privacy policy paranoia
- Started
- Last post
- 9 Responses
- maikel
It looks like the hot topic in a few conversations I had about digital whatevers is whether you're information is kept private or sold or manipulated or conspired against.
Considering that A LOT of things are easy to hack and we keep valuable stuff about ourselves on emails and phones, or -in general- online, it makes sense.
HOWEVER, as a lot of us use gmail/google, that keeps good track of everything. Even our Iphones know and track where we are.
So, how do you chaps go about this? Do anybody care about what is on my emails anyway, or what did I searched for a week ago?
- eficks0
how many people read t&c's anyway?
- detritus0
My gmail email is throwaway, for unimportant subscribes.
So it knows 10% of what I like, and delivers ads based on the keywords therein. *shrugs* I dont really care.
I don't have an iPhone, and I mainly use a landline.
My big weakpoint is my over-reliance on Google for searching, rarely (if ever) unhinging my cookies or IP from my search.
There though, I throw so many random queries in there, especially as backup for pointless internet activity (as on here) that they probably have me marked as a terrorist psychopath, so my only concern is The Man, and not His Advertising.
- maikel0
yeah, I was going on about FB and keeping ownership of your content. Analytics 'owns' your info as well. And your google account will store all you history if you don't turn the feature off... because 'it helps showing you better results based on your existing searches'.
I mean, I give a shit. I don't think of myself as THAT important.
- monospaced0
In my OPINION, it's paranoia to think that these companies would--or even could--really do anything malicious to an individual. The manpower involved in hunting down individuals based on a sea of search- and meta-data is improbable. Sure, there are computers to run the algorithms and serve up better advertising and results, but they treat it (you, us) all as statistics and people are just a number. Your specific details, the secure stuff, is of little interest to the big companies unless they plan on doing something with it, which would be insanely illegal and violate every privacy policy out there (that's why they exist). Lawyers, the public and governments would go apeshit if anything were ever exposed, so it's a fair bet that the policies are pretty solid and trustworthy. Yet, this is ONLY my opinion.
- monograph ehehhehehe jk, jkGeorgesII
- ?monospaced
- the malicious part is when the government mistakenly requests your info for somebadshit.eficks
- ukit0
Nobody cares about you, except as an anonymous consumer to advertise to.
I worked for awhile at a fairly large ad network and you'd be surprised how much tracking and data profiling of users does go on - all anonymously of course. There are probably a couple dozen ad networks tracking you as we speak - mainly through Flash cookies that are hidden on your hard drive.
But at the end of the day what does it all add up to? Not a whole lot to get scared about, unless email spam and popups scare you.
- < in other words, thismonospaced
- identity thieves care, credit thieves care about your info.eficks
- "it wont happen to me"eficks
- of course OTHER INDIVIDUALS might care, but that's a completely different topic, eficksmonospaced
- you said 'nobody' plus i do believe its a privacy concern, as the subject of the thread suggests.eficks
- he said :peficks
- Different issue though
The kind of info ad networks collect is not going to allow people to steal your identity or CCukit - credit card infoukit
- i'm sorry, did you read the OP?eficks
- monospaced0
"So, how do you chaps go about this? Do anybody care about what is on my emails anyway, or what did I searched for a week ago?"
I really don't think so. This applies to me and everyone I interact with as well.
- maikel0
Yeah Mono. I fully agree but surprises me the amount of people concerned about 'the corporations knowing their dirty secrets' where in reality the worse thing that can happen is a 14 y/o stealing your card details to buy some stuff on amazon, but you'd be insured against it anyway.
- monospaced0
maikel, you're right, but there's a slight disconnect still. 'the corporations knowing your dirty secrets' idea is not only unlikely, it's completely separate from that 14 y/o hacker.
- vaxorcist0
yes, people know a HELL of a lot about "you" but "you" are just an IP address + MAC address, usually turned into some hash.... but if some script kiddie can tie credit card records to surfing habits to social security number = something to fear..
Supermarket "club" cards that track your buying and know your address + phone + email are more orwellian to me....
I have to laugh when I see websites "privacy-policy.html" pages that contain the phrase "subject to change without notice" ... which means whatever you just read above that sentance is meaningless..