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This is my experience as well. While my family are enjoying their Amazon Dots and "Hey Siri" and everything else, I'm constantly reminding them of how evil thes

This is my experience as well. While my family are enjoying their Amazon Dots and "Hey Siri" and everything else, I'm constantly reminding them of how evil these companies are, and how they're constantly consuming and eating information, while Uncle Sam syphons every drip of internet off the pipeline. Convenience, in my mind, has never been worth the price of losing anonymity.

paulryanrogers 9y ago
How do you maintain your anonymity?
- dclowd9901 9y ago
  Not tweeting (much), not instagramming (much), not posting on Facebook (much), etc. I don't see anonymity as a binary; more of a spectrum (think something that stretches between a hermit and a celebrity). Obviously as a human existing into some manner of time with family and friends and coworkers, I'm _known_ by those who could/should, but I don't need Amazon parsing conversations in my kitchen.
  - darethas 9y ago
    Right, but do you hang out with people around you that tweet, Instagram, and post on Facebook? Have you ever had dinner with friends and they have an Echo/Dot/Home/"Smart" TV? They can infer where you are based on being around others that use these services.
    - bogomipz 9y ago
      I understand about being tagged in a photo and a social media site inferring where I am but can you explain how this happens with a friend's "Echo/Dot/Home/"Smart" TV"?
      - gm-conspiracy 9y ago
        Ultrasonic? GPS? geolocation using WAN IP of those devices and your device's GPS coordinates. You are in the same vicinity.
  - goshx 9y ago
    I tend to think that it is not as much about how much you use it. You either do use it or don't. If you do, you are already being tracked.
  - rublev 9y ago
    >Not tweeting (much), not instagramming (much), not posting on Facebook (much) It's not a spectrum. You are a user and you are rationalizing your cognitive dissonance. Just delete it, those things are completely useless/pointless and you're being tracked regardless of whatever precautions you take. You are on it, or you are not.
    - dclowd9901 9y ago
      This is naive, at best. I have a network of people in my life that I must maintain contact with, and their platforms of choice are these platforms. We don't always get to choose our battles, and this is one I won't win. And trying, in earnest, to avoid putting yourself on a stage is a far cry from publishing posts incessantly, looking to be a social media celebrity of some kind.
      - rublev 9y ago
        >This is naive, at best. I have a network of people in my life that I must maintain contact with, and their platforms of choice are these platforms. Must maintain? With who? Do you use FB to exclusively chat to your wife and boss or something? Will the stasi knock at your door for not checking in with Lord Zuckerberg every 5 minutes? I find it incredibly difficult to believe that there are people who's ONLY platform of communication in a digital age is Facebook. I don't mean 'primary', I mean 'only'. If your 'friends' much less family won't keep in contact with you because of choice of platform, can you really say they are your friends/family? If we didn't live in an age of cellphones, if calling is too much effort, would they have ever come to visit me in person? I deleted all that crap way back and only a few people came out of the wood work, the rest I forgot about and couldn't remember if I tried. In reality the only effect social media has is lowering barriers to communication, letting in all the shit connections. Much like a dam. Lower it, and the crap water comes in. Same with this, just makes it easier to be connected, which is built on the illusion that these connections are now somehow important. I have yet to encounter a plausible real life scenario that requires facebook. At best, it might add a tiny bit of convenience to your life wrt events/comm. But it's nothing that can't be easily replaced.
justinpaulson 9y ago
I do not think anonymity == privacy. They are two different things. It is one thing to maintain privacy and want to keep your actions and preferences private from the outside, but anonymity is more about making public statements and maintaining an anonymous persona. I would say anonymity in making public statements has greatly increased with the rise of the internet, while privacy has diminished. In fact, a lot of the data which these companies collect is anonymized.
- bogomipz 9y ago
  >" I would say anonymity in making public statements has greatly increased with the rise of the internet, while privacy has diminished." The trend has been for companies such as FB, Google, LinkedIn, etc to enforce "real name policies." And most commenter systems on large media sites want you you to login using a Google+ or Facebook account. I would say anonymity has seen a fast and steady decline.
zitterbewegung 9y ago
I think with the start of having inference at the edge on the device of a network instead of uploading to some cloud service there will be an opportunity to take back our data. We could create a system similar to an Amazon Echo where it performs inference on the device. Then if it needs to connect to an external data source for something like did the Cubs win yesterday it would only get that service. For things like setting reminders it would be able to do that completely on device.
Bartweiss 9y ago
I'm honestly pretty baffled by the whole "techies hate privacy and undermine consumers" genre. I mean, sure, engineers built Echo/Alexa and the Equifax website. But engineers also built Signal and HIBP. Programmers vary in their concern for privacy, just like any other group, but my general experience is that they skew more privacy-conscious than the general consumer. The writers who admit that often frame it as hypocrisy, but that's the usual sloppiness of conflating individuals with group averages. I doubt the people who wrote VTech's godawful software are particularly privacy-focused in their personal lives, while the engineers using encrypted messaging and password managers also tend to have scruples in the office. At a certain point the whole thing feels like blaming mechanical engineers for the military-industrial complex. Sure, someone found a team that would build Predator drones, but that tells us less about mechanical engineers than it does about the government.
- leggomylibro 9y ago
  Right; it's suits that hate privacy and undermine consumers, but they only do it because they think it's the best way to wring money out of you, and it's their job to figure that out without any sense of empathy, remorse, or morals. Techies generally like privacy in my experience, but most of them also value a steady paycheck more than they value your privacy. Sort of like how many factory workers like fishing, but they value a steady paycheck more than they value the health of your river. And again, the suits just see the river as a free way to get rid of otherwise expensive waste.
- wolco 9y ago
  It was always this way the people who actual wrote softwate were always more privacy minded. The products geeks who get excited over new products were the ones who never cared about privacy. There is a price to pay to be an early adopter and most are willing to trade in intangable things like time or stability or privacy. They set the norm for the average customer group that follows through feedback in the alpha/beta stages.
  - goialoq 9y ago
    You know it was geeks who invented all the insecure technologies that still plague us today: DNS and SMTP to name a few.
tomcam 9y ago
You sound like a lot of fun to be around ;)

paulryanrogers 9y ago

How do you maintain your anonymity?

dclowd9901 9y ago
Not tweeting (much), not instagramming (much), not posting on Facebook (much), etc. I don't see anonymity as a binary; more of a spectrum (think something that stretches between a hermit and a celebrity). Obviously as a human existing into some manner of time with family and friends and coworkers, I'm _known_ by those who could/should, but I don't need Amazon parsing conversations in my kitchen.
- darethas 9y ago
  Right, but do you hang out with people around you that tweet, Instagram, and post on Facebook? Have you ever had dinner with friends and they have an Echo/Dot/Home/"Smart" TV? They can infer where you are based on being around others that use these services.
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    I understand about being tagged in a photo and a social media site inferring where I am but can you explain how this happens with a friend's "Echo/Dot/Home/"Smart" TV"?
    - gm-conspiracy 9y ago
      Ultrasonic? GPS? geolocation using WAN IP of those devices and your device's GPS coordinates. You are in the same vicinity.
- goshx 9y ago
  I tend to think that it is not as much about how much you use it. You either do use it or don't. If you do, you are already being tracked.
- rublev 9y ago
  >Not tweeting (much), not instagramming (much), not posting on Facebook (much) It's not a spectrum. You are a user and you are rationalizing your cognitive dissonance. Just delete it, those things are completely useless/pointless and you're being tracked regardless of whatever precautions you take. You are on it, or you are not.
  - dclowd9901 9y ago
    This is naive, at best. I have a network of people in my life that I must maintain contact with, and their platforms of choice are these platforms. We don't always get to choose our battles, and this is one I won't win. And trying, in earnest, to avoid putting yourself on a stage is a far cry from publishing posts incessantly, looking to be a social media celebrity of some kind.
    - rublev 9y ago
      >This is naive, at best. I have a network of people in my life that I must maintain contact with, and their platforms of choice are these platforms. Must maintain? With who? Do you use FB to exclusively chat to your wife and boss or something? Will the stasi knock at your door for not checking in with Lord Zuckerberg every 5 minutes? I find it incredibly difficult to believe that there are people who's ONLY platform of communication in a digital age is Facebook. I don't mean 'primary', I mean 'only'. If your 'friends' much less family won't keep in contact with you because of choice of platform, can you really say they are your friends/family? If we didn't live in an age of cellphones, if calling is too much effort, would they have ever come to visit me in person? I deleted all that crap way back and only a few people came out of the wood work, the rest I forgot about and couldn't remember if I tried. In reality the only effect social media has is lowering barriers to communication, letting in all the shit connections. Much like a dam. Lower it, and the crap water comes in. Same with this, just makes it easier to be connected, which is built on the illusion that these connections are now somehow important. I have yet to encounter a plausible real life scenario that requires facebook. At best, it might add a tiny bit of convenience to your life wrt events/comm. But it's nothing that can't be easily replaced.

justinpaulson 9y ago

I do not think anonymity == privacy. They are two different things. It is one thing to maintain privacy and want to keep your actions and preferences private from the outside, but anonymity is more about making public statements and maintaining an anonymous persona. I would say anonymity in making public statements has greatly increased with the rise of the internet, while privacy has diminished. In fact, a lot of the data which these companies collect is anonymized.

bogomipz 9y ago
>" I would say anonymity in making public statements has greatly increased with the rise of the internet, while privacy has diminished." The trend has been for companies such as FB, Google, LinkedIn, etc to enforce "real name policies." And most commenter systems on large media sites want you you to login using a Google+ or Facebook account. I would say anonymity has seen a fast and steady decline.

zitterbewegung 9y ago

I think with the start of having inference at the edge on the device of a network instead of uploading to some cloud service there will be an opportunity to take back our data. We could create a system similar to an Amazon Echo where it performs inference on the device. Then if it needs to connect to an external data source for something like did the Cubs win yesterday it would only get that service. For things like setting reminders it would be able to do that completely on device.

Bartweiss 9y ago

I'm honestly pretty baffled by the whole "techies hate privacy and undermine consumers" genre. I mean, sure, engineers built Echo/Alexa and the Equifax website. But engineers also built Signal and HIBP. Programmers vary in their concern for privacy, just like any other group, but my general experience is that they skew more privacy-conscious than the general consumer. The writers who admit that often frame it as hypocrisy, but that's the usual sloppiness of conflating individuals with group averages. I doubt the people who wrote VTech's godawful software are particularly privacy-focused in their personal lives, while the engineers using encrypted messaging and password managers also tend to have scruples in the office. At a certain point the whole thing feels like blaming mechanical engineers for the military-industrial complex. Sure, someone found a team that would build Predator drones, but that tells us less about mechanical engineers than it does about the government.

leggomylibro 9y ago
Right; it's suits that hate privacy and undermine consumers, but they only do it because they think it's the best way to wring money out of you, and it's their job to figure that out without any sense of empathy, remorse, or morals. Techies generally like privacy in my experience, but most of them also value a steady paycheck more than they value your privacy. Sort of like how many factory workers like fishing, but they value a steady paycheck more than they value the health of your river. And again, the suits just see the river as a free way to get rid of otherwise expensive waste.
wolco 9y ago
It was always this way the people who actual wrote softwate were always more privacy minded. The products geeks who get excited over new products were the ones who never cared about privacy. There is a price to pay to be an early adopter and most are willing to trade in intangable things like time or stability or privacy. They set the norm for the average customer group that follows through feedback in the alpha/beta stages.
- goialoq 9y ago
  You know it was geeks who invented all the insecure technologies that still plague us today: DNS and SMTP to name a few.

tomcam 9y ago

You sound like a lot of fun to be around ;)