What reasons are there for being concerned about companies like google and meta etc collecting data and tracking me?

Please understandnim asking this question from a genuine place. I dont want the quora answer, i want the tech savvy, security expert minds of my fellow lemmings. If thats ok?

What happens to this data? What can/do they do with it? and why are so many people concerned about google tracking them?

Do i as an average user need to be concerned?

If so, What sorts of things can i do to avoid being tracked? Preferably without too much comprimise.

Amends1782,

Here’s a good example why you should care

gizmodo.com/signal-tried-to-run-the-most-honest-f…

Kage520,

I think the best example is for women. Imagine they can figure out, with 95% accuracy or something, that you are pregnant, that could be valuable data.

Now imagine you are a woman at a large corporation who just got pregnant, but aren’t telling anyone yet. Too early. Your corporation buys a batch of data and discovers there is a 95% chance you are pregnant. They don’t want to pay for maternity leave or make reasonable accomodations during pregnancy or pumping breast milk. They fire you for “unrelated reasons”, before you ever tell them you are pregnant.

Nothing illegal happened there really. You never told them so you have no way to prove they fired you for that.

Fleur__,
@Fleur__@lemmy.world avatar

Isn’t that illegal though

FontMasterFlex,

how so?

Blackmist,

Only if you have the funds to prove it.

realharo, (edited )

This is very unlikely, because if they did it to more than a handful of people, the pattern would become immediately obvious.

Kage520,

Not necessarily. It doesn’t have to be pregnancy either. It could be because you are 95% sure a Democrat. Or union friendly. Or atheist.

AngryCommieKender,

Bundle the “undesirables” in mass layoffs to increase the obfuscation of why they were laid off. “The algorithm said these 10% had to go.”

Samsy,

It’s called microtargeting, all big tech companys are sorting people in groups, just by their use of the service. It starts with simple things, for example: cats or dogs? And this goes deeper to your religion or sexuality, politics etc. Created mostly for advertising it got used by political parties. Check the Cambridge analytical scandal. If you easily able to sort the people for your target you are able to manipulate your targeted people.

Newest scandal for microtargeting came from the EU-Commission with the chatcontrol.

Rokk,

Cambridge Analytica stuff though I think mostly revolved around them identifying more vulnerable users.

I don’t consider myself vulnerable to this stuff (I may consider grandparents and certain friends a bit more vulnerable) - should I still be worried about them having my personal data? I obviously would rather they don’t have my vulnerable relatives data so they aren’t manipulated, but for me personally does it matter?

doublenut,

You not considering yourself vulnerable to this stuff makes you exactly the type that is vulnerable to this stuff.

Professorozone,

That’s kind of silly really. Consider the example above where the woman gets fired for being pregnant. Now just pretend it was a man thing instead. What if you are diagnosed with a curable cancer, but your employer only sees oncology and fires you. What if they find out you go to a bar that is NEAR a gay bar and they just establish a policy that draws a radius around them? I can go on forever. You don’t have control over what makes you vulnerable.

Jourei,

I don’t like the idea that if history repeats itself, a powerful entity can force the data vaults open and see who they should send to the showers. I could be on the “correct” side at that time yet something I did or said last year has the system deem me unfit for the noble breed.

Thorny_Insight,

I think if people knew the extent to which these big-data algorithms can figure out things about you just based on the links you click and posts you upvote then they would be more concerned. If it was just that they knew my location, age and interests then I wouldn’t really care much but the reality is that they probably know stuff about me, that even I don’t.

I simply don’t like the fact that this database exists somewhere because it can come back to bite me one day. Just imagine what a fascistic government could use data like this for. Or maybe not even that, but remember how we first didn’t have chatGPT and no one thought we would for years but then it just appeared and now it’s there. Well what if tomorrow someone comes up with an equally fun tool that you can put any person’s name into and it’ll give you access to all this data. I want my page on that app to be very brief and inconsistent.

I’m perfectly aware that it’s impossible to use the internet and not leave any tracks at all, but I want to make sure that my tracks are incredibly difficult to follow and preferably that they don’t lead anywhere.

hahattpro,

Do you want to leave trace in your live, or will you disappear without a trace :v

…

JewGoblin,

I used to care, but I gave in

mysoulishome,
@mysoulishome@lemmy.world avatar

This whole thread makes me want to quit using the internet right now…

SHamblingSHapes,

The US and UK have both used data from period trackers to spy on women and monitor for “suspicious” miscarriages.

Brekky,

Why would the uk care??

SHamblingSHapes,

Some people hate women with control over their own bodies.

Rentlar,

Governments in free, democratic countries are not supposed to spy on you without a probable suspicion of wrongdoing. Government agencies around the world get around that by “purchasing information” collected by private firms and use it to gain probable suspicion whenever they feel like.

Lycist,

An example of this I use on occasion is:

You date someone years ago and no longer are. You've moved on, but that person then goes and commits a heinous crime. The police decide that since you dated years ago, and that record of your personal info is stored on some database they have somewhere, they no-knock warrant into your house, and shoot you dead in your own bed (Brianna Taylor - Louisville KY.) because they think there's a possibility he was there.

griefreeze,

Breonna Taylor*

TheWiseAlaundo,

This example is pretty good. I’m stealin’ it.

ALERT,
@ALERT@sh.itjust.works avatar

All my life I give up all my data to any product of any company I use. I accept all cookies to track me, send auto-reports and telemetry, try to join all beta products and gladly report bugs that occur. I use one nickname everywhere it is available, my home address and phone number and all social network pages are easily googlable, all my profiles are public. I always say what I think. I’m from Kyiv, Ukraine, and I have never had a single negative occasion due to my Internet behavior. AMA.

Krudler,

Just a personal story to bring one example into focus.

I got sober 8 years ago and never talked about it online until I was about 4 years sober. Never saw a single promotion for anything related to alcohol…

Until the day I made a single comment on Reddit telling my story to help support another person who was just starting their own sobriety journey.

And like magic, all promoted communities to me were alcohol related. Even though I’m an ublock user, when I would selectively disable it every advertisement I saw online was related to booze.

So even though there are ethical applications for my data, I found that it was used in an attempt to target me based on human frailties.

guacupado,

I found that it was used in an attempt to target me based on human frailties.

This doesn’t even make sense. It’d be much more lucrative to target multiple things you speak fondly about it or have expressed personal interest in by actively searching.

yurgenst,

If you enjoy something you buy it occasionally. If you are addicted you buy it every day, every time you have money, you think about it all the time. That’s way more lucrative, it’s the whole business model of the tobacco industry too.

OneWomanCreamTeam,

That definitely doesn’t describe how I act with nicotine, and I’m ABSOLUTELY addicted to nicotine.

I could say the same for alcohol, but I’m a very mild alcoholic.

bogdugg,
@bogdugg@sh.itjust.works avatar

Things we need are higher on our priorities than things we want, and addiction convinces you that you need that thing. So anything that can monetize that addiction is going to be more effective and consistent than something you merely want.

Blamemeta,

Keyword based advertising is overly simple

Steeve,

I think that’s just really shitty targeted advertising, not surprising on Reddit lol

Krudler,

Reddit wasn’t even the worst offender.

I made two posts one on asshole design and one on dangerous design and they cumulatively got something like 7,000 up votes and then “magically” the problem was fixed on reddit!

lightnsfw,

Corporations are scummy motherfuckers. Once they have this data they will keep it forever. Even if they don’t have a use for it now they can come up with something in the future and will have no qualms about fucking you over with it. The technology available to analyze it is only getting more powerful as time goes on.

guacupado,

That’s a lot of words to say “I don’t know but everyone is saying it’s bad.”

lightnsfw,

That’s not a lot of words to gobble corporate nutsack.

Steeve,

Damn that comment struck a nerve in you eh lol

neon_cat,
@neon_cat@kbin.social avatar

When you have enough personal info about a population you can engineer advertisement so effectively that you can convince that population of almost everything. See Brexit.

guyrocket,
@guyrocket@kbin.social avatar

I'm sure there is a LOT of additional information about "what you can do", but here are some very simple starting points. You can do these today if you want.

  1. Only use Firefox with uBlock Origin installed/active for web browsing.
  2. Use a Virtual Private Network (VPN). https://protonvpn.com is considered one of the best.
  3. Turn off location services on your phone (this will probably be controversial but I think it makes a lot of sense).

For more, subscribe to @privacy and read and support eff.org

Best wishes!

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