28 ms·

Think You’re Discreet Online? Think Again

218 points by tysone 8y ago

Mirioron 8y ago
I think we're not really there yet. I think it's entirely possible for you to avoid most of this type of tracking if you so choose, but it does mean not using services such as Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and not giving out your phone number to people who use these services. What bothers me much more is that it might be possible to identify somebody through text analysis.
- thatoneuser 8y ago
  Deliberate obfuscation. Change the way you talk over time. Change your users and passwords. Even go so far as to say things that aren't the slightest bit true but can't be differentiated one way or another. Create a matrix of plausible personas you could possess and never let on to which sum of them you really are.
  - Nextgrid 8y ago
    Wouldn’t it be better to shape the world in such a way that those techniques aren’t needed? Don’t work for nasty companies, don’t invest in them, don’t do business with them and lobby the government to outlaw tracking & stalking.
    - Mirioron 8y ago
      I don't think that's going to work in the long run. You can't stop technological progress.
      - Nextgrid 8y ago
        You can’t stop progress, but you can stop it being used for certain purposes, and laws mostly work as long as they’re enforced correctly.
    - thatoneuser 8y ago
      I don't do that and the companies still exist. You can't stop that so this is the only choice :/
    - jocoda 8y ago
      > ... shape the world ... For the first time we probably have the technology that could help realize something like this if we knew what the shape should look. Unfortunately we will never have that because that would mean the shaping had already been done. Then again, if you think about it, maybe the shaping has been done and the shapers already have what they want... > ... tracking and stalking I think governments have a vested interest in being able to track
  - wmeredith 8y ago
    People are bad at stuff like this.
  - ohaideredevs 8y ago
    This is not at all viable in real life, unless you have overwhelming motivation to do so, it's your one priority in life, and you are willing to lose out on a lot of things to do so.
- morganherlocker 8y ago
  Other articles in this NYT series describe how location data is used for similar types of inference. Many of these systems are nearly impossible to opt out of, since they rely on deep rooted tech, like cell carrier chipsets, credit purchase history (tied to retail addresses), or even psychographic & demographic profiles tied to people in your neighborhood (essentially block level aggregates of commute & purchase data). Your strategy of spending time generating fake data online is not enough to really opt out of these systems, and many would argue that the burden of generating consistent dummy personas is already immense. To really opt out of your data being sold or used to target you, you would need to be ready to not travel with a cell phone, not use any electronic payments like credit/debit cards, or even conceal your place of residence from public sources through complex legal obfuscation. Obviously there are different levels of obscurity that can be had, but much of this technology uses dragnets with few practical ways to entirely hide.
- spaceheretostay 8y ago
  > I think it's entirely possible for you to avoid most of this type of tracking if you so choose, but it does mean not using services such as Facebook,... Why do you think this is a choice? This is definitely not a choice any more. It has been 10+ years since Facebook removed your choice to not use it from society. Step outside and walk around. You will be photographed. Those photographs are going to Instagram and you are in the background. Your face is scanned by Facebook and they know where you go and what you do in the day. Facebook will know your location because other apps that you use will send Facebook your location without you even knowing it. Other people's actions online, who are tracked more vigorously, like emailing you or even meeting you in person for a coffee, will give further info to Facebook. Your cell signal location and your credit card history are probably up for sale and Facebook probably buys that too. You want to opt-out by staying home? Just order stuff online? I'm sure Facebook will still find a way to figure you out. There is no such thing as not-using-Facebook, or opting out any more. Saying that there is a way to choose not to be tracked is dangerous and wrong. > ...and not giving out your phone number to people who use these services. The tracking they can do is so far past just linking phone numbers though. Trying to keep a phone number secret simply isn't going to work and if it did, it would be ineffective in protecting you from being tracked.
- krick 8y ago
  > not giving out your phone number to people who use these services Come on! Are you even serious? It basically requires you being a hermit, because these people is fucking everyone. I think I'm pretty close to being as discreet as possible while being considered more or less normal, but it seems to be of no use — I'm not even always sure how fresh-new fake account on Facebook (or such) can imply this or that connection, or how youtube can recommend a video on some quite specific interest I might have shown a while ago on a completely different device. And I don't know about you, but I'm not feeling ready to refuse to interact with a girl/friend/relative because they are using whatsapp. I can only hate fb and wish Zuckerberg a painful death, but I don't see how I can realistically avoid being monitored.
gatherhunterer 8y ago
Ironically I opened this is private mode and was turned away. The New York Times is trying to have it both ways. I can log in and be tracked by their advertisers or I can be discreet and open articles from another source. I don't mind paying a small subscription but let me choose to deny your advertisers information on how I consume your content. If being tracked is part and parcel of being a subscriber then these pro-privacy articles look almost unethical.
- dangus 8y ago
  Works fine for me incognito with ads and tracker blocking extensions enabled. Keep in mind that the journalist who did the research and wrote the article did not have a say in how the employer who enabled them to write this piece generates revenue.
  - linuxasheviller 8y ago
    > Keep in mind that the journalist who did the research and wrote the article did not have a say in how the employer who enabled them to write this piece generates revenue. In a way, she did. She is not an NYT employee, but rather, a professor at UNC Chapel Hill who could have published this piece elsewhere. To be clear, I don't fault her for her choice at all. Just pointing out that we all "opt-in" to this system when we participate in it, and that's a part of the problem.
    - dangus 8y ago
      I do agree with you, though I think opting out of the practices of most websites is impractical. The utility of my usage of the Internet far outweighs some advertisers figuring out what I like to buy. We do need more robust advertising privacy laws, though. By not being a NYT employee she has even less of a say in the matter. I'm sure she knows that nobody's going to read her article if it's published in The Daily Tar Heel. If someone gave you the opportunity to publish an article in The New York Times would you say no? I should also point out that the print edition of the NYT is still widely circulated, and it seems this article would have appeared in the Opinion section, tracker free :-)
jocoda 8y ago
From the article: >Such tools are already being marketed for use in hiring employees, for detecting shoppers’ moods and predicting criminal behavior. Surely, it's just a matter of time before we start gaming systems like this? You already have online reputation management for products and services. So how long is it before someone offers shaped online profiles for individuals as a service?
- rolph 8y ago
  its almost now.
o10449366 8y ago
"But today’s technology works at a far higher level. Consider an example involving Facebook. In 2017, the newspaper The Australian published an article, based on a leaked document from Facebook, revealing that the company had told advertisers that it could predict when younger users, including teenagers, were feeling “insecure,” “worthless” or otherwise in need of a “confidence boost.” Facebook was apparently able to draw these inferences by monitoring photos, posts and other social media data." Ironically, that's exactly what the NYT has started doing recently![0] I think they've realized just how lucrative selling these interferential insights can be; regardless of how accurate these metrics are, advertisers eat them up. How long until NYT writers start receiving pressure from upper management to produce content that maximizes emotional output from their readers? It's possible that proper restraint and separation of departments can be maintained, but I think history has shown that when profit motives are involved, greed often usurps ethics. [0] https://investors.nytco.com/press/press-releases/press-release-details/2018/The-New-York-Times-Advertising--Marketing-Solutions-Group-Introduces-nytDEMO-A-Cross-Functional-Team-Focused-on-Bringing-Insights-and-Data-Solutions-to-Brands/default.aspx https://investors.nytco.com/press/press-releases/press-relea...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- spaceheretostay 8y ago
  Surprised the author didn't reference the time when Facebook set out to intentionally manipulate hundreds of thousands of people by playing with their emotions [1]. Facebook made like 200,000 people start to feel sad on purpose and bragged about their abilities in a "scientific paper". That's in quotes because their lawyers say that you give your "informed consent" to be psychologically experimented on when you sign up for Facebook. Facebook does in fact decide to basically torture people into a depression with its power. Facebook is an evil entity and their intentional emotional torture exerted onto its users far surpasses the kind of thing you're quoting NYT for. Not excusing NYT here but Facebook is next-level-evil when it comes to psychological experimentation on unwilling and non-consenting users. [1] Lots of articles on this, here's a random one from Google searching: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everything-we-know-about-facebooks-secret-mood-manipulation-experiment/373648/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/every... (edited for accuracy, millions->thousands)
malvosenior 8y ago
What I don't understand is with all of this tracking, ML profiling... Why don't I get ads that are relevant to me at all? I'm very active all across the internet, proactively rate ads as "not relevant to me", would actually be interested in learning about products that I might like. Have disposable income... Yet nothing, just a sea of hot garbage ads that might as well be noise. I can't recall ever seeing something relevant enough to click on. I think the effectiveness of all of this stuff is way overrated. I have money, I will spend it, but with all the tech in the world the industry still can't put a relevant ad in front of me.
- balls187 8y ago
  Maybe you're not any companies target audience?
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    That's doubtful as I don't live some kind of hermit like existence and regularly buy many products.
    - evanweaver 8y ago
      Maybe you should start; it would be a good A/B test.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - moreGlorpsEqual 8y ago
      The truth is, not all companies advertise. Many companies know that advertising won't shift sales, for what they'd be willing to invest in campaigns. The companies you love probably don't need ads. Meanwhile, the ads that you want to see are the least effective. They fail to persuade you to become a new customer, because you're already won over. The most effective ads change your mind. They turn you from an enemy to a friend. No one expends effort advertising to existing customers. Why preach to the choir?
username223 8y ago
Laws controlling the use of data, like those for credit reporting agencies, would help. So would laws on collection and sale of data. Tracker-blockers help a bit more, but they're an eternal battle. What we need is new social norms. Most people don't point video cameras at their neighbors' windows, not out of fear of being caught, but because it's just wrong. Similar norms should apply online, and people and companies who do it should be shunned.
akyu 8y ago
Theres another downstream issue of this that many people seem to be unaware of. I've gone down the road of trying to create a super private browsing experience.(www.privacytools.io for a good start). The issue is the web experience degrades rapdily and quite frequently is unusable. You have to block CDNs for a start if you really wanna go full paranoia mode. And there's too many other issues to list here. But the biggest issue, is that Google's CAPTCHAs become unsolveable. I mean literally they wont let you pass. You will get served a large sequence of captchas. I've experienced up to 6 for a single verification. And not only do you get more, but they deliberately add an excruciatingly slow delay to each image. It can take 10-15 seconds to solve a single image set, and then you still need to do 5 more. Also interesting side note, it seems they are injecting adversial noise into the hard captcha, as I noticed faint distortions in most of the images. Bur even with your best effort to solve them you will not get through. Ive repeated this experiement many times. It seems that preventing browser fingerprinting is the thing that really makes them put up a redflag, but its hard to know for sure. And I'd like to emphasize that none of the privacy modifications I was using make any significant change to normal browser functionality. You still have JS, you still have cookies (through Firefox containers). Anyway the scary thing here is its very easy to extrapolate this further and get to an internet where you either opt in to be tracked, or you are effectively throttled/gated on huge parts of the web. Google CAPTCHAs have gone from asking the question "Are you human?" to "Which human are you?". And the beautiful, incredible irony is how this contrasts with Google's very public stance on net neutrality. "Internet companies, innovative startups, and millions of internet users depend on these common-sense protections that prevent blocking or throttling of internet traffic, segmenting the internet into paid fast lanes and slow lanes, and other discriminatory practices. Thanks in part to net neutrality, the open internet has grown to become an unrivaled source of choice, competition, innovation, free expression, and opportunity. And it should stay that way. " Do as I say. Not as I do.
- codexon 8y ago
  The google captcha's are starting to be unsolvable for me.
- dcolkitt 8y ago
  I could be wrong, but I assume that Google mostly does this because of the huge amount of malicious garbage bot traffic on the web. Once you go fully anonymous and private, there's no way to distinguish you between the hordes of malicious traffic. But there seems like there should be a technological solution. Google knows what a "legitimate" user looks like. Either because they come from a safe IP, or they're registered Google users, or they have a normal established browser history. But using your legitimate identify compromises your privacy, because then your IP/user-account can be correlated to your personal identity. So, let's create zero-knowledge proof identity schemes. Using your legitimate, but non-private, identity you "register" an ephemeral, private anonymous identity. But it's done using zero-knowledge proof, such that Google has no idea about who a particular anonymous identity besides that it must belong to one of its several million legitimate identities.
blfr 8y ago
Laymen try to be careful online in completely unproductive ways: they keep logging in and out of Facebook without even deleting cookies, they disable data transmission on their phones when at home, etc. The only way to keep privacy online is to compartmentalize. Use one proxy and profile browser for discussing politics, another for HN/Reddit, yet another for LinkedIn. And always block everything you don't need. Start with ads since you virtually never need ads. Use various nicknames and avoid Facebook if you can swing it. Beyond that you only need a secure (up to date) OS, Signal, and maybe occasionally Tor. It may or may not hold up against an NSA-level adversary but you will easily lose most advertisers and corporate surveillance.
- aristophenes 8y ago
  How does this work when you can be individually identified by analysis of the things you write in comments or your mouse movements? And that can be correlated across HN, Reddit, LinkedIn. I suspect that almost all of us are the laymen you first described, to someone.
  - blfr 8y ago
    HN doesn't correlate mouse movement tremors with LinkedIn so it holds up very well against actual online threats today. It may or may not hold up against scifi threats of tomorrow.
    - acqq 8y ago
      > HN doesn't correlate mouse movement The "fingerprint" of the writing style, the interests and "likes" and "dislikes" patterns is often enough, the more one writes the more "uniqueness" can be determined.
- mirimir 8y ago
  That's a good start. But you're still vulnerable if you do everything in one OS. And no matter how you physically compartmentalize, you're still vulnerable if you're posting all of that as the same persona. Even if it's not you're real name. Because it can all be correlated easily. And even using multiple personas, you must take care to avoid linking them. No common social media, forums or mail lists. No cross-linking, or mentioning each other. No telling anyone about links between them. And as much as possible, no shared interests, especially specific ones. Instead of using one OS with multiple browsers, it's better to compartmentalize in multiple VMs. Each VM should reach the Internet through a different nested chain of VPNs. And for more anonymity, you can use Whonix for Tor. Also, it goes without saying that the machine should be full-disk encrypted, and that you should avoid Windows. When it really matters, you should use multiple physical machines, on separate LANs. And of course, be careful not to share USB drives among them.
mrw 8y ago
Every article/report about online privacy reminds me of how many people I know ignore these facts, don’t know them, or brush them off as they ‘don’t find it harmful’/‘have nothing to hide’. Can anyone give me some suggestions/point to a resource on how to present these facts to the not-tech people I care most about in a way they will actually care?
telesilla 8y ago
I've had an idea for a long time, what would happen if you had some silent tabs running alongside you, randomly opening and closing browser pages, clicking etc - acting like a human but with the purpose to create noise. It would also involve submitting articles and social media posts using your name, to make it harder to be found on search engines with any real clarity. If anyone knows of a project like this please let me know of it. I'm aware it would break all kinds of ToS but all is not fair in this privacy game.
- CharlesColeman 8y ago
  https://adnauseam.io/ https://adnauseam.io/
  - telesilla 8y ago
    Thank you! There is only one feature that keeps me on Chrome (I've moved most of my browsing to Firefox and Opera), and that's the built-in translation as I'm on a lot of non-english websites during the day. This will make my daily Chrome use a lot more enjoyable.
    - eikenberry 8y ago
      The built-in translation works on Chromium and might work on some of the privacy oriented Chromium based browsers as well. I normally use Firefox and use Chromium when I want this feature.
      - telesilla 8y ago
        I tested a few Chromium browsers today with privacy features and the translation feature is disabled. I will try raw Chromium - I'm curious how buggy it is to run it straight off dev. Epic: translate is disabled Iridium: 403 on using inline translate Chromium: 403 on using inline translate API key errors abound. After wasting way too much time I went back to Opera and finally found inline translation with this extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-translate/aapbdbdomjkkjkaonfhkkikfgjllcleb https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-translate/a... Now everything is well. Thanks for your tip however!
qrbLPHiKpiux 8y ago
Does it matter if I use the completely block list for Facebook et al on github?
guisepppe 8y ago
Clickbait for low hanging fruit. This is weak sauce, and really doesn't deserve a lot of attention.
the-man 8y ago
All you know about me is what I've sold you, dumb fuck. I sold out long before you'd ever even heard my name. What you've got on me has an expiration date, I promise you that much.
creamy_smooth 8y ago
Hey guys, I just took a massive shit! It was earthy in it's stench, and brown as the bark of a strong maple tree! What do you think of that? Good stuff, right? Does it increase the economic value of my profile in the panopticon? Advertise to me! I need toilet paper! Perhaps some wet wipes as the luxury premium upgrade! Come on, guys! Where's you sporting sense of adventure! Be a pal!
smartbit 8y ago
https://archive.is/lZq6M https://archive.is/lZq6M

218 points by tysone 8y ago

I think we're not really there yet. I think it's entirely possible for you to avoid most of this type of tracking if you so choose, but it does mean not using services such as Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and not giving out your phone number to people who use these services. What bothers me much more is that it might be possible to identify somebody through text analysis.

thatoneuser 8y ago
Deliberate obfuscation. Change the way you talk over time. Change your users and passwords. Even go so far as to say things that aren't the slightest bit true but can't be differentiated one way or another. Create a matrix of plausible personas you could possess and never let on to which sum of them you really are.
- Nextgrid 8y ago
  Wouldn’t it be better to shape the world in such a way that those techniques aren’t needed? Don’t work for nasty companies, don’t invest in them, don’t do business with them and lobby the government to outlaw tracking & stalking.
  - Mirioron 8y ago
    I don't think that's going to work in the long run. You can't stop technological progress.
    - Nextgrid 8y ago
      You can’t stop progress, but you can stop it being used for certain purposes, and laws mostly work as long as they’re enforced correctly.
  - thatoneuser 8y ago
    I don't do that and the companies still exist. You can't stop that so this is the only choice :/
  - jocoda 8y ago
    > ... shape the world ... For the first time we probably have the technology that could help realize something like this if we knew what the shape should look. Unfortunately we will never have that because that would mean the shaping had already been done. Then again, if you think about it, maybe the shaping has been done and the shapers already have what they want... > ... tracking and stalking I think governments have a vested interest in being able to track
- wmeredith 8y ago
  People are bad at stuff like this.
- ohaideredevs 8y ago
  This is not at all viable in real life, unless you have overwhelming motivation to do so, it's your one priority in life, and you are willing to lose out on a lot of things to do so.
morganherlocker 8y ago
Other articles in this NYT series describe how location data is used for similar types of inference. Many of these systems are nearly impossible to opt out of, since they rely on deep rooted tech, like cell carrier chipsets, credit purchase history (tied to retail addresses), or even psychographic & demographic profiles tied to people in your neighborhood (essentially block level aggregates of commute & purchase data). Your strategy of spending time generating fake data online is not enough to really opt out of these systems, and many would argue that the burden of generating consistent dummy personas is already immense. To really opt out of your data being sold or used to target you, you would need to be ready to not travel with a cell phone, not use any electronic payments like credit/debit cards, or even conceal your place of residence from public sources through complex legal obfuscation. Obviously there are different levels of obscurity that can be had, but much of this technology uses dragnets with few practical ways to entirely hide.
spaceheretostay 8y ago
> I think it's entirely possible for you to avoid most of this type of tracking if you so choose, but it does mean not using services such as Facebook,... Why do you think this is a choice? This is definitely not a choice any more. It has been 10+ years since Facebook removed your choice to not use it from society. Step outside and walk around. You will be photographed. Those photographs are going to Instagram and you are in the background. Your face is scanned by Facebook and they know where you go and what you do in the day. Facebook will know your location because other apps that you use will send Facebook your location without you even knowing it. Other people's actions online, who are tracked more vigorously, like emailing you or even meeting you in person for a coffee, will give further info to Facebook. Your cell signal location and your credit card history are probably up for sale and Facebook probably buys that too. You want to opt-out by staying home? Just order stuff online? I'm sure Facebook will still find a way to figure you out. There is no such thing as not-using-Facebook, or opting out any more. Saying that there is a way to choose not to be tracked is dangerous and wrong. > ...and not giving out your phone number to people who use these services. The tracking they can do is so far past just linking phone numbers though. Trying to keep a phone number secret simply isn't going to work and if it did, it would be ineffective in protecting you from being tracked.
krick 8y ago
> not giving out your phone number to people who use these services Come on! Are you even serious? It basically requires you being a hermit, because these people is fucking everyone. I think I'm pretty close to being as discreet as possible while being considered more or less normal, but it seems to be of no use — I'm not even always sure how fresh-new fake account on Facebook (or such) can imply this or that connection, or how youtube can recommend a video on some quite specific interest I might have shown a while ago on a completely different device. And I don't know about you, but I'm not feeling ready to refuse to interact with a girl/friend/relative because they are using whatsapp. I can only hate fb and wish Zuckerberg a painful death, but I don't see how I can realistically avoid being monitored.

gatherhunterer 8y ago

Ironically I opened this is private mode and was turned away. The New York Times is trying to have it both ways. I can log in and be tracked by their advertisers or I can be discreet and open articles from another source. I don't mind paying a small subscription but let me choose to deny your advertisers information on how I consume your content. If being tracked is part and parcel of being a subscriber then these pro-privacy articles look almost unethical.

dangus 8y ago
Works fine for me incognito with ads and tracker blocking extensions enabled. Keep in mind that the journalist who did the research and wrote the article did not have a say in how the employer who enabled them to write this piece generates revenue.
- linuxasheviller 8y ago
  > Keep in mind that the journalist who did the research and wrote the article did not have a say in how the employer who enabled them to write this piece generates revenue. In a way, she did. She is not an NYT employee, but rather, a professor at UNC Chapel Hill who could have published this piece elsewhere. To be clear, I don't fault her for her choice at all. Just pointing out that we all "opt-in" to this system when we participate in it, and that's a part of the problem.
  - dangus 8y ago
    I do agree with you, though I think opting out of the practices of most websites is impractical. The utility of my usage of the Internet far outweighs some advertisers figuring out what I like to buy. We do need more robust advertising privacy laws, though. By not being a NYT employee she has even less of a say in the matter. I'm sure she knows that nobody's going to read her article if it's published in The Daily Tar Heel. If someone gave you the opportunity to publish an article in The New York Times would you say no? I should also point out that the print edition of the NYT is still widely circulated, and it seems this article would have appeared in the Opinion section, tracker free :-)

jocoda 8y ago

From the article: >Such tools are already being marketed for use in hiring employees, for detecting shoppers’ moods and predicting criminal behavior. Surely, it's just a matter of time before we start gaming systems like this? You already have online reputation management for products and services. So how long is it before someone offers shaped online profiles for individuals as a service?

rolph 8y ago
its almost now.

o10449366 8y ago

"But today’s technology works at a far higher level. Consider an example involving Facebook. In 2017, the newspaper The Australian published an article, based on a leaked document from Facebook, revealing that the company had told advertisers that it could predict when younger users, including teenagers, were feeling “insecure,” “worthless” or otherwise in need of a “confidence boost.” Facebook was apparently able to draw these inferences by monitoring photos, posts and other social media data." Ironically, that's exactly what the NYT has started doing recently![0] I think they've realized just how lucrative selling these interferential insights can be; regardless of how accurate these metrics are, advertisers eat them up. How long until NYT writers start receiving pressure from upper management to produce content that maximizes emotional output from their readers? It's possible that proper restraint and separation of departments can be maintained, but I think history has shown that when profit motives are involved, greed often usurps ethics. [0] https://investors.nytco.com/press/press-releases/press-release-details/2018/The-New-York-Times-Advertising--Marketing-Solutions-Group-Introduces-nytDEMO-A-Cross-Functional-Team-Focused-on-Bringing-Insights-and-Data-Solutions-to-Brands/default.aspx https://investors.nytco.com/press/press-releases/press-relea...

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
spaceheretostay 8y ago
Surprised the author didn't reference the time when Facebook set out to intentionally manipulate hundreds of thousands of people by playing with their emotions [1]. Facebook made like 200,000 people start to feel sad on purpose and bragged about their abilities in a "scientific paper". That's in quotes because their lawyers say that you give your "informed consent" to be psychologically experimented on when you sign up for Facebook. Facebook does in fact decide to basically torture people into a depression with its power. Facebook is an evil entity and their intentional emotional torture exerted onto its users far surpasses the kind of thing you're quoting NYT for. Not excusing NYT here but Facebook is next-level-evil when it comes to psychological experimentation on unwilling and non-consenting users. [1] Lots of articles on this, here's a random one from Google searching: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everything-we-know-about-facebooks-secret-mood-manipulation-experiment/373648/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/every... (edited for accuracy, millions->thousands)

malvosenior 8y ago

What I don't understand is with all of this tracking, ML profiling... Why don't I get ads that are relevant to me at all? I'm very active all across the internet, proactively rate ads as "not relevant to me", would actually be interested in learning about products that I might like. Have disposable income... Yet nothing, just a sea of hot garbage ads that might as well be noise. I can't recall ever seeing something relevant enough to click on. I think the effectiveness of all of this stuff is way overrated. I have money, I will spend it, but with all the tech in the world the industry still can't put a relevant ad in front of me.

balls187 8y ago
Maybe you're not any companies target audience?
- malvosenior 8y ago
  That's doubtful as I don't live some kind of hermit like existence and regularly buy many products.
  - evanweaver 8y ago
    Maybe you should start; it would be a good A/B test.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - moreGlorpsEqual 8y ago
    The truth is, not all companies advertise. Many companies know that advertising won't shift sales, for what they'd be willing to invest in campaigns. The companies you love probably don't need ads. Meanwhile, the ads that you want to see are the least effective. They fail to persuade you to become a new customer, because you're already won over. The most effective ads change your mind. They turn you from an enemy to a friend. No one expends effort advertising to existing customers. Why preach to the choir?

username223 8y ago

Laws controlling the use of data, like those for credit reporting agencies, would help. So would laws on collection and sale of data. Tracker-blockers help a bit more, but they're an eternal battle. What we need is new social norms. Most people don't point video cameras at their neighbors' windows, not out of fear of being caught, but because it's just wrong. Similar norms should apply online, and people and companies who do it should be shunned.

akyu 8y ago

Theres another downstream issue of this that many people seem to be unaware of. I've gone down the road of trying to create a super private browsing experience.(www.privacytools.io for a good start). The issue is the web experience degrades rapdily and quite frequently is unusable. You have to block CDNs for a start if you really wanna go full paranoia mode. And there's too many other issues to list here. But the biggest issue, is that Google's CAPTCHAs become unsolveable. I mean literally they wont let you pass. You will get served a large sequence of captchas. I've experienced up to 6 for a single verification. And not only do you get more, but they deliberately add an excruciatingly slow delay to each image. It can take 10-15 seconds to solve a single image set, and then you still need to do 5 more. Also interesting side note, it seems they are injecting adversial noise into the hard captcha, as I noticed faint distortions in most of the images. Bur even with your best effort to solve them you will not get through. Ive repeated this experiement many times. It seems that preventing browser fingerprinting is the thing that really makes them put up a redflag, but its hard to know for sure. And I'd like to emphasize that none of the privacy modifications I was using make any significant change to normal browser functionality. You still have JS, you still have cookies (through Firefox containers). Anyway the scary thing here is its very easy to extrapolate this further and get to an internet where you either opt in to be tracked, or you are effectively throttled/gated on huge parts of the web. Google CAPTCHAs have gone from asking the question "Are you human?" to "Which human are you?". And the beautiful, incredible irony is how this contrasts with Google's very public stance on net neutrality. "Internet companies, innovative startups, and millions of internet users depend on these common-sense protections that prevent blocking or throttling of internet traffic, segmenting the internet into paid fast lanes and slow lanes, and other discriminatory practices. Thanks in part to net neutrality, the open internet has grown to become an unrivaled source of choice, competition, innovation, free expression, and opportunity. And it should stay that way. " Do as I say. Not as I do.

codexon 8y ago
The google captcha's are starting to be unsolvable for me.
dcolkitt 8y ago
I could be wrong, but I assume that Google mostly does this because of the huge amount of malicious garbage bot traffic on the web. Once you go fully anonymous and private, there's no way to distinguish you between the hordes of malicious traffic. But there seems like there should be a technological solution. Google knows what a "legitimate" user looks like. Either because they come from a safe IP, or they're registered Google users, or they have a normal established browser history. But using your legitimate identify compromises your privacy, because then your IP/user-account can be correlated to your personal identity. So, let's create zero-knowledge proof identity schemes. Using your legitimate, but non-private, identity you "register" an ephemeral, private anonymous identity. But it's done using zero-knowledge proof, such that Google has no idea about who a particular anonymous identity besides that it must belong to one of its several million legitimate identities.

blfr 8y ago

Laymen try to be careful online in completely unproductive ways: they keep logging in and out of Facebook without even deleting cookies, they disable data transmission on their phones when at home, etc. The only way to keep privacy online is to compartmentalize. Use one proxy and profile browser for discussing politics, another for HN/Reddit, yet another for LinkedIn. And always block everything you don't need. Start with ads since you virtually never need ads. Use various nicknames and avoid Facebook if you can swing it. Beyond that you only need a secure (up to date) OS, Signal, and maybe occasionally Tor. It may or may not hold up against an NSA-level adversary but you will easily lose most advertisers and corporate surveillance.

aristophenes 8y ago
How does this work when you can be individually identified by analysis of the things you write in comments or your mouse movements? And that can be correlated across HN, Reddit, LinkedIn. I suspect that almost all of us are the laymen you first described, to someone.
- blfr 8y ago
  HN doesn't correlate mouse movement tremors with LinkedIn so it holds up very well against actual online threats today. It may or may not hold up against scifi threats of tomorrow.
  - acqq 8y ago
    > HN doesn't correlate mouse movement The "fingerprint" of the writing style, the interests and "likes" and "dislikes" patterns is often enough, the more one writes the more "uniqueness" can be determined.
mirimir 8y ago
That's a good start. But you're still vulnerable if you do everything in one OS. And no matter how you physically compartmentalize, you're still vulnerable if you're posting all of that as the same persona. Even if it's not you're real name. Because it can all be correlated easily. And even using multiple personas, you must take care to avoid linking them. No common social media, forums or mail lists. No cross-linking, or mentioning each other. No telling anyone about links between them. And as much as possible, no shared interests, especially specific ones. Instead of using one OS with multiple browsers, it's better to compartmentalize in multiple VMs. Each VM should reach the Internet through a different nested chain of VPNs. And for more anonymity, you can use Whonix for Tor. Also, it goes without saying that the machine should be full-disk encrypted, and that you should avoid Windows. When it really matters, you should use multiple physical machines, on separate LANs. And of course, be careful not to share USB drives among them.

mrw 8y ago

Every article/report about online privacy reminds me of how many people I know ignore these facts, don’t know them, or brush them off as they ‘don’t find it harmful’/‘have nothing to hide’. Can anyone give me some suggestions/point to a resource on how to present these facts to the not-tech people I care most about in a way they will actually care?

telesilla 8y ago

I've had an idea for a long time, what would happen if you had some silent tabs running alongside you, randomly opening and closing browser pages, clicking etc - acting like a human but with the purpose to create noise. It would also involve submitting articles and social media posts using your name, to make it harder to be found on search engines with any real clarity. If anyone knows of a project like this please let me know of it. I'm aware it would break all kinds of ToS but all is not fair in this privacy game.

CharlesColeman 8y ago
https://adnauseam.io/ https://adnauseam.io/
- telesilla 8y ago
  Thank you! There is only one feature that keeps me on Chrome (I've moved most of my browsing to Firefox and Opera), and that's the built-in translation as I'm on a lot of non-english websites during the day. This will make my daily Chrome use a lot more enjoyable.
  - eikenberry 8y ago
    The built-in translation works on Chromium and might work on some of the privacy oriented Chromium based browsers as well. I normally use Firefox and use Chromium when I want this feature.
    - telesilla 8y ago
      I tested a few Chromium browsers today with privacy features and the translation feature is disabled. I will try raw Chromium - I'm curious how buggy it is to run it straight off dev. Epic: translate is disabled Iridium: 403 on using inline translate Chromium: 403 on using inline translate API key errors abound. After wasting way too much time I went back to Opera and finally found inline translation with this extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-translate/aapbdbdomjkkjkaonfhkkikfgjllcleb https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-translate/a... Now everything is well. Thanks for your tip however!

qrbLPHiKpiux 8y ago

Does it matter if I use the completely block list for Facebook et al on github?

guisepppe 8y ago

Clickbait for low hanging fruit. This is weak sauce, and really doesn't deserve a lot of attention.

the-man 8y ago

All you know about me is what I've sold you, dumb fuck. I sold out long before you'd ever even heard my name. What you've got on me has an expiration date, I promise you that much.

creamy_smooth 8y ago

Hey guys, I just took a massive shit! It was earthy in it's stench, and brown as the bark of a strong maple tree! What do you think of that? Good stuff, right? Does it increase the economic value of my profile in the panopticon? Advertise to me! I need toilet paper! Perhaps some wet wipes as the luxury premium upgrade! Come on, guys! Where's you sporting sense of adventure! Be a pal!

smartbit 8y ago

https://archive.is/lZq6M https://archive.is/lZq6M