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I know, I know, it's the way it is but it's still creepy


nat whilk II

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So I go online with Google Play (I'm a subscriber) for something to listen to and as usual the website starts off with their useless Suggestions..as if I'm a tourist in a far land looking at a menu I can't read....but I notice that a new angle has appeared, that this and that is being suggested because I watched the artist/band recently on Youtube!

 

Oh, I know, terms of service and I have a choice and all that, thank you very much....

 

Guess I'll go spelunking in the options yet again to see if I can turn this use of my browsing history off (again) -

 

It's just creepy and getting creepier. It's wrong to be a peeping, spying, invasive creep, ya know? And wrong to blame the public for the behavior of the service provider. It's like "gee, if you don't want to be mugged, you should never walk in the street - it's your choice, you know!"

 

rantyrantrantrantyrant

 

nat whilk ii

 

 

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Naw, ya just have to use Google Chrome and browse in Incognito mode. It was originally invented to hide porn from wives who really don't want to know what their husbands are REALLY doing on the computer, but it turns out to be very useful for actual privacy.

 

BTW, have you noticed how the ads show the items that you've been shopping for lately? Google is the the new"cookie" monster... but I love them anyways.

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Incognito mode doesn't history, cookies or downloaded data from sites and web apps. So anything you visit can not be seen by them. Sure, they may have a back end way to see and save this stuff (not sure if that's the case or not), but at least the ads and such won't reflect your historical browsing.

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Incognito mode actually blocks Google's use of browsing history? Or does it just block your own access to your own browsing history??

 

nat whilk ii

 

Well, what Google Chrome does with Incognito mode (and Firefox with "Private Browsing Windows") is both not access your browsing history *on your computer*, and "cleans up after itself" when you close the window.

 

It does nothing (and can do nothing) about server-side history storage. All of that is tied to your Google account (i.e. if you looked at some YouTube video without logging into your Google account and then went to Google Play, chances are you wouldn't get any "suggestions" because, at that point, Google doesn't have any idea who is looking at the page).

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I think its pretty safe to say that everything you do online is being recorded, even if Google or whatever browser you`re using says. We`re at the point where pretty much everything you do, everywhere you go (even offline), is being recorded. There is no such thing as privacy. Someone somewhere is watching. Hello!

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Well, what Google Chrome does with Incognito mode (and Firefox with "Private Browsing Windows") is both not access your browsing history *on your computer*, and "cleans up after itself" when you close the window.

 

It does nothing (and can do nothing) about server-side history storage. All of that is tied to your Google account (i.e. if you looked at some YouTube video without logging into your Google account and then went to Google Play, chances are you wouldn't get any "suggestions" because, at that point, Google doesn't have any idea who is looking at the page).

 

That's pretty much what I thought Incognito (and the other browser versions of the same) did.

 

I'm going to experiment with logging out of Google, viewing YTs in Incognito mode as a logged-out user (I'll pick something way off my usual YT choices...like Barry Manilow) and see if Google later suggests some Manilow or other stuff in that vein...should be easy to spot.

 

Speaking of Manilow...here's an excerpt from a recent NPR article on this topic - it was actually this article that revived this chronic rant topic of mine...

 

In a course I co-teach at Berkeley, we ask our students to try to figure out what Google knows about them. One young woman tried switching to a new browser and entering searches for products like blood pressure monitors and Barry Manilow albums. She wasn't surprised when ads for menopause supplements started to appear on the Web pages she visited. But it was unsettling when her boyfriend started seeing ads for Viagra.

 

 

a link to the article if your paranoia needs a boost:

 

http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/12/10/369740829/forget-creepy-nunbergs-word-of-the-year-is-bigger-and-two-god-view

 

 

nat whilk ii

 

 

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ixquick, startpage, and duckduckgo are three browsers that don't record your browsing information on the server side - at least that's what they say.

 

There are also do-not-track type plug-ins you can add to most browsers.

 

There is one that heard of (I forget the name) that sends out random searches to google so that it swamps your profile with so much variety that google can't figure out what you like.

 

But that's all when you aren't logged in. Logging in is a different story altogether.

 

When you log into Google, Facebook, Twitter, or any of the others, everything you do is recorded. If you click Like or Share it goes in your profile, what links you click go into your profile, all your search terms go into your profile, when you tell them what school you went to, what you do for a living and everything else goes into your profile and that information is all for sale.

 

If it's free, you aren't the customer --- you are the product.

 

Here is a "poem" I wrote for Facebook, but you can substitute Google, G+, Twitter or whatever else you want:

 

ODE TO FACEBOOK

 

Oh Facebook how are you today?

I visit you most every day

 

And everything I do or say

you put into my dossier

 

Where was I born? what was my school?

Enter your job, be very cool

 

You even know my family

and everything that's dear to me

 

My information's gold to you

it sells to stores and spammers too

 

If I click "like" or I repost

your customers will dig me the most

 

I click an ad merely to look?

the ad man pulls to set the hook

 

It'll be in my e-mail later today

and web pages, day after day

 

And It'll waste, some of my precious time

and you'll receive lode from my mine

 

I wouldn't mind the money you make

if a commission I could take

 

I'd like to get twenty percent

but you don't offer one red cent

 

So Facebook please let's make a deal

just cut me in, no need to steal

 

I'll finish my profile if you do

and we will profit, both me and you

 

© Bob "Notes" Norton

 

I understand that whatever I do will be tracked, and that Google and Facebook know more about me than the FBI and CIA combined, and I really don't mind except that they are making money off of my name, and I'd really like at least an agents 20% commission ;)

 

Insights and incites by Notes

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So I go online with Google Play (I'm a subscriber) for something to listen to and as usual the website starts off with their useless Suggestions..as if I'm a tourist in a far land looking at a menu I can't read....but I notice that a new angle has appeared, that this and that is being suggested because I watched the artist/band recently on Youtube!

 

Oh, I know, terms of service and I have a choice and all that, thank you very much....

 

Guess I'll go spelunking in the options yet again to see if I can turn this use of my browsing history off (again) -

 

It's just creepy and getting creepier. It's wrong to be a peeping, spying, invasive creep, ya know? And wrong to blame the public for the behavior of the service provider. It's like "gee, if you don't want to be mugged, you should never walk in the street - it's your choice, you know!"

 

rantyrantrantrantyrant

 

nat whilk ii

 

Google All Access and Google YouTube Music Key are now basically under the same subscription and we can probably expect to see increased integration. I would not be at all surprised to see videos appearing in the Listen Now page at some not-too-distant point.

 

I'm definitely not one much for robo-recommendations on the music front (I got tired of "You like Modest Mouse? You'll probably like The Postal Service" type stuff -- since I did and I didn't, respectively).

 

That said, G's acquisition of the apparently quite popular Songza app/service seems to have improved All Access's reco engine and playlists to some degree. Before I never bothered with the Listen Now page but I've actually been reasonably pleased with a few 'playlists' and 'radio' stations.

 

I found 'stations' for traditional Hawaiian (slack key) guitar and for African roots guitar that were pretty good -- although they seem to run out of material and double back around sooner than necessary -- but most of the selections were pretty good or interesting. I've had less luck with more contemporary music, though, where my tastes apparently are much narrower than the mainstream and, so, more prone to repeated skips.

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Every time Adobe tries to update it attempts to install the Google browser. I unclick it. I don't want that crap on my computers thank you. I have no issues with suggested sites except for few sites I visit like EBay, and the only reason I have it there is because I saved my password. Every so often I'll clear all passwords with my history and that disappears. I'll also go in two windows temp folders, one is on the C drive when you open it and one is in the windows folder and I delete everything out of there manually. You'd be surprised how much stealth crap builds up in there.

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I went to check out ghanaweb.com, I thought Ghana would be an interesting place to visit. Since then, I've been getting served ads for cheap phone calls to Ghana, opportunities to date hot African-American singles, and various things to straighten my hair. So I guess Google has now officially changed my race.

 

Netflix's suggestions are hilarious because they don't give you a chance to say why you like something. For example, there's no check box on 1950s sci-fi movies to write "I liked it because I'm a fan of cardboard monsters and theremins."

 

It is creepy. Fortunately, I do so many different things I must appear to be multiple people using the same computer...apparently including some black guy who wants to straighten his hair, date hot women, and call Ghana.

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I went to check out ghanaweb.com, I thought Ghana would be an interesting place to visit. Since then, I've been getting served ads for cheap phone calls to Ghana, opportunities to date hot African-American singles, and various things to straighten my hair. So I guess Google has now officially changed my race.

 

Netflix's suggestions are hilarious because they don't give you a chance to say why you like something. For example, there's no check box on 1950s sci-fi movies to write "I liked it because I'm a fan of cardboard monsters and theremins."

 

It is creepy. Fortunately, I do so many different things I must appear to be multiple people using the same computer...apparently including some black guy who wants to straighten his hair, date hot women, and call Ghana.

 

 

Netflix - I love Netflix, but must they insult my intelligence so? The "ratings" you see have nothing to do with any crowd-polling or Rotten Tomatoes or critic's polls or even box-office receipts - they are totally fabricated by the Netflix software engine based on what that software predicts you will like based on what you've watched before. Taking "suggestions" to the next level.

 

I guarantee - here I adopt my prophetic voice, so put your sceptical specs on - that there will soon be studies showing that vendor suggestions based on programmed algorithms can be shown to have an effect in changing consumer's actual taste profile. So in effect, the software has already started creating the tastes that it is ready to satisfy by a sale. We will start to slowly turning into what the software says we are. The new trendsetters are algorithms.

 

brrrrrr....I'm getting a really good creepy-buzz going here....

 

nat whilk ii

 

 

 

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I really don't mind it all that much. My son likes Thomas the Tank Engine and Transformers, so I created a Google account for him, and when I log him in on the home machine, youtube suggests dozens of videos that he'll love. For me, I just ignore all the ads on Facebook (and on here ;) ) It's all automated - I doubt that anyone is actually being watched through their cellphone by google's minions. And if your GPS locator record does show that you stopped at the sex shop and the marijuana dispensary on your way home from work, no one is ever going to know, unless you were on your way to commit an actual crime :D

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I've mentioned this before in another thread, but my favorite personal anecdote about this is the guy I know who is a brilliant, high-end database/search engine programmer for Google. Who is also the most paranoid person among my current acquaintances about privacy and the power of big data. It's unnerving to hear someone placed in Google as he is, and talking about all this, he'll give you this dead-level stare, shake his head slowly side to side and slowly say, "you....have....no....idea...."

 

Why he continues to work for them? It's good money and he is fatalistic about it all - yeah, kind of a mixed-up guy. I emailed him once and mentioned some innocuous (so I thought) item involving his personal business, and boy, did I hear about that. sorry! sorry! sorrysorrysorry!!

 

nat whilk ii (this is NOT my real name!!!)

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Yes, but at the end of the day, we all have real lives off the Internet. All of these gadgets can be turned off, and you can still pay cash, in bricks and mortar stores, for every single thing that can be purchased over the Internet, if you're really bothered by online records of such things, or tailormaid ad feeds based on such histories. I personally couldn't care less what information Google has gleaned about me from tracking my web usage. It does all seem rather Orwellian, but it's hard to see how it would really affect anyone who is able to find the off button on their personal communication gadget.

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Yes, but at the end of the day, we all have real lives off the Internet. All of these gadgets can be turned off, and you can still pay cash, in bricks and mortar stores, for every single thing that can be purchased over the Internet, if you're really bothered by online records of such things, or tailormaid ad feeds based on such histories. I personally couldn't care less what information Google has gleaned about me from tracking my web usage. It does all seem rather Orwellian, but it's hard to see how it would really affect anyone who is able to find the off button on their personal communication gadget.

 

 

There's a whole lot of stuff now that can be paid for no other way other than over the internet. I also could not run my business without the internet - when I started my career, there was no internet, but the industry I'm in has put everything online and there's no other way now. No choice. The human world exists more and more on the internet every day.

 

It's not just about shopping choices. It's about getting anything done, being a part of the current social, economic, business, legal, political evironments. I hear people talk about staying off the grid, but it's not possible without taking some incredibly drastic, weird tack in life and basically becoming a sort of self-sufficient desert hermit. Even then, Google Maps still takes your picture and posts it worldwide. The modern world runs on the internet, there's no other world currently available.

 

That's the nub of the gripe - that the information and communication industry has taken advantage of access to people's lives for their own ends, regardless of people's right to privacy. And it's clear that all this info has power and that power will be wielded until someone somehow manages to buck the internet powers that be. They are not champions of human rights - they are just another self-interested commercial industry doing what they can get away with to make a buck. And don't forget what the NSA has been up to - governments want in on the big privacy give-away, too.

 

I may be just one helpless sheep among billions, but I'll continue to bleat my disapproval. Personal anecdotes to the effect that "nothin's happened bad to me" are nice, but need to include the qualifier, "yet".

 

 

nat whilk ii

 

 

 

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I wasn't suggesting going off the grid. I was merely implying that, with a little careful thought, one doesn't need to have the whole thing affect one's life like some Orwellian nightmare. Is it not a good thing that you can run a profitable business over the Internet? And you personally don't have to use Google for a single thing, if their data farming is really so sinister. I'm not saying that their overarching motive isn't highly sinister, maybe it is. I'm just saying that we all have the ability to make informed choices about how we use the Internet.

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I've mentioned this before in another thread, but my favorite personal anecdote about this is the guy I know who is a brilliant, high-end database/search engine programmer for Google. Who is also the most paranoid person among my current acquaintances about privacy and the power of big data. It's unnerving to hear someone placed in Google as he is, and talking about all this, he'll give you this dead-level stare, shake his head slowly side to side and slowly say, "you....have....no....idea...."

 

Why he continues to work for them? It's good money and he is fatalistic about it all - yeah, kind of a mixed-up guy. I emailed him once and mentioned some innocuous (so I thought) item involving his personal business, and boy, did I hear about that. sorry! sorry! sorrysorrysorry!!

 

nat whilk ii (this is NOT my real name!!!)

 

Yes, thats pretty much it. We have no idea and we never will even though words like transparency are used. It means nothing. And as it was mentioned already, I don`t think there is an individual keeping track of every click we make but every click is being recorded and generating a report and trends are being noted. My laptop is used by 3 different people in my house so the interests vary widely so I get all kinds of ads.

 

None of this should bother you unless you`re doing something wrong.

 

:thu:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I run a business on the Internet http://www.nortonmusic and I collect no data - zero - nada - nill - nothing. I share my customer's data with nobody - period. I make money from the products my customers purchase from me, not by selling their information. My shopping cart company puts cookies on your browser that will expire when the session is over, but if you block the cookies the shopping cart will still work, just a bit slower.

 

It's just a 'do unto others' thing for me.

 

I know if you are on the Internet, you don't have any privacy. I minimize what they collect from me, I never finished my profile on FB (and they bug me weekly), I don't click "Like", I use "private browsing", I don't log into Google, and I use ixquick or startpage as my preferred search engine.

 

I'm sure I'm still being profiled, but I don't want to be an African-American from Ghana like Craig - false information can be a problem. What if you had a keen interest in a certain religion - just because you are curious and you want to know the difference between the truth and what the presstitute on TV said about it? Before you know it you can be on the FBI's possible terrorist list.

 

Perhaps the public library is a better place for some kinds of research ;)

 

Insights and incites by Notes

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I've mentioned this before in another thread, but my favorite personal anecdote about this is the guy I know who is a brilliant, high-end database/search engine programmer for Google. Who is also the most paranoid person among my current acquaintances about privacy and the power of big data. It's unnerving to hear someone placed in Google as he is, and talking about all this, he'll give you this dead-level stare, shake his head slowly side to side and slowly say, "you....have....no....idea...."

 

I can't remember if this was on MusicPlayer.com or HC, but one person posted a comment about wanting to off the prez, it was Bush at the time. It was pretty obvious he wasn't making a threat but just using a hyperbolic figure of speech, but the feds knocked on his door and questioned him for several hours. He was quite shaken up by that and I don't think he posted any more once he realized every word was being monitored.

 

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I took a vacation in Spain two years ago, and I'm still getting Spam in Spanish.

 

Last year I went to the Czech Republic. I created a throw-away e-mail address, did all the searching in ixquick and startpage and surfed in the incognito mode. I haven't gotten any Czech spam.

 

Ah by Visa, Amex, Aeroflot, and Capital One know I've been there ;)

 

Now so does the rest of the world.

 

PS The Czech Philharmonic, Prague Symphony and Prague National Opera orchestras are wonderful in person!

 

Insights and incites by Notes

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None of this should bother you unless you`re doing something wrong.

 

Something wrong...like being a gypsy, Jew, intellectual, homosexual, or Catholic in Germany in the 30s. It sure would have been a lot easier to round up those wrong people and put them on trains to the camps if there was a database identifying where they lived, their relativies, their hot buttons, and their exact location at any given minute.

 

Think it can't happen here? It could happen anywhere. While I think the odds of a nightmare scenario happening in the US are remote, remember that Germany was a center of the arts, culture, and technology. The "medical experiments" were an outgrowth of medical sciences that were sufficiently advanced that it was very special if a doctor had gotten an education in Germany. All it took was an economic meltdown, a fear or terrorism, wounded pride, and enticing promises to strip the veneer of civilization off of society.

 

Sorry to veer into politics here, but I lived in Europe a decade after WWII ended. I knew people with tattoos on their wrists, and saw enough bombed-out ruins to last me for a lifetime. A huge number of women in Italy were still dressed in black to mourn the husbands who would never return. Believe me...it can happen.

 

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, not "what, me worry?"

 

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None of this should bother you unless you`re doing something wrong.

 

:thu:

 

I don't know about that. Things can go awry in a hurry.

 

I don't do anything wrong, I don't do drugs, I don't drink and drive, I don't do anything illegal. About the worst thing I might do is speed occasionally.

 

But I'm still uncomfortable with all that data being collected. Read Craig's post. And then ask yourself: do you feel you trust everyone, including this in politics, to make the right decision every time?

 

 

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I don't worry much about nightmare scenarios - although most people don't until they happen.

 

Craig is totally right on about the oft-quoted "you have nothing to worry about if you're doing nothing wrong". "Wrong" as defined by whom? (Sorry about the really long post to follow - I've edited it down as well as I'm able):

 

 

A current example, and this is not off some wacko news source, this is straight-up verifiable stuff: IRS for decades has had some rules in place that required banks and certain "luxury" vendors (sports cars, jewelry, furs, etc.) to report to the government whenever someone came in and made cash transactions in excess of $10,000. "Cash" in this case meaning real currency/coin. This was to help the IRS spot unreported income and money laundering. In 1985 when this rule was first put into place, 10 grand was a lot more money than it is now. But the reporting is still stuck at 10 grand.

 

So, say you came back from Vegas with a big wad of cash over 10 grand - when you went to deposit it, you had to fill out some paperwork with your name, SSN, address, all that stuff, and the bank used that to fill out the IRS forms and mail them off. Word got around that it was not a good idea to make cash deposits or withdrawals in excess of $10,000 as a rule if you could avoid it.

 

The government decided that, if you consciously kept your deposits under 10 grand to avoid messing with the forms, then that was not only also reportable, but it was a crime called "structuring". But all over the country, the grapevine advisory network had all these small vendors who dealt in lots of cash (restaurants, vending machine companies, groceries, you name it) trying to stay under the 10 grand limit for no reason other than convenience and the universal dislike of paperwork and having to be "reported" to a government agency.

 

In recent years, as the availability of raw data has exploded in nova proportions, IRS (and many other government agencies) see a potential goldmine of info for analysis and "action items" via the internet, electronic reporting, bank activity databases, etc. The trigger here is the sheer ease of data availability on a massive scale.

 

Ok, enough dull backstory - here's the money moment, step by step, about how the simple analysis of data concerning any citizen, can result in law enforcement moving in on you if you simply fit a pattern:

 

If, via available data, the IRS decides that your activities fit a suspicious pattern regarding cash deposits, they can freeze and seize your bank accounts without audit, without trial, without even a crime actually being charged.

 

Quotes from a recent NYT article on this, and a link to the full article following: (emphasis in bold by me)

 

...the Institute for Justice, a Washington-based public interest law firm that is seeking to reform civil forfeiture practices, analyzed structuring data from the I.R.S., which made 639 seizures in 2012, up from 114 in 2005. Only one in five was prosecuted as a criminal structuring case.

 

Their money was seized under an increasingly controversial area of law known as civil asset forfeiture, which allows law enforcement agents to take property they suspect of being tied to crime even if no criminal charges are filed. Law enforcement agencies get to keep a share of whatever is forfeited.

 

Critics say this incentive has led to the creation of a law enforcement dragnet, with more than 100 multiagency task forces combing through bank reports, looking for accounts to seize. ...banks....are supposed to report any suspicious transactions, including deposit patterns below $10,000. Last year, banks filed more than 700,000 suspicious activity reports. Owners who are caught up in structuring cases often cannot afford to fight. The median amount seized by the I.R.S. was $34,000, according to the Institute for Justice analysis, while legal costs can easily mount to $20,000 or more.

 

In one Long Island case, the police submitted almost a year’s worth of daily deposits by a business, ranging from $5,550 to $9,910. The officer wrote in his warrant affidavit that based on his training and experience, the pattern “is consistent with structuring.” The government seized $447,000 from the business, a cash-intensive candy and cigarette distributor that has been run by one family for 27 years.

 

Army Sgt. Jeff Cortazzo of Arlington, Va., began saving for his daughters’ college costs during the financial crisis, when many banks were failing. He stored cash first in his basement and then in a safe-deposit box. All of the money came from paychecks, he said, but he worried that when he deposited it in a bank, he would be forced to pay taxes on the money again. So he asked the bank teller what to do. "She said: ‘Oh, that’s easy. You just have to deposit less than $10,000.'”

 

The government seized $66,000; settling cost Sergeant Cortazzo $21,000.

 

link to the full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/us...pgtype=article

 

So my obvious point - stuff can be done with data, regardless whether you did anything wrong or not -

 

nat whilk ii

 

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