Not a fans of these people saying how bad thing are but refuse to elaborate. Like sure, i know ads and socmed company will collect my data piece by piece and put it together to know who i am and target me with stupid ads, but i also love to know if there’s more to it. It’s not to convince me but it’s to convince others.
I worked at an ad agency and we’d literally have every user’s email, name, phone etc in random spreadsheets that everyone had access to.
As an intern I had root access to just about everything on the company server because I was one of the people who “knew computers” who wasn’t a dev.
There was constant debate about how to trick people into giving over their data etc (e.g. email sign-up for some free crap that you never actually got). Or getting people to allow apps permission to access their contacts, as then you’ve got 100 new people, and enough info about them to get them to open a spam email.
Also, if the user fell for a trick, their details are suddenly high value, as they are dumb enough to be a “mark” (or maybe their English isn’t very good), so their stuff can be sold to scam companies or just scummy people.
Privacy is a layer of defence, and shitty people feel entitled to take it away from you.
“…root access to just about everything on the company server.”
The urge to set up a cron for a random time after my departure to sudo rm -rf / would be so strong.
Or a Python script that quietly swaps all the data tables’ values, so the aggregate information looks valid but is functionally worthless.
That last sentence is a beautiful summary. I’m totally going to steal it. I promise to try and remember to give credit.
Some things that my company does:
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Has someone watching you browse our site live. We can see everything you do in real time. All your searches, missclicks, mouse movements, etc. Only thing it cant see is credit card info.
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Uses these live views to create a profile on you. Are you in the deep south and searched for something that could be “conservative”? Your now on our Conservative mailing list. Vise-versa as well, We have email marketing campaigns that are written to cater to demographics. For each email sales campaign we put out, there are about 8 varieties of those emails that are tailored to what we think you want.
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Keep databases of all our customers and people who visit the site, with as much info as possible. IP, location, estimated salary, spending potential, whether or not you are more likely to click on our links. All kinds of info that isnt really protected in any meaningful way. Most of it is just on a Google Drive.
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For our big spenders and repeat customers, we have a separate database that has even more personal info. The marketing manager has even gone so far as to look up Facebook and Linkden and whatnot on you and take whatever they can find. Family, friends, hobbies, jobs, anything that they think can be useful to sell more stuff. Again, none of this is really secured to well.
Im not in the marketing department of my job so theres probably a lot more that im not aware of. These are just a few things we do and im sure this is mild in comparison to bigger companies. My job is a small family business with like 10 people working there.
This is why I run several layers of adblock on my network and use plugins to search random terms that seem real, while also clicking every ad that makes it through.
My goal ceased being to contain my interests/info when I realized how much they knew. Now my goal is to just make the data as poisoned as possible.
Yeah, the first time I saw he granularity of what Analytics could collect on a site, I was mortified. Like yeah, they may not record your specific name, but if they know every page you visit and everything you buy, you’re still a unique and trackable entity.
But what does your company do with this data? You put me on an email list, but if you have my spam only email… Then what? What do I stand to lose by your company doing research on me?
Why don’t you give everyone here that kind of info then?
It sounds like everyone already has all that info, and all they seem to do with it is recommend gifts my mom would like based on her search history.
I get targeted political ads, but who cares about those? I don’t form my opinion based on ads.
You are so special thinking you are immune to propaganda.
It’s pretty easy for ads, they’re clearly labeled and anything in an advertisement is propaganda with little merit.
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I built software around 2010-2014 around harvesting visitor data.
Shit was scary back then with how much we could predict. We were already laser targeting customers and people. I can only imagine what they’re doing now.
This was before the whole “big data” push when companies were cross-referencing data sources from other harvesters.
I’ve worked at both Facebook and Google, and I’d second this sentiment. It is pretty disgusting that anyone with a passable knowledge of how to hide their tracks can basically get all of the information (messages, posts, photos, private information) they want about you. Sure, they might get fired if they’re caught, and maaaaaaaybe (read: probably not) face legal action, but they can do a lot of damage beforehand. And if they’re good enough, they won’t get caught.
I trust the people that I worked with there, but these are big organizations, and a lot more people than I would be comfortable with have essentially administrator access to private data.
IMO it’s less about insiders stealing info. I’ve seen leads lists stolen and sold on the open market, etc. What we should really be concerned about is the above board, legal and absolutely promoted evil of advertising. I’ve worked in social Media and gaming(gambling) and let men tell you: the legal things these advertisers do are diabolical. The whiteboard conversations about how to structure a user journey are exploitation and immoral, unethical and downright evil and they are so by design. You’re doing a poor job if you’re not devising ways to skirt the law and use loopholes to manipulate people.
Doesn’t most people also manupulate each other as well? Like gaslighting and etc.
I work in an advertising-adjacent field (we won’t do any skeevy data-harvesting stuff, but still, ads) and I barely use any of the main social media sites, have an adblocker enabled on my router, use uBlock, GrapheneOS for my phone, Linux with a bunch of hardening, a VPN that’s always on etc.
My work computer doesn’t have any of that 'cause I need to be able to see ads on it, but sometimes if I forget and just browse around on my work computer with no ad protection… holy fuck it always surprises me how awful the internet is.
Hmm maybe I’m just desensitized, but what are they going to do with that information? Going to try and sell me stupid shit?
Right now in the US? Not much outside of try to sell you stupid shit.
But the capability in the data is there for an authoritarian regime to do quite a lot to you as a result of the information.
So you know - if there was any pending threat of a narcissistic psychopath upending the government you might be concerned over what insights into individual mindsets can be accomplished with the data available…
