4 ms·
You're probably not thinking adversarially. Most of us aren't. Most of us love all the features of technology. However, there are bad apples in society, seek
by chillingeffect 9y ago
You're probably not thinking adversarially. Most of us aren't. Most of us love all the features of technology.
However, there are bad apples in society, seeking shortcuts through taking from others and harming them. And there are guardians in society, constantly looking for vectors that a baddie can cause harm to protect them.
One emerging vector is the combination of market data to target individuals for threat and harm. E.g. you piss someone or a group off, whether by insulting them, simply the act of driving or eating meat, supporting a political party they don't, etc. Then, that person or group purchases batches of insufficiently anonymized marketing data, combines them to narrow down to your profile and uses it to hunt you down.
E.g. restaurants. Someone could buy location, restaurant and driving data, filter by several clues they discover about you, then stake out locations where you'll be.
Now that I've explored the personal-revenge factor, consider a different type of threat: economic survival. An adversarial corporation could use details about your psychology gleaned from timing information, nutrition profile, age, DNA/race, internet comments to influence you and larger groups in unethical ways, such as encouraging you to live unhealthy lifestyles, presenting carefully selected news items - not to harm you necessarily, but to perpetuate their own gain at your cost.
And this doesn't even have to happen to you personally. It can happen to targeted groups estimated to have vulnerabilities in any domain: middle-class, new home-owners, teen-agers. And the baddies' efforts all increase in efficacy the more information we leak.
So stop giving away all your information!
- fixermark 9y agoIf one doesn't trust Google as a data steward, I can totally see one being deeply concerned about these data-request notifications and about the system knowing their geolocation. ... but I can't follow why one would then continue to use Google Maps. ... or a phone running an OS that Google writes and maintains. ... or, in the case of this particular blog-post, https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/webfont/1.6.26/webfont.js https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/webfont/1.6.26/webfont...