13 ms·

The Fight to Mine Your Data and Sell It to Your Boss

303 points by artsandsci 9y ago

irrational 9y ago
I am so thankful I don't have a LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. account to mine for data.
- psychometry 9y ago
  I assure you that Facebook knows all about you whether you have an account or not.
  - fenwick67 9y ago
    Well, maybe not all about you, but they have a good guess.
  - tjoff 9y ago
    Highly doubtful has any idea of even gender and age. They have a broad idea of localization and perhaps a pretty laughable attempt at "interests". Absolutely guaranteed to be nothing of value though.
    - sumedh 9y ago
      > Highly doubtful has any idea of even gender and age. That depends if they know that you visit websites which are also visited a lot by other males between the age group of 20 to 30, then they can almost assume that you are a male between 20 - 30.
      - tjoff 9y ago
        Big woop, what are they going to do with that information? They can "target" me with an ad meant for males in their 20-30s (which again, is just a very crude guess). Which will guaranteed to be a much worse fit than just targeting to the content of that site. No tracking needed. Much better accuracy and return.
        sumedh 9y ago
        Big woop? you just said its highly doubtful they have any idea about your demographics, I explained you how they can easily do that and much more like know your race and income bracket. The days of just targeting you based on the content site are over, now demographics and your search/click history plays a role too.
        tjoff 9y ago
        Because their accuracy is abysmal. Maybe they have a few percent better accuracy than guessing at random. And that might be worth a few billions. But on an individual level they just don't have the slightest clue. edit: State of the art tracking seems to be "look at what products user x has looked at, show the exact same product everywhere after he/she probably bought it". Now if you do have and use a facebook account that is another thing.
        sumedh 9y ago
        > Because their accuracy is abysmal. Can you give some sources for your claim?
        tjoff 9y ago
        Not really, but it is kind of obvious. I have a very weird setup which would be quite easy to fingerprint (probably a handful in the world and likely only one in my town uses my display setup for one). I am the only one using my devices and noone else is using my IP (and I don't switch IPs either) and I don't use any ad-blockers. Yet ad networks haven't got a clue, often even get gender wrong. (And as a male i interested in tech that should probably be the easiest scenario imaginable) I guess the most tangible data point is when google allowed you to look at what google thought if you (gender, age, interests etc.) and how bad they are at it unless you actually use their services. It is obvious they would be far better of targeting sites than users without accounts. But that is not where their competitive edge is so they downplay that. Also, I guess they are big enough to not care about people without accounts.
    - pound 9y ago
      Don't forget shadow profiles based on data like others mentioning you on pictures etc.
      - tjoff 9y ago
        They can not correlate that data with any form of identity with any accuracy. They can't even detect fake and duplicate accounts, which would be trivial in comparison.
        FridgeSeal 9y ago
        > They can't even detect fake and duplicate accounts, which would be trivial in comparison. They almost certainly can, but due to capitalism, they have a business interest in not really removing these accounts.
        tjoff 9y ago
        That would be incredibly short sighted given the problem such accounts are for them and that they do go out of their way to ruin real accounts in search for them kind of reveals that they can't do it.
        FridgeSeal 9y ago
        Much like the twitter bots to them, lip-service will be paid, action will be taken on some low hanging fruit so they look like they're working on the problem, but they will not make a concerted, legitimate effort to clean them up.
    - improbable22 9y ago
      Oh they have much more than this. Messenger asks nicely to upload your whole address book, and since half your college buddies clicked yes they know when and where you studied, and who you knew, and your parents landline thus some idea of their location (and how wealthy it is). Ditto your colleagues at each place you worked, who all still have your old corporate email, and some have newer info... And that's before anyone posts anything on facebook.
      - tjoff 9y ago
        And yet they can't show even a semi-related ad if their entire existence counted on it. They have the data, yes. But they will ruin society before having any idea on how to use it. Most importantly. They can not correlate that with my IP or my browsing history. So that information is beyond useless when trying to track me and only slightly useful for researching the society in which I grew up (which facebook isn't interested in anyway).
        improbable22 9y ago
        This is also true. I don't see how they're making money off their extensive knowledge about me. When I make the mistake of buying something online in a browser logged into facebook, then I get adds for a week trying to sell me what I just bought... this does not lead to me buying another one! And all this strategy seems to need is basic cookies, not a shadow profile.
  - irrational 9y ago
    How do they get that information? My family and friends don't really use it much (and to the best of my knowledge I've never been written about or been in any photographs that have been posted). I use things like Ghostery, noscript, ad block, etc. to keep tracking to a minimum. I don't search Google directly but only through duckduckgo. I'd be interested in hearing what other means they have of finding out information about me so I can block those as well if possible.
    - bdamm 9y ago
      There are very few perfectly anonymous Internet users left, so that makes you a member of a quite elite group. Thus, you have become identifiable by your extensive efforts to be anonymized.
- Raphmedia 9y ago
  Since they can fingerprint your web travels to every page that has Google Analytics or a share widget, there's no need for you to create an account.
  - irrational 9y ago
    I use Ghostery and noscript and an ad blocker, so hopefully there isn't too much of that happening.
    - bdamm 9y ago
      Micro images, and browser fingerprinting, and IP location are widely used as well. Even if you're using lynx via VPN you're still relatively identifiable since not too many users do that. Good luck!
- willitpamp573 9y ago
  But you're missing out on all the valuable Services they provide!!! /s
- 21 9y ago
  In a few years not having a meaningful Facebook profile might be suspicious in itself.
megamindbrian2 9y ago
This is stupid. While my boss has vested interest in my data, I am the only one that can benefit or change because of it.
- dsp1234 9y ago
  If your employer knows you are looking for other opportunities, they could stop giving you projects and start transitioning you before you are ready, or just fire you. That's a benefit to the employer, that probably is not a benefit to you, since you would likely want to quit on your own terms. Another quick example is knowing that your employees are researching how to unionize, and thus knowing to bring in anti-union resources. I'm sure there are more.
  - mjcl 9y ago
    Or even create a self-fulfilling prophecy. What if someone is listed as "may leave" when they have no intent to do so. If the employer then starts freezing the employee out, that could lead the the employee eventually leaving, even if they didn't originally want to.
- kevin_b_er 9y ago
  The goal is to figure out if you're close to quitting so you can be preemptively fired. This hands the final key away: That while the corporation without notice or reason could fire you, you could always show the same lack of loyalty and quit without notice. The goal is to deny the human that small balance.
CalChris 9y ago
This approach strikes me as confusing precision for accuracy. It is possible to use this sort of information to formulate an extremely precise model. That apparent precision becomes believable because ... it's precise and complex and uses a lot of data. That then becomes a salable product. However, whether this all is actionable and accurate is another and unfortunately later question. The promoters and customers of that approach might want to read this chapter in the CIA's Psychology of Intelligence Analysis: Chapter 5: Do You Really Need More Information? https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/psychology-of-intelligence-analysis/art8.html https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig... But then they might not have a product to sell or buy.
- alanfalcon 9y ago
  I dunno, I was accutely aware that as I prepared to find a new job by updating my resume, updating my LinkedIn profile and contact list for the first time in years, etc., that it would be very obvious to anyone watching what I was doing. I correctly assumed my employer wasn’t watching (which would have made things potentially uncomfortable for me), but with tools like this it becomes so low effort to watch for this stuff that they can afford to do it. No, not everyone is like me and ignores LinkedIn while actively and happily employed, but I imagine enough people are and that it’s not so hard to build models of other user types that work as advertised (as long as they have access to the public data). HiQ is a threat to LinkedIn on two fronts: as a direct competitor and as a reason for some people to opt out of using the service (though it appears LinkedIn offers similar services, so perhaps the threat is more the Streisand effect at work). That doesn’t mean HiQ should be locked out of the data of course, but it makes for an interesting and complicated situation.
  - CalChris 9y ago
    I'm not saying that social media doesn't exist and that anything you say can't and won't be used against you in a court of law. It will be. What I am saying is that relying on a complex model based on this is just rank silliness. Still, I guarantee that that rank silliness will be a product, it will be sold and and it will be bought. For a big market with small bets (ads) this makes sense. For a small market with big bets (employment) it doesn’t make sense, to me at least.
whack 9y ago
I think the two main questions raised in this case: 1. Is it always ok for someone to build a bot to do something which can be legally done by hand? Example: Building a LinkedIn scraper that tracks all public data. Or using a GPS tracker to track a car, instead of manually following it 2. Is it anti-competitive practice, and a violation of anti-trust laws, for LinkedIn to allow the general public, and other companies like Google, access to its public data, but ban others such as HiQ? On question 1, I tend to lean towards LinkedIn's position. Just because something can be legally done by hand, shouldn't automatically mean that we should allow it to be done at massive scale by automated scripts. I wouldn't want companies having the right to surveil the movements of every citizen 24/7, just because they have the right to follow someone on foot, and I think a similar argument can be made against HiQ. On question 2 though, I agree with HiQ. LinkedIn's attempt to ban HiQ doesn't seem like an attempt to protect their users, but rather, an anti-competitive attempt to kill off a potential competitor, and secure the market for themselves.
- leggomylibro 9y ago
  >Is it always ok for someone to build a bot to do something which can be legally done by hand? Funny that you put it that way; when computers were in their infancy, people would scoff along the lines of, "...and they spent all that money/time teaching the damned thing to do something that you could get anyone off the street to do for $0.50/hr..." Of course, before computers were invented in the first place 'computer' was a job description for a person who computes. How things change in...what, 50-80 years?
- lovich 9y ago
  Haven't the courts already decided that if things can be done by hand then they can be automated? For example license plate scanners were ruled legal because officers can view that information in public, but the automation allows the police to follow everyones movements with only a few machines set up. This ship has sailed
  - epicide 9y ago
    You're probably correct in how it will turn out, but laws can change. One precedent does not mean nothing will ever break it. It does make it harder, though.
wfo 9y ago
The poignant part of the headline here is "sell it to your boss". I think we have already lost the battle over data mining. It is happening, and will continue to happen and it seems to me there is really nothing we can do short of drastically restructuring the entire Internet. The biggest problem is when you combine intrusive massive surveillance with a ultra-powerful entity that can be capricious, malicious, and often abuses and punishes its underlings. This is why I am far more concerned (as a selfish American, thinking for now only about the concerns of Americans) about the FBI having unlimited surveillance powers than the NSA: the FBI has a history of committing crime, horrifying suppression of speech, dissents, political movements, of destroying the lives of innocents, etc. The FBI can knock on your door with guns and throw in you a cage for decades. It has massive power over us so it is important we do not give it massive information about us at the same time. The same is true with bosses. One technique to deal with this is to try and firewall the information off away from the powerful. This is what we did to the FBI before parallel construction (bills that say data will be collected "only for terrorism" -- a lie, obviously, as it always is, but one that made the collection palatable). The article focuses on this approach, which is in my view a lost cause, but a lost cause worth fighting for nonetheless. The other approach is to take away power from bosses. Right now a boss has complete and total power over his employees without labor unions or worker protections (i.e. the current state of affairs in the US). It is this combination with the information that is so disgusting and dystopian. So we could, instead, talk about taking away the power, rather than taking away the information -- which would have the added benefit of solving many other social problems along the way.
- gaius 9y ago
  The biggest problem is when you combine intrusive massive surveillance with a ultra-powerful entity that can be capricious, malicious, and often abuses and punishes its underlings. I am not so worried about that as I am about the cost. Consider: You could always get the dirt on someone if you were willing to drop a few grand on a private dick. That created a bit of friction - you had to really want to get at that person. But what if you can get all the dirt you could ever use for just $1, or some trivial cost? Someone so inclined could go on a fishing expedition on a whim. Your HR department could routinely do everyone in the company, and every supplier and customer, because why not? That's the way this will be weaponized.
DannyBee 9y ago
It's interesting to see EPIC and EFF on different sides of the same issue. I don't feel like i've ever seen that happen.
- Analemma_ 9y ago
  I wonder if it might've been best for the EFF to just stay out of this one entirely, because it seems like sticking up for either side is defending and normalizing a shitty proposition. I see their point that LinkedIn is abusing the CFAA to stop competitive scrapers, but on the other hand, evil as LinkedIn may be, at least the users on it agreed to its terms. If I sign up for LinkedIn and give them my data, I agreed to that. If HiQ slurps it up, I'm not consenting to whatever sinister things they decide to do with it. That feels wrong and not something the EFF should be sticking up for. (Disclosure: I used to work for Microsoft, which now owns LinkedIn, although I like to think I'd have this opinion either way)
  - 21 9y ago
    Yes, I don't quite get EFF's point. So they are saying that anybody should be allowed to scrape anything found online, and use that data for any purpose? In this case it can be argued they use the data against the physical's person about who the data is. So they wouldn't object if banks or credit companies would use the data to reject non-desirable people.
    - mjevans 9y ago
      My armchair impression is that the EFF doesn't like the prescient this might set. I think you are correct in them wanting individuals to be able to scrape or otherwise mechanically process anything which they can normally view. The real chilling effect is from the lack of actual privacy on the data it's self; and the existing asymmetry of power in the employee / employee model as we know it today.
    - speedplane 9y ago
      Generally, the EFF fights for freedoms to use digital technology. Preventing bots inhibits that freedom, so it does make sense.
default-kramer 9y ago
You know, I think LinkedIn actually has a point that blocking certain scrapers is in the interest of their users' privacy. Of course, they are really just trying to stifle a competitor (glad the judge called them out on it) but I still think they should have a right to block scrapers at will.
- id2531513 9y ago
  The judges argument is fine, if HiQ had to contact every profile owner and ask for their consent to store and use their data. Otherwise, how does a individual know where their information is going?
giantsloth 9y ago
I'm going to posit that most of us are spoiled by how much attention we get from recruiters, which is why the attention on this article seems to be on the legality of scraping someones site are not. The focus should be on how disturbing it is that a company is using metrics like "independence from employer brand" to take the power out of the hands of the worker and put it into the hands of the corporation who already wields so much power and influence over our society. Programmers are lucky, a last bastion of decent treatment by corporations. Companies like HiQ are looking to tip the scale back in favor of the corporation, run by people like Mark Weidick who want to be a useful and well kept pet and identify as a "Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Hollywood wanna-be." (twitter) I fear secretive preemptive firing and hiring. "Talks" from your manager, based on encroachments into your private internet browser. This will force developers to combine their personal identity with their corporate identity (which far too many developers do already wearing their respective companies t-shirt like a big walking free advertisement) and curate their online life to reflect how grateful they are to the lords of their fiefdom.
- acover 9y ago
  The neural network said so
- QAPereo 9y ago
  Give it time, and Snow Crash is going to look like a utopian vision.
  - bdamm 9y ago
    The day I wipe my ass with dollar bills will be one of the saddest days in my life. (Note: Employer, NSA, FBI, DHS, this one's for you!)
- GordonS 9y ago
  > Programmers are lucky, a last bastion of decent treatment by corporations Hah, maybe in the Bay area - in the rest of the world we're treated like scum, just the same as everyone else.
atmosphereiv 9y ago
Well now it is time to delete my LinkedIn account. There terms and services say that would not allow people to steal my information and that my information is my own. I have never agreed for my info to be resold by HiQ. Now that it is illegal for LinkedIn to protect me from HiQ's theft the only option I have is to drop LinkedIn.
- avh02 9y ago
  I believe it's done only on publicly visible accounts, modify your privacy settings _if_ you don't want to go all the way to deactivation.
s73ver_ 9y ago
Why does HiQ have any right to my data in the first place?
- meritt 9y ago
  Because people self-submitted their own information to LinkedIn with the desire for it to be publicly accessible.
  - jongisli 9y ago
    And what is the reason people want their own information to be publicly accessible you think? My public information on LinkedIn is public - to market myself. I didn't make it public so that another company could store it in their own databases, analyse it and sell it to "my boss". This is a discussion touched upon in the article "What were the public squares and private rooms of the web? Who got to determine access? Should data be protected as speech?" Anyway, as mentioned in another comment, the highly unethical work HiQ is doing will be hard to capitalize on with the GDPR coming up.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - s73ver_ 9y ago
    Where in that did I give permission to HiQ to do this highly unethical thing?
    - meritt 9y ago
      When you explicitly chose to broadcast that information to the public via LinkedIn who explicitly makes that information available to the general public and does not require you to log in (in contrast to say Facebook) > highly unethical How is a company leveraging intentionally public data unethical? That's quite a stretch. Stop making your information public if you don't want people or companies to look at it. It's as simple as that. If you want to talk about unethical practices, let's talk about financial companies selling your transaction data to advertisers and insurance agencies, or social networking platforms re-purposing the content of your direct messages, or ISPs selling your browsing history. Those are actual things which have a reasonable expectation of privacy. These are actual instances of problematic PII abuse and what laws like GDPR are intending to curb.
V2hLe0ThslzRaV2 9y ago
The official opinions of EFF and EPIC on the case: * EFF: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/08/judge-cracks-down-linkedins-shameful-abuse-computer-break-law https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/08/judge-cracks-down-link... * EPIC: https://epic.org/amicus/cfaa/linkedin/ https://epic.org/amicus/cfaa/linkedin/
deckar01 9y ago
I think LinkedIn's mistake was letting the lawyers fight over it. They could have just blocked the bots with a captcha and called it a day.
- speedplane 9y ago
  Captcha's are easy to beat these days, even fancy reCaptchas. They make the process harder and a bit more expensive, but they don't solve the problem.
- qkls 9y ago
  The problem is that LinkedIn wanted to let some bots in (e.q. Google) but not competitor's.
haxel 9y ago
There's a positive framing of the idea of mining (or collecting) information about yourself and selling it to your boss: it can help get you raises and promotions. After all, when you ask for a raise you're in a wonderful negotiating position when your value is clearly quantified. When you mine/collect the information yourself, you get to choose how and when you present it. Thus you are selling the information to your boss and reaping the rewards yourself.
- speedplane 9y ago
  At first, it will help you get raises. Then over time as everyone does it, you won't get a raise unless you participate. Over time, you won't get hired at all unless you participate.
tempodox 9y ago
Now I'm just glad I never signed up for LinkedIn or any of these. Can't trust any data repository that's not my own.
id2531513 9y ago
What HiQ are doing will be illegal in Britain when the new data protection regulations are introduced in May 2019. You will no longer be allowed to collect and store personal data without content.
mythrwy 9y ago
Good. My Boss is going to find out I volunteer at soup kitchens and help old ladies across the street. Oh, and I also love his favorite band and agree with him politically and didn't even have to gratuitously mention this around the office like a big suck up. A promotion is just around the corner! Wasn't it just last week we saw articles on the front page almost every day about how we can't trust information from the Internet because Facebook and Google are big lying spying monopolies and sell clicks to anyone and don't responsibly curate like they are supposed to and we should all go back to reading the newspaper to get the real facts on life? Ya, pretty sure that was the gist of them. Anyway, hopefully my boss didn't read any of those. We'll just leave him believing that data mining and scraping and twitter sentiment analysis have super secret powers to reveal the hidden truth about the world.

303 points by artsandsci 9y ago

irrational 9y ago

I am so thankful I don't have a LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. account to mine for data.

psychometry 9y ago
I assure you that Facebook knows all about you whether you have an account or not.
- fenwick67 9y ago
  Well, maybe not all about you, but they have a good guess.
- tjoff 9y ago
  Highly doubtful has any idea of even gender and age. They have a broad idea of localization and perhaps a pretty laughable attempt at "interests". Absolutely guaranteed to be nothing of value though.
  - sumedh 9y ago
    > Highly doubtful has any idea of even gender and age. That depends if they know that you visit websites which are also visited a lot by other males between the age group of 20 to 30, then they can almost assume that you are a male between 20 - 30.
    - tjoff 9y ago
      Big woop, what are they going to do with that information? They can "target" me with an ad meant for males in their 20-30s (which again, is just a very crude guess). Which will guaranteed to be a much worse fit than just targeting to the content of that site. No tracking needed. Much better accuracy and return.
      - sumedh 9y ago
        Big woop? you just said its highly doubtful they have any idea about your demographics, I explained you how they can easily do that and much more like know your race and income bracket. The days of just targeting you based on the content site are over, now demographics and your search/click history plays a role too.
        tjoff 9y ago
        Because their accuracy is abysmal. Maybe they have a few percent better accuracy than guessing at random. And that might be worth a few billions. But on an individual level they just don't have the slightest clue. edit: State of the art tracking seems to be "look at what products user x has looked at, show the exact same product everywhere after he/she probably bought it". Now if you do have and use a facebook account that is another thing.
        sumedh 9y ago
        > Because their accuracy is abysmal. Can you give some sources for your claim?
        tjoff 9y ago
        Not really, but it is kind of obvious. I have a very weird setup which would be quite easy to fingerprint (probably a handful in the world and likely only one in my town uses my display setup for one). I am the only one using my devices and noone else is using my IP (and I don't switch IPs either) and I don't use any ad-blockers. Yet ad networks haven't got a clue, often even get gender wrong. (And as a male i interested in tech that should probably be the easiest scenario imaginable) I guess the most tangible data point is when google allowed you to look at what google thought if you (gender, age, interests etc.) and how bad they are at it unless you actually use their services. It is obvious they would be far better of targeting sites than users without accounts. But that is not where their competitive edge is so they downplay that. Also, I guess they are big enough to not care about people without accounts.
  - pound 9y ago
    Don't forget shadow profiles based on data like others mentioning you on pictures etc.
    - tjoff 9y ago
      They can not correlate that data with any form of identity with any accuracy. They can't even detect fake and duplicate accounts, which would be trivial in comparison.
      - FridgeSeal 9y ago
        > They can't even detect fake and duplicate accounts, which would be trivial in comparison. They almost certainly can, but due to capitalism, they have a business interest in not really removing these accounts.
        tjoff 9y ago
        That would be incredibly short sighted given the problem such accounts are for them and that they do go out of their way to ruin real accounts in search for them kind of reveals that they can't do it.
        FridgeSeal 9y ago
        Much like the twitter bots to them, lip-service will be paid, action will be taken on some low hanging fruit so they look like they're working on the problem, but they will not make a concerted, legitimate effort to clean them up.
  - improbable22 9y ago
    Oh they have much more than this. Messenger asks nicely to upload your whole address book, and since half your college buddies clicked yes they know when and where you studied, and who you knew, and your parents landline thus some idea of their location (and how wealthy it is). Ditto your colleagues at each place you worked, who all still have your old corporate email, and some have newer info... And that's before anyone posts anything on facebook.
    - tjoff 9y ago
      And yet they can't show even a semi-related ad if their entire existence counted on it. They have the data, yes. But they will ruin society before having any idea on how to use it. Most importantly. They can not correlate that with my IP or my browsing history. So that information is beyond useless when trying to track me and only slightly useful for researching the society in which I grew up (which facebook isn't interested in anyway).
      - improbable22 9y ago
        This is also true. I don't see how they're making money off their extensive knowledge about me. When I make the mistake of buying something online in a browser logged into facebook, then I get adds for a week trying to sell me what I just bought... this does not lead to me buying another one! And all this strategy seems to need is basic cookies, not a shadow profile.
- irrational 9y ago
  How do they get that information? My family and friends don't really use it much (and to the best of my knowledge I've never been written about or been in any photographs that have been posted). I use things like Ghostery, noscript, ad block, etc. to keep tracking to a minimum. I don't search Google directly but only through duckduckgo. I'd be interested in hearing what other means they have of finding out information about me so I can block those as well if possible.
  - bdamm 9y ago
    There are very few perfectly anonymous Internet users left, so that makes you a member of a quite elite group. Thus, you have become identifiable by your extensive efforts to be anonymized.
Raphmedia 9y ago
Since they can fingerprint your web travels to every page that has Google Analytics or a share widget, there's no need for you to create an account.
- irrational 9y ago
  I use Ghostery and noscript and an ad blocker, so hopefully there isn't too much of that happening.
  - bdamm 9y ago
    Micro images, and browser fingerprinting, and IP location are widely used as well. Even if you're using lynx via VPN you're still relatively identifiable since not too many users do that. Good luck!
willitpamp573 9y ago
But you're missing out on all the valuable Services they provide!!! /s
21 9y ago
In a few years not having a meaningful Facebook profile might be suspicious in itself.

megamindbrian2 9y ago

This is stupid. While my boss has vested interest in my data, I am the only one that can benefit or change because of it.

dsp1234 9y ago
If your employer knows you are looking for other opportunities, they could stop giving you projects and start transitioning you before you are ready, or just fire you. That's a benefit to the employer, that probably is not a benefit to you, since you would likely want to quit on your own terms. Another quick example is knowing that your employees are researching how to unionize, and thus knowing to bring in anti-union resources. I'm sure there are more.
- mjcl 9y ago
  Or even create a self-fulfilling prophecy. What if someone is listed as "may leave" when they have no intent to do so. If the employer then starts freezing the employee out, that could lead the the employee eventually leaving, even if they didn't originally want to.
kevin_b_er 9y ago
The goal is to figure out if you're close to quitting so you can be preemptively fired. This hands the final key away: That while the corporation without notice or reason could fire you, you could always show the same lack of loyalty and quit without notice. The goal is to deny the human that small balance.

CalChris 9y ago

This approach strikes me as confusing precision for accuracy. It is possible to use this sort of information to formulate an extremely precise model. That apparent precision becomes believable because ... it's precise and complex and uses a lot of data. That then becomes a salable product. However, whether this all is actionable and accurate is another and unfortunately later question. The promoters and customers of that approach might want to read this chapter in the CIA's Psychology of Intelligence Analysis: Chapter 5: Do You Really Need More Information? https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/psychology-of-intelligence-analysis/art8.html https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig... But then they might not have a product to sell or buy.

alanfalcon 9y ago
I dunno, I was accutely aware that as I prepared to find a new job by updating my resume, updating my LinkedIn profile and contact list for the first time in years, etc., that it would be very obvious to anyone watching what I was doing. I correctly assumed my employer wasn’t watching (which would have made things potentially uncomfortable for me), but with tools like this it becomes so low effort to watch for this stuff that they can afford to do it. No, not everyone is like me and ignores LinkedIn while actively and happily employed, but I imagine enough people are and that it’s not so hard to build models of other user types that work as advertised (as long as they have access to the public data). HiQ is a threat to LinkedIn on two fronts: as a direct competitor and as a reason for some people to opt out of using the service (though it appears LinkedIn offers similar services, so perhaps the threat is more the Streisand effect at work). That doesn’t mean HiQ should be locked out of the data of course, but it makes for an interesting and complicated situation.
- CalChris 9y ago
  I'm not saying that social media doesn't exist and that anything you say can't and won't be used against you in a court of law. It will be. What I am saying is that relying on a complex model based on this is just rank silliness. Still, I guarantee that that rank silliness will be a product, it will be sold and and it will be bought. For a big market with small bets (ads) this makes sense. For a small market with big bets (employment) it doesn’t make sense, to me at least.

whack 9y ago

I think the two main questions raised in this case: 1. Is it always ok for someone to build a bot to do something which can be legally done by hand? Example: Building a LinkedIn scraper that tracks all public data. Or using a GPS tracker to track a car, instead of manually following it 2. Is it anti-competitive practice, and a violation of anti-trust laws, for LinkedIn to allow the general public, and other companies like Google, access to its public data, but ban others such as HiQ? On question 1, I tend to lean towards LinkedIn's position. Just because something can be legally done by hand, shouldn't automatically mean that we should allow it to be done at massive scale by automated scripts. I wouldn't want companies having the right to surveil the movements of every citizen 24/7, just because they have the right to follow someone on foot, and I think a similar argument can be made against HiQ. On question 2 though, I agree with HiQ. LinkedIn's attempt to ban HiQ doesn't seem like an attempt to protect their users, but rather, an anti-competitive attempt to kill off a potential competitor, and secure the market for themselves.

leggomylibro 9y ago
>Is it always ok for someone to build a bot to do something which can be legally done by hand? Funny that you put it that way; when computers were in their infancy, people would scoff along the lines of, "...and they spent all that money/time teaching the damned thing to do something that you could get anyone off the street to do for $0.50/hr..." Of course, before computers were invented in the first place 'computer' was a job description for a person who computes. How things change in...what, 50-80 years?
lovich 9y ago
Haven't the courts already decided that if things can be done by hand then they can be automated? For example license plate scanners were ruled legal because officers can view that information in public, but the automation allows the police to follow everyones movements with only a few machines set up. This ship has sailed
- epicide 9y ago
  You're probably correct in how it will turn out, but laws can change. One precedent does not mean nothing will ever break it. It does make it harder, though.

wfo 9y ago

The poignant part of the headline here is "sell it to your boss". I think we have already lost the battle over data mining. It is happening, and will continue to happen and it seems to me there is really nothing we can do short of drastically restructuring the entire Internet. The biggest problem is when you combine intrusive massive surveillance with a ultra-powerful entity that can be capricious, malicious, and often abuses and punishes its underlings. This is why I am far more concerned (as a selfish American, thinking for now only about the concerns of Americans) about the FBI having unlimited surveillance powers than the NSA: the FBI has a history of committing crime, horrifying suppression of speech, dissents, political movements, of destroying the lives of innocents, etc. The FBI can knock on your door with guns and throw in you a cage for decades. It has massive power over us so it is important we do not give it massive information about us at the same time. The same is true with bosses. One technique to deal with this is to try and firewall the information off away from the powerful. This is what we did to the FBI before parallel construction (bills that say data will be collected "only for terrorism" -- a lie, obviously, as it always is, but one that made the collection palatable). The article focuses on this approach, which is in my view a lost cause, but a lost cause worth fighting for nonetheless. The other approach is to take away power from bosses. Right now a boss has complete and total power over his employees without labor unions or worker protections (i.e. the current state of affairs in the US). It is this combination with the information that is so disgusting and dystopian. So we could, instead, talk about taking away the power, rather than taking away the information -- which would have the added benefit of solving many other social problems along the way.

gaius 9y ago
The biggest problem is when you combine intrusive massive surveillance with a ultra-powerful entity that can be capricious, malicious, and often abuses and punishes its underlings. I am not so worried about that as I am about the cost. Consider: You could always get the dirt on someone if you were willing to drop a few grand on a private dick. That created a bit of friction - you had to really want to get at that person. But what if you can get all the dirt you could ever use for just $1, or some trivial cost? Someone so inclined could go on a fishing expedition on a whim. Your HR department could routinely do everyone in the company, and every supplier and customer, because why not? That's the way this will be weaponized.

DannyBee 9y ago

It's interesting to see EPIC and EFF on different sides of the same issue. I don't feel like i've ever seen that happen.

Analemma_ 9y ago
I wonder if it might've been best for the EFF to just stay out of this one entirely, because it seems like sticking up for either side is defending and normalizing a shitty proposition. I see their point that LinkedIn is abusing the CFAA to stop competitive scrapers, but on the other hand, evil as LinkedIn may be, at least the users on it agreed to its terms. If I sign up for LinkedIn and give them my data, I agreed to that. If HiQ slurps it up, I'm not consenting to whatever sinister things they decide to do with it. That feels wrong and not something the EFF should be sticking up for. (Disclosure: I used to work for Microsoft, which now owns LinkedIn, although I like to think I'd have this opinion either way)
- 21 9y ago
  Yes, I don't quite get EFF's point. So they are saying that anybody should be allowed to scrape anything found online, and use that data for any purpose? In this case it can be argued they use the data against the physical's person about who the data is. So they wouldn't object if banks or credit companies would use the data to reject non-desirable people.
  - mjevans 9y ago
    My armchair impression is that the EFF doesn't like the prescient this might set. I think you are correct in them wanting individuals to be able to scrape or otherwise mechanically process anything which they can normally view. The real chilling effect is from the lack of actual privacy on the data it's self; and the existing asymmetry of power in the employee / employee model as we know it today.
  - speedplane 9y ago
    Generally, the EFF fights for freedoms to use digital technology. Preventing bots inhibits that freedom, so it does make sense.

default-kramer 9y ago

You know, I think LinkedIn actually has a point that blocking certain scrapers is in the interest of their users' privacy. Of course, they are really just trying to stifle a competitor (glad the judge called them out on it) but I still think they should have a right to block scrapers at will.

id2531513 9y ago
The judges argument is fine, if HiQ had to contact every profile owner and ask for their consent to store and use their data. Otherwise, how does a individual know where their information is going?

giantsloth 9y ago

I'm going to posit that most of us are spoiled by how much attention we get from recruiters, which is why the attention on this article seems to be on the legality of scraping someones site are not. The focus should be on how disturbing it is that a company is using metrics like "independence from employer brand" to take the power out of the hands of the worker and put it into the hands of the corporation who already wields so much power and influence over our society. Programmers are lucky, a last bastion of decent treatment by corporations. Companies like HiQ are looking to tip the scale back in favor of the corporation, run by people like Mark Weidick who want to be a useful and well kept pet and identify as a "Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Hollywood wanna-be." (twitter) I fear secretive preemptive firing and hiring. "Talks" from your manager, based on encroachments into your private internet browser. This will force developers to combine their personal identity with their corporate identity (which far too many developers do already wearing their respective companies t-shirt like a big walking free advertisement) and curate their online life to reflect how grateful they are to the lords of their fiefdom.

acover 9y ago
The neural network said so
QAPereo 9y ago
Give it time, and Snow Crash is going to look like a utopian vision.
- bdamm 9y ago
  The day I wipe my ass with dollar bills will be one of the saddest days in my life. (Note: Employer, NSA, FBI, DHS, this one's for you!)
GordonS 9y ago
> Programmers are lucky, a last bastion of decent treatment by corporations Hah, maybe in the Bay area - in the rest of the world we're treated like scum, just the same as everyone else.

atmosphereiv 9y ago

Well now it is time to delete my LinkedIn account. There terms and services say that would not allow people to steal my information and that my information is my own. I have never agreed for my info to be resold by HiQ. Now that it is illegal for LinkedIn to protect me from HiQ's theft the only option I have is to drop LinkedIn.

avh02 9y ago
I believe it's done only on publicly visible accounts, modify your privacy settings _if_ you don't want to go all the way to deactivation.

s73ver_ 9y ago

Why does HiQ have any right to my data in the first place?

meritt 9y ago
Because people self-submitted their own information to LinkedIn with the desire for it to be publicly accessible.
- jongisli 9y ago
  And what is the reason people want their own information to be publicly accessible you think? My public information on LinkedIn is public - to market myself. I didn't make it public so that another company could store it in their own databases, analyse it and sell it to "my boss". This is a discussion touched upon in the article "What were the public squares and private rooms of the web? Who got to determine access? Should data be protected as speech?" Anyway, as mentioned in another comment, the highly unethical work HiQ is doing will be hard to capitalize on with the GDPR coming up.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  Where in that did I give permission to HiQ to do this highly unethical thing?
  - meritt 9y ago
    When you explicitly chose to broadcast that information to the public via LinkedIn who explicitly makes that information available to the general public and does not require you to log in (in contrast to say Facebook) > highly unethical How is a company leveraging intentionally public data unethical? That's quite a stretch. Stop making your information public if you don't want people or companies to look at it. It's as simple as that. If you want to talk about unethical practices, let's talk about financial companies selling your transaction data to advertisers and insurance agencies, or social networking platforms re-purposing the content of your direct messages, or ISPs selling your browsing history. Those are actual things which have a reasonable expectation of privacy. These are actual instances of problematic PII abuse and what laws like GDPR are intending to curb.

V2hLe0ThslzRaV2 9y ago

The official opinions of EFF and EPIC on the case: * EFF: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/08/judge-cracks-down-linkedins-shameful-abuse-computer-break-law https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/08/judge-cracks-down-link... * EPIC: https://epic.org/amicus/cfaa/linkedin/ https://epic.org/amicus/cfaa/linkedin/

deckar01 9y ago

I think LinkedIn's mistake was letting the lawyers fight over it. They could have just blocked the bots with a captcha and called it a day.

speedplane 9y ago
Captcha's are easy to beat these days, even fancy reCaptchas. They make the process harder and a bit more expensive, but they don't solve the problem.
qkls 9y ago
The problem is that LinkedIn wanted to let some bots in (e.q. Google) but not competitor's.

haxel 9y ago

There's a positive framing of the idea of mining (or collecting) information about yourself and selling it to your boss: it can help get you raises and promotions. After all, when you ask for a raise you're in a wonderful negotiating position when your value is clearly quantified. When you mine/collect the information yourself, you get to choose how and when you present it. Thus you are selling the information to your boss and reaping the rewards yourself.

speedplane 9y ago
At first, it will help you get raises. Then over time as everyone does it, you won't get a raise unless you participate. Over time, you won't get hired at all unless you participate.

tempodox 9y ago

Now I'm just glad I never signed up for LinkedIn or any of these. Can't trust any data repository that's not my own.

id2531513 9y ago

What HiQ are doing will be illegal in Britain when the new data protection regulations are introduced in May 2019. You will no longer be allowed to collect and store personal data without content.

mythrwy 9y ago

Good. My Boss is going to find out I volunteer at soup kitchens and help old ladies across the street. Oh, and I also love his favorite band and agree with him politically and didn't even have to gratuitously mention this around the office like a big suck up. A promotion is just around the corner! Wasn't it just last week we saw articles on the front page almost every day about how we can't trust information from the Internet because Facebook and Google are big lying spying monopolies and sell clicks to anyone and don't responsibly curate like they are supposed to and we should all go back to reading the newspaper to get the real facts on life? Ya, pretty sure that was the gist of them. Anyway, hopefully my boss didn't read any of those. We'll just leave him believing that data mining and scraping and twitter sentiment analysis have super secret powers to reveal the hidden truth about the world.