How Facebook Watches You and Tracks You

hlockwood said:
Bit of paranoia here, wot?

HFl
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Why do you think Russia is a mess? Everybody is scared to speak out against Putin.

Did you study what happened in the German Democratic Republic (i.e. East Germany?)

This is not paranoia. It all happened recently. We need laws in place now to ensure that new technologies do not get used for similar purposes.
 
LinkedIn, Yahoo. Google, ... etc. all use data mining and use algorithms that custom fit ads for each computer user. We had two years ago the Lead Scientist for LinkedIn visit with us for 3 days. He was Lead Scientist at Yahoo before that. He told us that he "saved Yahoo $300 million in one year" by his algorithms. The algorithms track each website access by IP since that IP was established. We are talking about fitting hundreds of millions of equations. Professionals with different educational backgrounds and experiences work together as teams.

This field is called Data Science, and salaries are sky-high for statisticians doing such work.
 
Identity theft is one of the risks with the highest consequences for most of us. Data aggregation and mining are the tools used to join the dots between different data sources to enable identity theft. The less personal information you have out there, the less risk of identity theft.

Identity theft can pretty well destroy your life.
 
JPSuisse said:
Why do you think Russia is a mess? Everybody is scared to speak out against Putin.

Did you study what happened in the German Democratic Republic (i.e. East Germany?)

This is not paranoia. It all happened recently. We need laws in place now to ensure that new technologies do not get used for similar purposes.
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A few years ago there was a a graphic that showed the amount of spying the Stasi did and the amount of spying the NSA did. well let's say the Stasi has nothing on the NSA in terms of pure Data and information on a person, state etc...

Russia is far from a free country but we should be more aware of what is wrong in our own countries before complaining about other countries
especially considering that the biggest spying complex in the world that also spies on it's own citizens is located in the west. Also the step from a semi democracy to a dictatorship is only a small one as history has shown time and time again.
 
I haven't been on FB or TWT, but what can they can do with knowledge I used to buy old film stuff and occasionally, coffee beans?

I can only agree on how undeveloped some adware is - once I buy something, they continue to offer me same thing. Not something related, but very same thing. I hope this retarded "analysts" who create oversimplified algorithms aren't ones highly paid.
 
JPSuisse said:
Yup, I find it disturbing too. What happens if a fascist government again comes to power in a Western democracy? If in the US, I'm sure they'll make good use of the NSA's extensive database.
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What do you mean 'if'?

We have a fascist government in the UK now.
 
How about using private browsing settings/mode and ad-block?
I'm not on of FB or twitter, not even have smart phone;)

Of course paying cash also avoids getting "A-listed" :D
 
I decided Facebook was not for me. But this has nothing to do with privacy.

Privacy does not exist. This is a two-edged sword. There are benefits in terms of security and protecting innocent people. There are dangers because the information could be abused. History is rich with examples of abuses that generated profound personal suffering.

Content on the internet is free (of course some subscription based-content exists). So we pay for the content with our information. I would rather have ads based on my browsing history than ads that are randomly generated. I would rather have ads than pay for content... mainly because the I value diversity and freedom of content choice more than I value my browser-history privacy.
 
DominikDUK said:
A few years ago there was a a graphic that showed the amount of spying the Stasi did and the amount of spying the NSA did. well let's say the Stasi has nothing on the NSA in terms of pure Data and information on a person, state etc...

Russia is far from a free country but we should be more aware of what is wrong in our own countries before complaining about other countries
especially considering that the biggest spying complex in the world that also spies on it's own citizens is located in the west. Also the step from a semi democracy to a dictatorship is only a small one as history has shown time and time again.
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Domink, I agree with everything you say. I am complaining about my country first as well. We should all worry about cleaning up our own act before we complain about others. My reference to those other places was only to demonstrate to my fellow country men what happens when government agencies get out of control.

For clarification, I still do believe we have a democracy in the US though, even though the amount of spying done by the NSA is bigger than what the Stasi was doing. Sure, it's not perfect. But this is a different story. Let's start cleaning up before that small step has a chance of getting made and things become a lot less perfect...

ernstk said:
What do you mean 'if'?

We have a fascist government in the UK now.
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Ernst, unfortunately, my knowledge of UK politics is insufficient to comment.
 
JPSuisse said:
Domink, I agree with everything you say. I am complaining about my country first as well. We should all worry about cleaning up our own act before we complain about others. My reference to those other places was only to demonstrate to my fellow country men what happens when government agencies get out of control.

For clarification, I still do believe we have a democracy in the US though, even though the amount of spying done by the NSA is bigger than what the Stasi was doing. Sure, it's not perfect. But this is a different story. Let's start cleaning up before that small step has a chance of getting made and things become a lot less perfect...



Ernst, unfortunately, my knowledge of UK politics is insufficient to comment.
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A small correction to your post the US is in fact not a democracy neither is any european country not even switzerland is a true democracy. The US is a republic and it's founders were very much anti democracy which they considered a dictatorship of the masses. Also freespeech has nothing to do with democracy this is a misconception. But let's stay on topic.

Facebook and Google are also much smarter than any goverment spy agency as the get the info for free whereas the spies have to work and pay for it :)
 
If you want a visual representation of who gets your data when surfing, download a plug-in call Collusion. It shows you in real time all of the sites that are receiving your data in real time.

Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk
 
Not on facebook. Whew! Never will, and I am not supposed to (can't tell you why).

But now I wonder, might Trump name Zuckerberg as running mate? Hmmm.
 
lynnb said:
Identity theft is one of the risks with the highest consequences for most of us. Data aggregation and mining are the tools used to join the dots between different data sources to enable identity theft. The less personal information you have out there, the less risk of identity theft.

Identity theft can pretty well destroy your life.
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You can make choices to minimise the risk.

1. never use your real date of birth online (use one that is several years/months 'out' from reality, to prevent registry searches).

2. never give your residential address online (I use a po box).

3. never use your middle name(s) online.

4. (for Australia) put yourself on the electoral roll in the right suburb but not at your actual address.

Without these bits of info, it's very hard to get problems (at least here in Australia). Not impossible, but vastly more unlikely.
 
DominikDUK,
the US is in fact not a democracy neither is any european country not even switzerland is a true democracy.
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Fact yourself! FB was not originated from UK or Vienna.

Democracy is wiliness of nation to have choice.
You can't type "democracy" in China Microsoft Internet. You could have only allowed amount of food in N. Korea. You'll be jailed or even killed if you ask for democracy in Russia.

Facebook is FREE. You don't have to pay for it even if you are using it for your business. If you don't like FB, use fax and USPS. America as democracy gives you this choice.
Democracy in USA is so deep, their major company (Apple) will not give personal data of terrorist to the government.

Democracy is in the freedom of choice. I installed free upgrade to Win 10 yesterday. For computer grammar illiterate it gives default choice. For me it gave "custom" choice where I turned off all of the personal data tracking.

You could have FB and gay marriage. Or you could still have FB, but sharia law. Guess where democracy is.
 
You are now the product - if you let yourself be one by participating in these types of sites.

An alternative to Google, which tracks everything you do, is smartpage.com which claims it doesn't track your searches. However, once you go to other sites, you are tracked.
 
On January 1you will find tweets wishing everyone a happy internet birthday. January 1 is the date most IT security professionals use when forced to enter a birth date on a web page.

Obviously you don't do this for on-line loan applications, medical accounts, IR, social security, medicare, etc.
 
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