11 ms·

I tried to keep my unborn child secret from Facebook and Google

78 points by imartin2k 8y ago

umeshunni 8y ago
I tried to read the article, but Wired gave me this: https://imgur.com/GzFnA54 https://imgur.com/GzFnA54
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- eu 8y ago
  You don't use the right add blockers. I was able to read it with uBlock Origin and uMatrix
  - mileszim 8y ago
    I find it somewhat amusing this is even something we discuss--that there are "right" and "wrong" ad blockers is such a twisted re-framing of our right to personal privacy as default. (I'm not indemnifying you at all, just find the concept itself fascinating).
- dhimes 8y ago
  I got that message in the right column with ublock origin- I could still read the article. The problem with sites that do this is that they don't tell you which scripts to allow in order to see advertising. There are a bajillion scripts loading, including facebook and twitter and instagram and vine, and I'm not going to allow those. But when I enabled the other stuff then no ads showed. I don't mind seeing ads, and I'll even click on them if they are interesting, but it's going to be on my terms. Maybe I should open wired in a container or something.
  - dhimes 8y ago
    After further review, I opened in a new container, turned off ublock origin and ghostery, and saw zero ads. Hmmm.
- c22 8y ago
  I tried to look at your graphic, but imgur wont work without javascript enabled. On the other hand, this wired article worked fine and I saw no ads.
  - Gaelan 8y ago
    It's a "please disable ad blocker" message
  - ihuman 8y ago
    Try https://i.imgur.com/GzFnA54.png https://i.imgur.com/GzFnA54.png
  - dvdgsng 8y ago
    maybe give the browser extension "imagus" a try, pretty useful.
- buzzert 8y ago
  Wired runs just fine with JS completely disabled. You won't get this, either. (Support them with a magazine subscription though!)
frereubu 8y ago
This is an important issue, but this article seems almost entirely devoid of content with some links to other articles. It's like a lazy 16-year-old was asked to write an essay. You could sum it up by saying "I tried not to let my unborn child's existence known to advertising networks, but it was hard, particularly without alienating my friends and family." I wonder how many ad impressions it will generate for Wired.
- itronitron 8y ago
  Maybe I am just being cynical, but part of me thinks their real motive in keeping their unborn child a secret is so they can register the domain name and claim social media profiles for their child before they are born.
- vokep 8y ago
  You're right, that sentence captures it entirely, the rest is additional words but not additional meaning.
  - chillacy 8y ago
    Which is convenient because most people will only read the headline before sharing it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/06/16/six-in-10-of-you-will-share-this-link-without-reading-it-according-to-a-new-and-depressing-study/?utm_term=.823de6440b17 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/06...
- Topolomancer 8y ago
  That's a little bit unfortunate, as I think that the topic could be explored much, much deeper. For example, are there any social considerations when it comes to not sharing these details? Will you be ostracized or seen as weird by your friends, will you maybe even trigger automated alarm systems because your behaviour is seen as fraudulent, etc. (at least the last part is alluded to, but it comes through yet another link; if I want to follow many links, I go browse Wikipedia, not an article that purports to be a long-form essay about an interesting topic)
BeetleB 8y ago
In pre-Internet days, people managed. You would go to stores and buy stuff. Many did so with cash. If you wanted to learn about something, you'd buy a book, go to the library, or subscribe to a magazine (that last one was likely selling your information in those days). Then came the Internet. Comparing the before and after, the only strong benefit of the Internet is much better and cheaper access to information. Unfortunately, the "cheaper" part means you end up sacrificing something. I too would like not to be tracked on the Internet. But I'm not going to forget that I did live a life before the Internet, and it was quite a reasonable life. Moreover, that life is by no means obsolete in today's age. You can get most of what you want in the article while still having the Internet. Just don't try to live your whole life (knowledge + purchases) online.
- onemoresoop 8y ago
  > But I'm not going to forget that I did live a life before the Internet, and it was quite a reasonable life. Think of the generation that doesn't have this firsthand knowledge and were born after the pre-internet era. They behaviors are shaped in completely different ways and they have no pre-internet benchmark to compare it to.
- josefresco 8y ago
  >You would go to stores and buy stuff. Many did so with cash. The article not only touches on purchases, but also facial recognition and the trouble with keep your friends and family from revealing the child. Not as simple as "buy stuff offline with cash".
  - BeetleB 8y ago
    >The article not only touches on purchases, but also facial recognition and the trouble with keep your friends and family from revealing the child. I'm aware of that. No rule that says you have to touch on the whole article when commenting on the Internet :-) As for friends and family: To be honest, that's always been a problem, even before the Internet. My experience in both eras has been that people will leak information to people you don't, and the only solution I know of is to separate the world into people who can keep things to themselves, and those who cannot. Granted, it's a bit more complicated now. Even a "trusted" person could message you, and the information leaks to the intermediaries.
neogodless 8y ago
Before Firefox Multi-containers, Amazon decided my wife and I were pregnant. I've shared the story on Hacker News before, so I won't go into too much detail, but the short of it is - it decided (incorrectly) that we were pregnant, and started sending weekly "you're pregnant, read our tips, buy things" emails to me. As a couple with troubles conceiving... it was not welcomed. It was salt on a wound. And thus far, I have found no recourse. I'm uncomfortable that corporations can readily collect and analyze information about us, misinterpret it at times, and attempt to influence our behaviors and choices based on this. It's not a new problem - humans have done this before. Now computers do it, and very large companies that do not care about "rounding errors" are not really prepared to apologize or improve their systems to avoid causing some people emotional pain or any other problem.
- bdcravens 8y ago
  Yeah for some reason I've started getting snail mail marketing for expecting parents. We are on an IVF journey, and in the unfortunate event we don't get the result we want, I'm not looking forward to a poorly timed mailing.
- amyjess 8y ago
  > As a couple with troubles conceiving... it was not welcomed. It was salt on a wound. As a trans woman who repeatedly gets ads for period stuff, I feel much the same way. At first, I thought it was cute. "Aww look, I even pass to the ad algorithm", and it eventually turned into "oh fuck, another reminder that my body is never going to work the way it was supposed to". And it got stronger and stronger as time went on. It started with the occasional ad for pads in Gmail's promotions tab... then I started seeing ads for period products on Facebook... and then I repeatedly got ads inviting me to take part in clinical studies for painful periods and ads for all different kind of menstrual products, to the point where just loading Facebook would set off my dysphoria.
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    So, you don't want to be treated as if you were female? Would you say that was common amongst males who identify themselves as women?
sjjshvuiajhz 8y ago
The problem is not the web tracking, the problem is your obsession about it. Stop worrying about it and your mental health will improve. Are you going to raise your kid to be afraid of the shadows around every corner?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- justtopost 8y ago
  Spoken like a true sleazeball. While I agree, generally that 'stranger danger' is bullshit, and the kid-safing of the world does more harm than good, it does not follow that being surveiled without recourse and being pushed to the fringes of social life is ever ok. I challenge you to elucidate how ad-tracking is not a social and sociatal detriment at best, and a tool for despostim and opression if misused in a rather simple way, as seems to be the case currently.
  - freehunter 8y ago
    I'd be careful calling people names like that around here.
  - jimmaswell 8y ago
    Defense of ad-tracking: increasing value for all parties by making ads more relevant and helping to keep services free. The only significant downside in my opinion is the possibility of data breaches giving the information to identity thieves etc. Otherwise I have no reason to be upset that some computers have determined, without any human involved, that I might be more likely to click on a Cheerios ad than a bicycle ad.
  - sjjshvuiajhz 8y ago
    Advertisement improves economic efficiency, resulting in increased prosperity. It’s part of the desperately needed decoupling of economic growth and energy consumption. Whether the parameters of some neural net are trained on the Facebook pictures of your baby you uploaded is entirely insignificant. On the other hand, the psychological harm this author will do to their baby if they raise them with an attitude of fear and anxiety is likely to cause them to suffer greatly. I’m not sure what you mean by “pushed to the fringes” - it seems this author’s isolation is self-imposed. I’m familiar with the ways depression and anxiety can isolate a person, so I’m sympathetic. But it’s often not useful to express that fight-or-flight response by trying to spread your anxieties to others. Learning to distinguish which perceived problems actually matter is important. Most of them can be dealt with inside your head, or by talking them through with someone you trust. Learning to do this has greatly improved my quality of life and my personal relationships.
shpx 8y ago
> we didn’t want to be stalked around the internet by adverts for breast pumps and baby carriers Install an ad blocker. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa...
- barbs 8y ago
  That does feel like the obvious solution but no doubt they couldn't mention that in an article published on a website where they make most of their money through ads
- TazeTSchnitzel 8y ago
  That alone is not enough. If you use Facebook, Twitter or Google, they track your usage of the service and make inferences. Even if you turn that off or don't use those services, advertisers who are also spying on you (for example, Amazon knowing your purchase history) will give them data on you. And so on.
FuckOffNeemo 8y ago
The only article part of the article I found ironic, is the site that the writer used imploring me to disable ad-blocker so they can generate revenue... on an article that tells me about all the reasons why targeted ads suck.
ImaCake 8y ago
>Let me just open up Tor so we can read through advice pages on the NHS website. Signing up for classes about the trauma of childbirth? Hold on a second while I setup a new email account on a private server so Google doesn’t scan my inbox for keywords. Excited family members sending you questions on Facebook Messenger? Ask them to immediately delete all those messages and download Signal instead. Wow. Just use Firefox and a $5/month email service. Where did this myth that privacy protecting applications were difficult to use come from? Firefox is just as easy as chrome, and Signal's only difficulty is getting other people to use it, not the UI. I understand actually ensuring your data doesn't leak is difficult, but the apps to use are certainly not difficult.
- vinni2 8y ago
  I use Firefox, a very unpopular paid email service from Germany, pihole for dns level ad blocking, ublock origin, DuckDuckGo as default search engine and use TOR for any medically sensitive searches or embarrassing stuff... still get targeted ads for things happening in my life which I thought I took enough precautions to hide from the ad trackers.. there is simply no easy way
devmunchies 8y ago
I just finished reading Ted Kaczynski’s (the unabomber) book Technological Slavery. Yeah he was a domestic terrorist who most likely hurt technological reform more than helped it, but there were still a lot of good points related to this post. The more we rely on technology the more powerless and less free we become.
munk-a 8y ago
> Opting out of tracking and targeting, it turns out, isn’t an option. There is no such thing as a purely transactional transaction. Every purchase I make and every website I visit is recorded, tracked and indelibly tagged to scores of profiles sold by data brokers I’ve never heard of to companies I’ve never heard of in an attempt to persuade me to spend £150 on a Chicco Next 2 Me Bedside Crib. Spoiler: I did. And this is why advertisers are invasive. If you feed the trolls (or advertisers in this case) they come back for more. As an aside, it would be hilarious if this entire article was sponsored content for that crib.
- landcoctos 8y ago
  this is why i use cash whenever possible. most transactions should be one time events
mileszim 8y ago
For anyone still holding onto the belief they can break free of being tracked and sold and still remain functional in modern life, I offer you a challenge: For one month, do everything in your power to avoid being tracked. Take it as far as you can. A year ago I attempted this by seeing what exactly I would need to do just to simply build my own cell phone, just to call, which did not allow any kind of tracking. Every layer you step through, from components to software to the telecom infrastructure itself has some finger in the pie. For the first time that stoner-ism "it's the SYSTEM, man" began to take a concrete form, like discovering some invisible forces just under the surface, governing our behavior. That's when I pulled the plug for my own sanity. How it is we not only accepted this, but allow an entire market to exist buying and selling our personal lives (of which of course we ourselves do not profit directly from), still astounds me. Keeping your life private is no longer the default mode. It's now more like going to the gym: it requires continuous drive and effort. Most don't have the time or the resources to even think about personal privacy, let alone take some kind of meaningful action.
gammateam 8y ago
Commendable effort, some critiques about the inconvenience of relearning the internet: Yes opening TOR to run a search query is just as easy as having Chrome open all the time too. The non-google email that you also made over TOR should be set up already. Regarding social networks, delete your account. Make a new one with no phone number or a different phone number. This breaks the social graph. Honestly, just don't add people back to it. Your immediate family knows how to contact you, and if you add them back the whole social graph relinks you with them. Download your data if you have attachment issues. You can avoid the awkward "I don't have that network" conversation by actually having one, for some people you meet. For others, use the other way to contact you. If a Google Voice no longer works to signup to a social network, and you don't want to pay for an additional line, then head on over to dark net marketplaces because you can pay people to get the phone number confirmation codes for you there. But of course, you can probably also find someone on Fiverr if someone convinced you DNMs are "scary". DNM providers likely have better access to mass phone numbers.
petilon 8y ago
See also this story: For all of the supposed liberating power of their digital devices, they might as well be wearing ankle monitors. Today’s students live their lives so publicly — through the technology we provide them without training — that much simpler errors than mine earn them the wrath of the entire internet. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/09/opinion/sunday/dumb-mistakes-college.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/09/opinion/sunday/dumb-mista...
petilon 8y ago
This is why we need the EU, and laws like GDPR and the Right to be Forgotten: Google's Eric Schmidt suggests that young people should change their name upon reaching adulthood https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7951269/Young-will-have-to-change-names-to-escape-cyber-past-warns-Googles-Eric-Schmidt.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7951269/Young-... Facebook's Zuckerberg Says The Age of Privacy Is Over https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2010/01/10/10readwriteweb-facebooks-zuckerberg-says-the-age-of-privac-82963.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/external/readwri...

78 points by imartin2k 8y ago

umeshunni 8y ago

I tried to read the article, but Wired gave me this: https://imgur.com/GzFnA54 https://imgur.com/GzFnA54

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
eu 8y ago
You don't use the right add blockers. I was able to read it with uBlock Origin and uMatrix
- mileszim 8y ago
  I find it somewhat amusing this is even something we discuss--that there are "right" and "wrong" ad blockers is such a twisted re-framing of our right to personal privacy as default. (I'm not indemnifying you at all, just find the concept itself fascinating).
dhimes 8y ago
I got that message in the right column with ublock origin- I could still read the article. The problem with sites that do this is that they don't tell you which scripts to allow in order to see advertising. There are a bajillion scripts loading, including facebook and twitter and instagram and vine, and I'm not going to allow those. But when I enabled the other stuff then no ads showed. I don't mind seeing ads, and I'll even click on them if they are interesting, but it's going to be on my terms. Maybe I should open wired in a container or something.
- dhimes 8y ago
  After further review, I opened in a new container, turned off ublock origin and ghostery, and saw zero ads. Hmmm.
c22 8y ago
I tried to look at your graphic, but imgur wont work without javascript enabled. On the other hand, this wired article worked fine and I saw no ads.
- Gaelan 8y ago
  It's a "please disable ad blocker" message
- ihuman 8y ago
  Try https://i.imgur.com/GzFnA54.png https://i.imgur.com/GzFnA54.png
- dvdgsng 8y ago
  maybe give the browser extension "imagus" a try, pretty useful.
buzzert 8y ago
Wired runs just fine with JS completely disabled. You won't get this, either. (Support them with a magazine subscription though!)

frereubu 8y ago

This is an important issue, but this article seems almost entirely devoid of content with some links to other articles. It's like a lazy 16-year-old was asked to write an essay. You could sum it up by saying "I tried not to let my unborn child's existence known to advertising networks, but it was hard, particularly without alienating my friends and family." I wonder how many ad impressions it will generate for Wired.

itronitron 8y ago
Maybe I am just being cynical, but part of me thinks their real motive in keeping their unborn child a secret is so they can register the domain name and claim social media profiles for their child before they are born.
vokep 8y ago
You're right, that sentence captures it entirely, the rest is additional words but not additional meaning.
- chillacy 8y ago
  Which is convenient because most people will only read the headline before sharing it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/06/16/six-in-10-of-you-will-share-this-link-without-reading-it-according-to-a-new-and-depressing-study/?utm_term=.823de6440b17 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/06...
Topolomancer 8y ago
That's a little bit unfortunate, as I think that the topic could be explored much, much deeper. For example, are there any social considerations when it comes to not sharing these details? Will you be ostracized or seen as weird by your friends, will you maybe even trigger automated alarm systems because your behaviour is seen as fraudulent, etc. (at least the last part is alluded to, but it comes through yet another link; if I want to follow many links, I go browse Wikipedia, not an article that purports to be a long-form essay about an interesting topic)

BeetleB 8y ago

In pre-Internet days, people managed. You would go to stores and buy stuff. Many did so with cash. If you wanted to learn about something, you'd buy a book, go to the library, or subscribe to a magazine (that last one was likely selling your information in those days). Then came the Internet. Comparing the before and after, the only strong benefit of the Internet is much better and cheaper access to information. Unfortunately, the "cheaper" part means you end up sacrificing something. I too would like not to be tracked on the Internet. But I'm not going to forget that I did live a life before the Internet, and it was quite a reasonable life. Moreover, that life is by no means obsolete in today's age. You can get most of what you want in the article while still having the Internet. Just don't try to live your whole life (knowledge + purchases) online.

onemoresoop 8y ago
> But I'm not going to forget that I did live a life before the Internet, and it was quite a reasonable life. Think of the generation that doesn't have this firsthand knowledge and were born after the pre-internet era. They behaviors are shaped in completely different ways and they have no pre-internet benchmark to compare it to.
josefresco 8y ago
>You would go to stores and buy stuff. Many did so with cash. The article not only touches on purchases, but also facial recognition and the trouble with keep your friends and family from revealing the child. Not as simple as "buy stuff offline with cash".
- BeetleB 8y ago
  >The article not only touches on purchases, but also facial recognition and the trouble with keep your friends and family from revealing the child. I'm aware of that. No rule that says you have to touch on the whole article when commenting on the Internet :-) As for friends and family: To be honest, that's always been a problem, even before the Internet. My experience in both eras has been that people will leak information to people you don't, and the only solution I know of is to separate the world into people who can keep things to themselves, and those who cannot. Granted, it's a bit more complicated now. Even a "trusted" person could message you, and the information leaks to the intermediaries.

neogodless 8y ago

Before Firefox Multi-containers, Amazon decided my wife and I were pregnant. I've shared the story on Hacker News before, so I won't go into too much detail, but the short of it is - it decided (incorrectly) that we were pregnant, and started sending weekly "you're pregnant, read our tips, buy things" emails to me. As a couple with troubles conceiving... it was not welcomed. It was salt on a wound. And thus far, I have found no recourse. I'm uncomfortable that corporations can readily collect and analyze information about us, misinterpret it at times, and attempt to influence our behaviors and choices based on this. It's not a new problem - humans have done this before. Now computers do it, and very large companies that do not care about "rounding errors" are not really prepared to apologize or improve their systems to avoid causing some people emotional pain or any other problem.

bdcravens 8y ago
Yeah for some reason I've started getting snail mail marketing for expecting parents. We are on an IVF journey, and in the unfortunate event we don't get the result we want, I'm not looking forward to a poorly timed mailing.
amyjess 8y ago
> As a couple with troubles conceiving... it was not welcomed. It was salt on a wound. As a trans woman who repeatedly gets ads for period stuff, I feel much the same way. At first, I thought it was cute. "Aww look, I even pass to the ad algorithm", and it eventually turned into "oh fuck, another reminder that my body is never going to work the way it was supposed to". And it got stronger and stronger as time went on. It started with the occasional ad for pads in Gmail's promotions tab... then I started seeing ads for period products on Facebook... and then I repeatedly got ads inviting me to take part in clinical studies for painful periods and ads for all different kind of menstrual products, to the point where just loading Facebook would set off my dysphoria.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  So, you don't want to be treated as if you were female? Would you say that was common amongst males who identify themselves as women?

sjjshvuiajhz 8y ago

The problem is not the web tracking, the problem is your obsession about it. Stop worrying about it and your mental health will improve. Are you going to raise your kid to be afraid of the shadows around every corner?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
justtopost 8y ago
Spoken like a true sleazeball. While I agree, generally that 'stranger danger' is bullshit, and the kid-safing of the world does more harm than good, it does not follow that being surveiled without recourse and being pushed to the fringes of social life is ever ok. I challenge you to elucidate how ad-tracking is not a social and sociatal detriment at best, and a tool for despostim and opression if misused in a rather simple way, as seems to be the case currently.
- freehunter 8y ago
  I'd be careful calling people names like that around here.
- jimmaswell 8y ago
  Defense of ad-tracking: increasing value for all parties by making ads more relevant and helping to keep services free. The only significant downside in my opinion is the possibility of data breaches giving the information to identity thieves etc. Otherwise I have no reason to be upset that some computers have determined, without any human involved, that I might be more likely to click on a Cheerios ad than a bicycle ad.
- sjjshvuiajhz 8y ago
  Advertisement improves economic efficiency, resulting in increased prosperity. It’s part of the desperately needed decoupling of economic growth and energy consumption. Whether the parameters of some neural net are trained on the Facebook pictures of your baby you uploaded is entirely insignificant. On the other hand, the psychological harm this author will do to their baby if they raise them with an attitude of fear and anxiety is likely to cause them to suffer greatly. I’m not sure what you mean by “pushed to the fringes” - it seems this author’s isolation is self-imposed. I’m familiar with the ways depression and anxiety can isolate a person, so I’m sympathetic. But it’s often not useful to express that fight-or-flight response by trying to spread your anxieties to others. Learning to distinguish which perceived problems actually matter is important. Most of them can be dealt with inside your head, or by talking them through with someone you trust. Learning to do this has greatly improved my quality of life and my personal relationships.

shpx 8y ago

> we didn’t want to be stalked around the internet by adverts for breast pumps and baby carriers Install an ad blocker. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa...

barbs 8y ago
That does feel like the obvious solution but no doubt they couldn't mention that in an article published on a website where they make most of their money through ads
TazeTSchnitzel 8y ago
That alone is not enough. If you use Facebook, Twitter or Google, they track your usage of the service and make inferences. Even if you turn that off or don't use those services, advertisers who are also spying on you (for example, Amazon knowing your purchase history) will give them data on you. And so on.

FuckOffNeemo 8y ago

The only article part of the article I found ironic, is the site that the writer used imploring me to disable ad-blocker so they can generate revenue... on an article that tells me about all the reasons why targeted ads suck.

ImaCake 8y ago

>Let me just open up Tor so we can read through advice pages on the NHS website. Signing up for classes about the trauma of childbirth? Hold on a second while I setup a new email account on a private server so Google doesn’t scan my inbox for keywords. Excited family members sending you questions on Facebook Messenger? Ask them to immediately delete all those messages and download Signal instead. Wow. Just use Firefox and a $5/month email service. Where did this myth that privacy protecting applications were difficult to use come from? Firefox is just as easy as chrome, and Signal's only difficulty is getting other people to use it, not the UI. I understand actually ensuring your data doesn't leak is difficult, but the apps to use are certainly not difficult.

vinni2 8y ago
I use Firefox, a very unpopular paid email service from Germany, pihole for dns level ad blocking, ublock origin, DuckDuckGo as default search engine and use TOR for any medically sensitive searches or embarrassing stuff... still get targeted ads for things happening in my life which I thought I took enough precautions to hide from the ad trackers.. there is simply no easy way

devmunchies 8y ago

I just finished reading Ted Kaczynski’s (the unabomber) book Technological Slavery. Yeah he was a domestic terrorist who most likely hurt technological reform more than helped it, but there were still a lot of good points related to this post. The more we rely on technology the more powerless and less free we become.

munk-a 8y ago

> Opting out of tracking and targeting, it turns out, isn’t an option. There is no such thing as a purely transactional transaction. Every purchase I make and every website I visit is recorded, tracked and indelibly tagged to scores of profiles sold by data brokers I’ve never heard of to companies I’ve never heard of in an attempt to persuade me to spend £150 on a Chicco Next 2 Me Bedside Crib. Spoiler: I did. And this is why advertisers are invasive. If you feed the trolls (or advertisers in this case) they come back for more. As an aside, it would be hilarious if this entire article was sponsored content for that crib.

landcoctos 8y ago
this is why i use cash whenever possible. most transactions should be one time events

mileszim 8y ago

For anyone still holding onto the belief they can break free of being tracked and sold and still remain functional in modern life, I offer you a challenge: For one month, do everything in your power to avoid being tracked. Take it as far as you can. A year ago I attempted this by seeing what exactly I would need to do just to simply build my own cell phone, just to call, which did not allow any kind of tracking. Every layer you step through, from components to software to the telecom infrastructure itself has some finger in the pie. For the first time that stoner-ism "it's the SYSTEM, man" began to take a concrete form, like discovering some invisible forces just under the surface, governing our behavior. That's when I pulled the plug for my own sanity. How it is we not only accepted this, but allow an entire market to exist buying and selling our personal lives (of which of course we ourselves do not profit directly from), still astounds me. Keeping your life private is no longer the default mode. It's now more like going to the gym: it requires continuous drive and effort. Most don't have the time or the resources to even think about personal privacy, let alone take some kind of meaningful action.

gammateam 8y ago

Commendable effort, some critiques about the inconvenience of relearning the internet: Yes opening TOR to run a search query is just as easy as having Chrome open all the time too. The non-google email that you also made over TOR should be set up already. Regarding social networks, delete your account. Make a new one with no phone number or a different phone number. This breaks the social graph. Honestly, just don't add people back to it. Your immediate family knows how to contact you, and if you add them back the whole social graph relinks you with them. Download your data if you have attachment issues. You can avoid the awkward "I don't have that network" conversation by actually having one, for some people you meet. For others, use the other way to contact you. If a Google Voice no longer works to signup to a social network, and you don't want to pay for an additional line, then head on over to dark net marketplaces because you can pay people to get the phone number confirmation codes for you there. But of course, you can probably also find someone on Fiverr if someone convinced you DNMs are "scary". DNM providers likely have better access to mass phone numbers.

petilon 8y ago

See also this story: For all of the supposed liberating power of their digital devices, they might as well be wearing ankle monitors. Today’s students live their lives so publicly — through the technology we provide them without training — that much simpler errors than mine earn them the wrath of the entire internet. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/09/opinion/sunday/dumb-mistakes-college.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/09/opinion/sunday/dumb-mista...

petilon 8y ago

This is why we need the EU, and laws like GDPR and the Right to be Forgotten: Google's Eric Schmidt suggests that young people should change their name upon reaching adulthood https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7951269/Young-will-have-to-change-names-to-escape-cyber-past-warns-Googles-Eric-Schmidt.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7951269/Young-... Facebook's Zuckerberg Says The Age of Privacy Is Over https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2010/01/10/10readwriteweb-facebooks-zuckerberg-says-the-age-of-privac-82963.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/external/readwri...