[HN Gopher] Tech companies are profiling us from before birth
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Tech companies are profiling us from before birth
Author : DamnInteresting
Score : 124 points
Date : 2021-01-18 19:02 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)
| codingprograms wrote:
| People are too focused on data collection. We get it,
| surveillance is everywhere. It's taking up a quarter of the front
| page at any given time. Anyone have anything intellectually novel
| to say? Or can I go write a bunch of articles about the same
| topic?
| SignalNotSecure wrote:
| Gemini protocol users seem to write a lot of interesting
| content
| lastgeniusua wrote:
| stupid 'hackers' being stupid 'hackers' as always. what should
| concern you if not global commodification of personal data?
| aboringusername wrote:
| Although many celebrated the passing and "enforcement" of the
| GDPR, I consider it to be one of the biggest failures in recent
| times. I'd argue the situation is _worse_ today, and so far, the
| GDPR doesn 't have any teeth whatsoever. On one website this is
| the cookie pop-up "consent" message:
|
| "We use cookies to provide a great experience. If you're happy
| with this, continue browsing"
|
| Apparently that counts as an "explicit, freely informed,
| permission given" consent now?
|
| I have found countless examples of websites sending data to
| facebook (including PII), simply by using XHR/fetch and a POST
| request, sending entire page URLs every time you navigate the
| website. I've noticed tens of requests to several domains that
| could be hijacked at any time and peoples information collected
| by a bad actor is they get the domain "totallynotspyingonyou.com"
|
| If the GDPR was serious platform changes would've been
| implemented - similar to Apple's coming tracking permission -
| which should be standard on every OS inside the EU. Instead of
| relying on websites/providers to the right thing, the upstream
| systems (browsers, OS) should be designed around the laws
| instead. As it stands, Google allows their OS to collect an
| individuals _entire_ address book, apparently that data structure
| can be parsed, uploaded and freely traded once somebody taps
| "accept", and if my data is included...Well tough shit for me I
| guess. Asking Google whom has got my phone number saved onto
| their accounts yields no response, yet if somebody puts my PII
| onto Google, I have no rights over it.
|
| The "rights" the GDPR enshrined are nothing more than a empty,
| hollow promise - how many have had success trying to get
| information deleted? All I get told is it's "legal" as there's a
| "public interest" or for any number of reasons.
|
| Regulators simply can't and won't keep up. Reporting Google is a
| waste of time, a regulator is unlikely to touch them, even if
| there is data Google won't provide in a SAR and take months to
| provide a response.
|
| We need to embrace and accept data is going to be collected on
| all humans and kept for as long as the collector wants, and it
| can be sold, leaked, used and abused without you having any way
| to control it.
|
| We're all just numbers in a database somewhere, your feelings
| don't matter, how it affects your life on earth is disregarded,
| ads must be sold, data must be harvested.
|
| Welcome to 2021.
| rdiddly wrote:
| It is written: They "trust me" / Dumb fucks
|
| It's a problem, for sure, but I don't think we're totally
| helpless... yet... and it frustrates me to see this level of
| learned helplessness, and mistaking convenience for necessity.
| Being _used to_ using your phone for everything, doesn 't mean
| you _cannot_ do something else. It 's inconvenient, and not
| impossible, to go to a library[0] instead of Google and
| BabyCenter.com for answers to your questions. It's inconvenient,
| and not impossible, to momentarily disappoint your kids to
| protect their data forever (which is the kind of long-term
| concern that you understand and they don't, because you're the
| adult, which in turn is why you, and not they, are in charge).
|
| [0] RE libraries & books, that's the method most people used up
| to and past the 80s when PCs started appearing in many homes.
| That's the method by which enough knowledge was transmitted
| through millennia to enable the invention of smartphones. You
| don't even have to borrow the book; you can read it on-premises.
| But if you need to borrow it, you should still real-quick make
| sure the library isn't selling you out to anybody either. Most
| libraries have enough money and are pretty popular when it comes
| time to levy a tax or issue a bond. But some are just strapped
| enough that they "could really use the extra cash" that comes
| from providing borrower data to somebody who has convinced them
| it will be "anonymized."
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| Because we don't want a world where we HAVE the technological
| capability to make life so much more convenient but somehow
| can't use any of it because of some shitty fixable
| privacy/social/political problems.
|
| For example, if you see a car that tracks your movement and
| sells it so some third party, you can either say "lets make
| cars that don't do that" or "lets go back to horses". I'm not
| excited about going back to horses, we can fix the damn car :/
| Turning our back on modern technology is a depressing and
| limiting action in the long run.
| rdiddly wrote:
| I don't mean to suggest for one minute that this is a
| technical problem. It's a voting-with-your-feet problem.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Please don't use the Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols block of
| Unicode to make cutesy letters like that, it can prevent the
| visually disabled from reading HN through their screenreaders.
| 458aperta wrote:
| not sure if this genuine or sarcasm.
| mattlondon wrote:
| From the article they mention a user being angry that they lost
| their kick data. It felt like they were highlighting this
| scenario like it was somehow weird or unusual that a pregnant
| mother was upset that she lost this data.
|
| This "fascination" from the author is unhelpful IMHO.
|
| I am not surprised that the pregnant mother was upset - in the UK
| it is now drilled into you that you need to keep track of kick
| data for your child and that you must - _must_ - call the
| hospital as soon as you notice any change at all in kicking from
| your unborn child (1).
|
| They are deliberately very vague and unclear about what a
| "change" constitutes - just that if you feel something has
| changed _at all_ or in _any way_ then you need to call. From
| experience, these calls always end with a request that you go
| into hospital for a check from a midwife. So 55 kicks today, but
| 60 yesterday? Come in and a midwife will hook you up to keep
| track of your baby 's vitals for an hour just to be sure with
| lots of reassurance that you did the right thing by coming in and
| getting it checked.
|
| So no shit if you've entrusted this data to an app and they've
| dropped the ball, no wonder you are angry: this is not just data
| for data's sake - not having it potentially endangers the life of
| your unborn child because you don't have your historical data to
| compare against any more, so you can't know anymore if today's
| kicks are changed from yesterday's or the day before etc.
|
| I am sure many people will scoff and call this an overreaction
| (including apparently the author of the article) but this is the
| current recommendation from the NHS here, and not everyone has a
| totally normal medical history or otherwise-textbook pregnancy
| where it is all skipping through meadows of wild daisys and baby
| ducklings quietly nuzzling at your feet followed by the perfect
| stress and pain free delivery. People can and do have medical
| circumstances that influence pregnancy. It ain't all plain
| sailing.
|
| People have reason to need to trust that their medical data is
| stored safely and reliably. To insinuate that is is odd is deeply
| unhelpful.
|
| 1 - https://www.nhs.uk/pregnancy/keeping-well/your-babys-
| movemen...
| top_post wrote:
| We had a similar experience, where my wife was STRESSED OUT ALL
| THE TIME at the data in these apps. Everything was tracked and
| it was fucking awful. The reliance on them meant she had no
| idea how to feel intuitively about our kid growing inside of
| her. After some convincing, the apps were ditched, she felt
| more "in tune" with what was going on, and we even had a ride
| to hospital to check on things because she felt things had gone
| quiet movement wise. Our kid moved like clockwork at certain
| times of the day and after meals, no app needed to figure that
| out.
|
| These apps are a fucking cancer on what should be an enjoyable
| and natural time.
| jcjshakdnsjz wrote:
| You just mansplained the importance of pregnancy data to a
| mother and academic who spent years studying the subject.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "Big data is a resource and a tool. It is meant to inform, rather
| than explain; it points us toward understanding, but it can still
| lead to misunderstanding, depending on how well or poorly it is
| wielded. And however dazzling we find the power of big data to
| be, we must never let its seductive glimmer blind us to its
| inherent imperfections. . . . What we are able to collect and
| process will always be just a tiny fraction of the information
| that exists in the world. It can only be a simulacrum of reality,
| like the shadows on the wall of Plato's cave."
|
| - from the book "Big Data" menitoned in the article
|
| Meant to inform rather than to explain. Words of caution for
| "data scientists". We get more useful data from our senses each
| day than we ever will from a company conducting surveillance over
| the internet.
| WalterGR wrote:
| _an international study that demonstrated that out of 24 mobile
| health (mHealth) apps, 19 shared user data with parent companies
| and service providers (third parties). They also showed that
| third parties shared user data with 216 fourth parties, including
| multinational technology companies, digital advertising
| companies, telecommunications corporations, and a consumer credit
| reporting agency._
|
| But _what_ data are they collecting? Things available via
| JavaScript, tracking pixels, phone characteristics - most
| definitely. But the raw data about their pregnancies that users
| enter into tracking apps? While that's _entirely possible_ ,
| Citation Needed.
| aboringusername wrote:
| I've seen examples of encrypted payloads being sent to various
| third parties on the internet, it would be very time consuming
| to try and determine what that data actually is.
|
| In my opinion, the OS should let you deny the "internet"
| permission on any app, no reason why it should need it if I
| don't want to risk my data being uploaded without my consent.
| [deleted]
| jedberg wrote:
| All the more reason we need some laws defining your data as your
| property, not the company that collects it. We need strong
| consumer protection of data.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| I'd say in many cases the issue is more that you are socially
| forced into accepting ToS that you have never read, thereby
| making data collection legal despite you never intending to do
| so.
|
| That's why the GDPR is so great: It's only legal if the user has
| willingly and independently given consent to your data
| processing. So as soon as you force or coax someone into ticking
| that box, it's invalid and you can be sued for it.
|
| Facebook learned that the hard way :)
| dudue3grg wrote:
| Agreed, before GDPR the largest internet companies were
| essentially just data collection firms.
| cortesoft wrote:
| And they still are?
| danjc wrote:
| Ah, the ToS I've never read. So you mean, basically all of them
| ;)
| jimmaswell wrote:
| From my point of view GDPR is the real ToS you never read but
| were forced to accept.
| novok wrote:
| Its called law ;)
| Terr_ wrote:
| In the meantime: https://tosdr.org/
| a3n wrote:
| If it's an app, you're being commercially surveiled and
| exploited.
|
| Is that where we are now?
| punnerud wrote:
| How do you think Clubhouse will materialize on its users?
| hn3333 wrote:
| Afraid so. That reminds me: IIRC in the Dune universe they
| eventually abandon all technology. I wonder if we're on that
| track for real.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| Not quite. It's possible to live in the modern world using
| only Free and Open Source software. Stallman does this, but I
| think he's pretty much alone.
| a3n wrote:
| I've read that he borrows people's phones.
| lstodd wrote:
| Yeh, it was sold as a jihad.
|
| But I think Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons would fit better.
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| Death is no escape either - my grandfather died almost thirty
| years ago but you can still find his name and last address on all
| of the people search sites. My grandmother was still getting
| marketing materials addressed to him when she died about five
| years ago. I had an uncle who died in the early 80s and there is
| no trace of him, so 90s seems to be the point at which the data
| brokers decided that nobody ever dies. Online advertising is
| already a sham (no really, I am never ever going to download
| Homescapes but I see ads for it thirty times a day), add on top
| of that all the dead people's data being passed around. There
| really needs to be some regulation and oversight.
| umvi wrote:
| > I had an uncle who died in the early 80s and there is no
| trace of him
|
| Hmm, I wouldn't be so sure. Ancestry, FamilySearch, and other
| genealogical databases may yet have him in there, along with
| tons of information that ancestors literally voluntarily
| supply, including photos (for posterity). I see that as a good
| thing though. I can learn about my ancestors and see pictures
| of them and read stories about them.
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