8 ms·

Who else feels a sense of horrible dread and frustration that every minutiae of my (and your) online activity is recorded for eternity and exploited to the full

• necessity 10y ago
  Well the site doesn't even work if you have NoScript, which is the bare minimum to have...
  • baenation 10y ago
    sub 2 this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LNET_reE6o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LNET_reE6o
  • hrrsn 10y ago
    I wouldn't consider it bare minimum. Most of the web is broken with NoScript installed.
    • wtbob 10y ago
      > Most of the web is broken with NoScript installed. More accurately, most of the web is broken, whether or not NoScript is installed — it's just that you can see that it's broken when NoScript is installed.
      • cmkrnl 10y ago
        <3
      • tunap 10y ago
        I consider it a feature, more times than not. Google's anticipating my search, flash heavy eye-candy/media and numerous unaffiliated servers baked into web pages all clog my 1mb connection and make my browser run like molasses. How many Targetimg cdn's does it take to display a single product page? Last I checked it was 4, plus a half-dozen or more other presumably ad servers. I choose not to use many big retailers' sites b/c of it. Again, for me, that is a feature to keep them at bay from anything beyond our potential transactional relationship.
    • JustSomeNobody 10y ago
      That part of the web hates the user so win win.
    • SixSigma 10y ago
      There is a difference though. I can selectively turn things on / off. If I have to turn on >5 websites to see the content it suddenly has less value and I shrug and close
      • truth_sentinell 10y ago
        I really can't understand the people that browse the internet without JS. Like what's the point? JS is part of the web, deal with it.
        • tyfon 10y ago
          I am dealing with it by not visiting homepages that rely on JavaScript. The point is I do not want a bunch of insecure code running on my computer just to read some text, which is what I usually do in a browser.
          • truth_sentinell 10y ago
            Maybe all you visit is blogs. But there are lots of websites that rely on JS in order to express their intentions. It's like watching a movie with the mute on because the english accents bothers you -and without the possibility of subtitles-.
            • xkcd-sucks 10y ago
              It seems that for most sites that rely on JS, about ten percent is actually necessary and the remainder is useless advertising/tracking/analytics/fonts/social media buttons. NoScript, uMatrix etc. are really helpful here.
        • anc84 10y ago
          Boring old argument again and again. 99% of the distraction, tracking, annoyance of the modern web are due to JS. Blocking it will not "break most sites", you can usually read just fine. Selectively allowing JS per domain works great. Try it, you might be surprised and not talk down to us anymore.
• andybak 10y ago
  I behave online with the understanding that my behaviour is essentially public. PS - how come all website product recommendations still suck? Data collection is rather ahead of data usage it seems...
  • pdkl95 10y ago
    > website product recommendations still suck Targeted advertising isn't about giving you good recommendations. It's about advertisers picking which demographic they want to influence. It may be presented as a "recommendation", but it's still an ad.
    • tunap 10y ago
      It's also heavily weighted by what they want you to buy: over-stock, higher margins, last year's models.
  • raimue 10y ago
    Oh, yes, the algorithms supposed to target you specifically are often quite bad and annoying. For example on Amazon, when you just bought a coffee machine, your recommendations will show you a bunch of coffee machines. Well, I just made a choice and ordered a coffee machine, I am not going to buy another one for quite some time.
    • LeifCarrotson 10y ago
      Bad for you != bad for the advertiser, and bad for the advertiser is not necessarily correlated to annoying to you. While your particular case may need just one coffee machine, there are other scenarios. If you just bought a coffee machine, perhaps it will be defective and you'll need a replacement. Perhaps you didn't know about the one they're showing you and will return the first one to buy this one. Perhaps you are just getting into this coffee stuff and realize that a second one for the office would be nice. Perhaps you're buying a few to compare them. It could be rational to show you the ad instead of a random individual if the sum of these scenarios is greater than the rate at which random individuals buy coffee machines. Or, yeah, it could be that their ad-showing algorithm just tells them you have the word "coffee" in your recent browsing history.
• SquareWheel 10y ago
  Horrible dread? Can't say I do. If I get a relevant ad from a keyword in my email, that seems like a pretty minor event in my life.
  • pdkl95 10y ago
    You do know that the ad won't necessarily be relevant to you, right? The ads will be "relevant" according to the advertisers who think you're the kind of target they want to trick into buying their product. Regarding that "minor event": it is minor in isolation, but the point is that you are generating a large amount of those events that are being aggregated into databases where they are unlikely to be deleted. The ad(s) you might get isn't important. What you should be concerned about is the detailed pattern-of-life analysis that can be done at any time in the future by anybody that buys a copy of that database.
    • SquareWheel 10y ago
      >You do know that the ad won't necessarily be relevant to you, right? Perhaps, but I don't really see the difference in the end. Anecdotally, I see ads for IntelliJ IDEA because I look up a lot of coding-related things. So does it matter that I'm getting this ad because Google's ad network has decided I like coding, or because IntelliJ selected some parameters and said "send this ad to coders"? The goal of either operator would be to send me an ad they think I'm most likely to click on, and so from the user perspective it's indistinguishable where the ad is actually directed from. >Regarding that "minor event": it is minor in isolation, but the point is that you are generating a large amount of those events that are being aggregated into databases where they are unlikely to be deleted. Alright, here's the thing. I don't love the idea of tracking but I'm not repulsed by it either. I always see "tracking is evil!" as if it's the final say on the matter, especially on this website. But I've yet to see a convincing argument that it's something which I should be actively concerned about, or that it's something making my life worse in any way. Often what I see is people using emotional words like "surveillance", when really we're talking about a computer algorithm that matches ads with interests groups. It inspires imagery of somebody watching you through your computer which I suspect is the point. This sort of language strikes me as hyperbolic, and in some cases dishonest. I realize this is outside the scope of your original comment, but understand that when making claims like "tracking is evil", or some variation of that view, unless there's something tangible to point to and say "this is how it makes your life worse", it just doesn't register on my radar. It might be easy to dismiss that view as short-sighted, but ultimately I consider it more pragmatic than placing ethical stances on what seems to be largely speculative concerns. Why would an ad company sell user data when that's their entire competitive advantage? In the case of Google (and I suspect most others), their privacy policy explicitly prohibit them from selling user data. Ultimately I find that technology improves my life in many ways, and I try not to fear it unless I see a real cause for concern. And on this particular issue I haven't seen that yet.
• dx034 10y ago
  Not really horrified. Yes they save it, but they don't seem to be able to use it well. The ads I get on Facebook are sometimes really interesting (i.e. targeted well), on other pages it's mostly stuff I bought a while ago or topics where I don't even have a clue why they think that could be interesting. And even though they can save it forever, it's outdated pretty quickly. If someone has information that I clicked a button 5 times when I visited a page in '09, this will have zero value now. The information is only valid for hours or days. I guess most of this information is used to test behavior on pages and to optimize them. And I can only support that. Tracking like this is the reason why popular pages are intuitive. They perform A/B testing extensively to see what works best. I don't see an issue with that.
  • Pigo 10y ago
    I sometimes wonder if I should be more concerned with privacy and my data than I am. I don't engage in risky behaviors, and use mailinator as much as possible. But I also have nothing to hide, and rarely share anything critical apart from cc# with amazon. If they want to know how often I show up and track events, I couldn't care less. I suppose it's good more people know what they're capable of. I know people who think they need to go Snowden when they're daily life is just finding answers on Stack Overflow and watching Joe Rogan on YouTube.
  • pdkl95 10y ago
    > they don't seem to be able to use it well You are implicitly assuming that this won't change. Databases persist indefinitely. > The information is only valid for hours or days. This simply isn't true. You seem to be only thinking about single data points, not the entire picture about your life that is painted when you aggregate that all of the captured data. For example, timestamps of your clicks build a pattern about when you use your computer, and the domain names you have visited (including the order you visited them) probably gives a reasonably accurate estimation of your political views, personal beliefs, and other data that you haven't shared on the web. (Bayesian analysis, machine learning, and other modern analysis methods do amazing things with minimal data) > I guess It might be a good idea to not base your risk analysis on a guess. If you have no other option and have guess the level of risk, you should be assume the worse. Assuming benevolence (or incompetence) without evidence is incredibly foolish.
• rolodato 10y ago
  It's true that everything that can be recorded will be recorded, but the actual way to not bring attention to you is to let everything be recorded. NoScript/Ghostery/etc users are actually the outliers. Similar to what happens with Tor. I can find relief in the fact that it's extremely unlikely someone will look for your specific data because of the sheer volume of it. Website owners will just look at some charts and metrics in their analytics platform and that's it.
• Diederich 10y ago
  Honest question. I think, historically, most people have lived in very tight quarters, quite close to a lot of other people. Indeed, that's still true for many of us! Some of these very 'always nearby' people would be family members and/or greatly trusted, but even one layer beyond that would be a lot of people who we would consider acquaintances today. My question: isn't it possible that the amount of privacy some people had in the last couple of centuries was rather anomalous? That our default level of privacy has always been very low. Edit: To be clear, I do not intend to minimize the value of privacy, whether it's a recent thing or not. However, some historical context is, I believe, useful.
  • iamnothere 10y ago
    This is true for many things though. Isn't it true that the level of healthcare available recently is rather anomalous, historically speaking? Or the quantity of food available? Technology can grant us advantages if we allow it. It can also take them away.
    • Diederich 10y ago
      Very true! I didn't mean to minimize the value of privacy, whether it's a relatively new thing or not; some historical context is useful though.
  • eveningcoffee 10y ago
    There is an important difference. This transparency applied to the most of the people - everyone was transparent, except some exceptional people. In many parts of the world we have lived already about two hundred years with expectation to high level privacy.
    • Diederich 10y ago
      I agree; it's an interesting perspective.
  • peller 10y ago
    To state it another way: isn't it possible that the amount of freedom some people had in the last couple of centuries was rather anomalous? That our default level of freedom has always been very low? I would posit both your and my "questions" are true. Does that truth make it any less worth fighting for? One might even argue, there is no such thing as freedom without privacy.
• taneq 10y ago
  Maybe it's time to accept that we are ems.
• binthere 10y ago
  Disable cookies and javascript. Use a decent browser such as Firefox, Tor. Use ddg.gg to search. Solved.
• SeriousM 10y ago
  Disable JavaScript is the first right step.
• tdaltonc 10y ago
  Monitoring and optimizing human behavior is what I do for a living so . . . I'm going to do more of the same.
• Retra 10y ago
  If the fullest extent at which they can exploit my activities is to show me mostly irrelevant shit that I'll never buy, then I'm not worried about it. It's be like worrying about all those 'psychics' that pretend to know what you're thinking by repeating what you've just said back at you. Whatever power they find there is an exploitation of other peoples' careless ignorance, which is something I do dread on occasion.
• andai 10y ago
  The Internet = other people's computers
• agumonkey 10y ago
  It motivates me to use lynx to surf or go to a library to read, and to some local store for music and books. The future looks marvellously humane.