foundation is an engineering and political organization designed specifically to combat your concerns. Their philosophy is that you should not use proprietary software and instead only use free software. Free software is software which is "free as in freedom, not free as in beer". This means you might have to pay for it, but once you buy it, you have also bought freedom: the source code, the right to modify the source code, and the right to redistribute modified or unmodified versions of the source code, and also sell them. This is not relevant to you unless you are a developer, but as an end-user, the goal of not running non-free software implies avoidance of certain types of software, including but not limited to: Non-free online services like Facebook, Instagram, Google, etc. Proprietary software like MacOS, Windows, and many more In practice you probably won't follow these rules, but use this philosophy to remind yourself that you are right to have these concerns, and there are solutions. People are working on it, and there is hope. I encourage you to donate to the Free Software Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation if this is truly something you care about, as well as quitting Facebook, Google, etc. Short video: Longer video: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drillkicker Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlemflolia Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 18 minutes ago, drillkicker said: god i wish i was on his level Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YEK Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ambermonk Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 It's probably a capitalism thing. Pretty sure companies are tracking us via our phones to find out what our actual interests are and adapt their marketing accordingly. Not as much of a 1984 thing I reckon, unless you live in mainland China. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hijexx Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 Used to care. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlemflolia Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 39 minutes ago, ambergonk said: It's probably a capitalism thing. Pretty sure companies are tracking us via our phones to find out what our actual interests are and adapt their marketing accordingly. Not as much of a 1984 thing I reckon, unless you live in mainland China. they detect your phones via things called bluetooth beacons and in grocery stores and malls they can track your every movement via that alone. any website that allows itself to integrate facebook, google, etc. cookies means facebook and google can track you even if you don't have an account, just from accidentally going onto one of those websites. websites that give infinite scrolling track your every movement down to finger hesitation during scrolling to gauge interest in an ad. they then associate all of this info with you forever in their databases, and they will continue to use this ever rising pile of information on you to train machine learning models to do everything from target product online advertisements at you to selling consumer information about you to retailers. imagine everything you can imagine right now about how you could be tracked online and spied on so people can sell you shit. now imagine 100x more of it happening in 100x smarter ways. once you imagine this, you will be at maybe 1% of how advanced the real tracking technology is, because these companies scoop up the top PhDs to work for them and create advanced algorithms and machine learning models to spy on you even better. remember the store about walmart predicting a girl was pregnant before she knew it? imagine it 100x deeper into your psychology. they probably mine every website's data at this point to perform stylographic analysis on every post you've ever written and link up your various online personas. they then mine this for anything about you that they can use to sell things to you, or sell this information about you to others who want to either sell things to you or sell their analysis of the information to others. it's too late and we are fucked, the only solution is going 100% stallman and on top of that using a hand-built stylographic obfuscator for every single post you write online, that's the only way to not erase yourself from their databases but pause the data they continue collecting on you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goDel Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 6 hours ago, J3FF3R00 said: Anyway, I’m hoping that some of y’all share this frustration and we can use this thread as a way to not only vent these frustrations but share tips and tricks on how to best prevent this kind of thing from completely taking over our lives. Are you from the US or EU? (Or?) Matters a lot in terms of laws with respect to privacy. EU is more strict on privacy than US. From EU perspective, the US is close to unregulated and companies can do anything they want. Try the wiki on privacy laws to see what situation you're in. It matters a lot where you live. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xxx Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 Probably shouldn't even put this out there but the Ted Kaczynski's manifesto pretty much nailed it on technology. So many innovations begin as something of convenience that should serve us but it seems to inevitably result in the reverse: we serve the technology. He was a dumbass for blowing up innocent people like computer store clerks but I have not been able to shake a lot of things he was talking about well before the mobile/web revolution even got started. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dingformung Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 If you are a scientist and inventor, all your intellectual property will be stolen by the NSA if it can be used to build weapons and given to the US military to solidify US hegimony (which means people like Trump have more power and Iranian farmers need to pray that they won't be starved to death for political reasons). The total surveillance and profiling is a way of reinforcing existing power structures. Those who have a say in navigating humanity's future know everything about us while knowbody really knows much about them. 1 hour ago, goDel said: Are you from the US or EU? (Or?) Matters a lot in terms of laws with respect to privacy. EU is more strict on privacy than US. From EU perspective, the US is close to unregulated and companies can do anything they want. Try the wiki on privacy laws to see what situation you're in. It matters a lot where you live. But the US spies on EU citizens, companies and politicians, too, whithout respecting any laws and nobody seems to be bothered too much by this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goDel Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 23 minutes ago, darreichungsform said: But the US spies on EU citizens, companies and politicians, too, whithout respecting any laws and nobody seems to be bothered too much by this. Sorry, that's just a vague and unsubstantiated accusation. Whether or not the US spies, what matters is the legal framework. And in the EU there are def many people bothered by this and acting on it. The GDPR has been in play only a few years, but the impact is pretty big. Big in terms of what is allowed. And big in terms of the number of people being required to be bothered with respecting and implementing these laws. Please, there's more to it than just the kids posting on social media who don't seem to be bothered. Way more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J3FF3R00 Posted September 28, 2019 Author Share Posted September 28, 2019 2 hours ago, goDel said: Are you from the US or EU? (Or?) Matters a lot in terms of laws with respect to privacy. EU is more strict on privacy than US. From EU perspective, the US is close to unregulated and companies can do anything they want. Try the wiki on privacy laws to see what situation you're in. It matters a lot where you live. US, unfortunately Beyond putting in a bunch of safeguard practices as far as how I use my phone and how I not use social media (to an extent), I try not to shop online unless I’m buying music. It bothers me less that some capitalist bot networks might use my info to try and sell me music that I might actually like. The problem is when my info gets shared to some other source that I’m of a particular demographic or persuasion and that is used either to market other things to me... but I have no idea what the limits are with who gets that info or how it can be used to someone else’s benefit or (especially somewhere down the line) against me. I think it’s reasonable, at this point (and not exactly paranoid) to assume that the info that’s out there now can be also use for political or even legal purposes in the future. I’m fairly anti amazon but I still have a membership, pretty much only for Christmas shopping and the rare “emergency” purchase. We had our Blu-ray player hooked up to our amazon account so we can watch movies (infrequently) and were disappointed to recently learn that, as of today, our Blu-ray player would no longer be supported. They sent us a free amazon fire stick so we can stream movies but apparently it’s remote has a microphone that always listens to you, even if you disable it in the settings. I found some article that shows how you can open it up and remove the microphone. I’m planning to do that, if I ever plug it in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dingformung Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 27 minutes ago, goDel said: Sorry, that's just a vague and unsubstantiated accusation. Whether or not the US spies, what matters is the legal framework. And in the EU there are def many people bothered by this and acting on it. The GDPR has been in play only a few years, but the impact is pretty big. Big in terms of what is allowed. And big in terms of the number of people being required to be bothered with respecting and implementing these laws. Please, there's more to it than just the kids posting on social media who don't seem to be bothered. Way more. Surely, but what are the consequences? American secret services keep listening in on phone calls of European politicians to gain information advantage. But that's maybe not really what this thread is about Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goDel Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 No, this thread is not about spying, or so I thought... Or rather, it's better to treat these as separate issues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J3FF3R00 Posted September 28, 2019 Author Share Posted September 28, 2019 10 minutes ago, goDel said: No, this thread is not about spying, or so I thought... Or rather, it's better to treat these as separate issues. I don’t think it’s not about spying. I think that ultimately is the upshot of the whole issue, anyway. The more information we have out there the easier it is for it to be used against us. I’m also concerned about all of the potential issues that we haven’t even imagined yet. I think people feel more comfortable thinking that it’s just business or capitalism or whatever, but I’m scared when I see how much big business gets away with already in the US and I just don’t put anything past those creepy motherfuckers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goDel Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 From a legal perspective, what happens with data of private citizens in the hands of corporations is a vastly different subject to activities of national intelligence agencies. It's fair to have a discussion about it and all. But if these issues are conflated into one single "privacy" argument, you're off in the weeds. If that's your angle, fine. It's just not my idea of having a meaningful discussion about issues like these. My advice: treat them differently. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YangYing Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 we gonna b dead b4 any of this matters much Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Salvatorin Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 free eugene Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Candiru Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 Foreign spies are watching you poop through your phone. Act accordingly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlemflolia Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 17 hours ago, goDel said: Sorry, that's just a vague and unsubstantiated accusation. Whether or not the US spies, what matters is the legal framework. And in the EU there are def many people bothered by this and acting on it. The GDPR has been in play only a few years, but the impact is pretty big. Big in terms of what is allowed. And big in terms of the number of people being required to be bothered with respecting and implementing these laws. Please, there's more to it than just the kids posting on social media who don't seem to be bothered. Way more. it's not even about the laws, laws are just one SMALL aspect of cybersecurity (the green part in this picture) we need a lot more of ALL of that before we make any progress, and guess what - it ain't gonna fucking happen any time soon, so we're FUCKED Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlemflolia Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 17 hours ago, J3FF3R00 said: I don’t think it’s not about spying. I think that ultimately is the upshot of the whole issue, anyway. The more information we have out there the easier it is for it to be used against us. I’m also concerned about all of the potential issues that we haven’t even imagined yet. I think people feel more comfortable thinking that it’s just business or capitalism or whatever, but I’m scared when I see how much big business gets away with already in the US and I just don’t put anything past those creepy motherfuckers. facebook mines all of the data about its users, uses natural language processing based artificial intelligence to come up with machine learning models to analyze their psychology and how likely they are to be receptive to a specific advertisement or facebook story item, and then they sell this targeting ability to advertisers, it was used to target political ads at politically unaware people in swing states by the russians that was just an initial trial, imagine once this gets in full swing WERE FUCKED Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luke viia Posted September 29, 2019 Share Posted September 29, 2019 the thing that really creeps me out is when i get ads for things I've never looked up, but that have come up in conversation. as an example, one of my old neighbors came over one night, drunk, talking about his plans to go to a police auction the next day. i chatted with him, feigning interest, then he left. the next day an article in my google news feed appeared, regarding an upcoming local police auction. fuck. off. as far as browsing, some amount of surveillance is inevitable. you can get a VPN, use chromium based extensions like ghostery, etc etc (i do both of those things), but yeah. somebody out there knows you're into bowsette preggo porn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ambermonk Posted September 29, 2019 Share Posted September 29, 2019 16 hours ago, Candiru said: Foreign spies are watching you poop through your phone. Act accordingly. Clandestine muthafuckaz and their weird-ass fetishes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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