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It's not about aggregate behavior with millions of others at all. It's about profiling. Consider the case of clicking a link in an email someone sent me for a

It's not about aggregate behavior with millions of others at all. It's about profiling. Consider the case of clicking a link in an email someone sent me for a joke. My google account thereafter managed to associate me with bestality [1]. Fun eh? Now ironically, over a year later, I was still getting rather awful targeted Google Ads advertising and SPAM to a supposedly unrelated email account (on Windows Live with no associated Google account). The persistent google cookie from hell dragged that information and my three static IP addresses across multiple sites and managed to basically bombard me with shit. Something somewhere managed to make the associations and send directed advertising. They had me profiled. That in my mind is unacceptable, which is why I don't want to sign up for another profiling account. It's not paranoia or conspiracy crap - it's fact. Regarding usenet: there's no reliable way to profile people on it due to its architecture. [1] I accept some responsibility for clicking a link in an email of course.

bane 15y ago
Regarding usenet: there's no reliable way to profile people on it due to its architecture. Fun fact, I used to work an ISP years and years ago as a tech support peon, but I remember a couple cases of police visiting us working child porn cases with subpoenas for a copy of our access logs for dial-in lines and our Usenet server. Both times the suspect was successfully prosecuted because we and the two other usenet servers he used logged activity, so we could demonstrate what posts he had made, when and from which IP. Many Usenet servers, especially these days, require a user/pass to gain access, which is probably logged (like we did back in the day). Also, since your profile contains minimal information the weight of your accidental bestiality hit is magnified. So for a lack of other things to show you, they show you ads for local donkey shows. Fill your profile up with more legitimate activity and that will become a rounding error. Plus, it's associated your IP address, or some other aspect of your profile, not you personally. Which is the thrust of the rest of my response. The activity is associated with your clothes not the person. Finally, your lack of profilable activity is in and of itself more profilable. "Oh, he's the guy that doesn't want to be profiled." Is more notable than "He's the guy that uses the Internet just like everybody else." Weird usage patterns are one of the first things network analysts look to establish when tracking people. You for example, would be great to advertise to about security and identity protection products.
- pointyhat 15y ago
  That's a fair statistical analysis so I get your point. With respect to Usenet, I'd fully expect that the endpoint logs, but not every intermediatary who happens to have an agreement with another intermediatary, which is the issue with tracking on the web. Distribution of information is no longer controlled by the endpoint or by contract, but rather by coincidence via any nefarious method possible. If I did something naughty, I'd expect to get caught. This is not about anonymity, but about the assumptions that people draw about you based on unrelated information tracked from multiple sources. However, I'd rather be an obvious objector than annoyed by donkey porn adverts :) I don't see ads either (Firefox+Adblock+ghostery+noscript).

bane 15y ago

Regarding usenet: there's no reliable way to profile people on it due to its architecture. Fun fact, I used to work an ISP years and years ago as a tech support peon, but I remember a couple cases of police visiting us working child porn cases with subpoenas for a copy of our access logs for dial-in lines and our Usenet server. Both times the suspect was successfully prosecuted because we and the two other usenet servers he used logged activity, so we could demonstrate what posts he had made, when and from which IP. Many Usenet servers, especially these days, require a user/pass to gain access, which is probably logged (like we did back in the day). Also, since your profile contains minimal information the weight of your accidental bestiality hit is magnified. So for a lack of other things to show you, they show you ads for local donkey shows. Fill your profile up with more legitimate activity and that will become a rounding error. Plus, it's associated your IP address, or some other aspect of your profile, not you personally. Which is the thrust of the rest of my response. The activity is associated with your clothes not the person. Finally, your lack of profilable activity is in and of itself more profilable. "Oh, he's the guy that doesn't want to be profiled." Is more notable than "He's the guy that uses the Internet just like everybody else." Weird usage patterns are one of the first things network analysts look to establish when tracking people. You for example, would be great to advertise to about security and identity protection products.

pointyhat 15y ago
That's a fair statistical analysis so I get your point. With respect to Usenet, I'd fully expect that the endpoint logs, but not every intermediatary who happens to have an agreement with another intermediatary, which is the issue with tracking on the web. Distribution of information is no longer controlled by the endpoint or by contract, but rather by coincidence via any nefarious method possible. If I did something naughty, I'd expect to get caught. This is not about anonymity, but about the assumptions that people draw about you based on unrelated information tracked from multiple sources. However, I'd rather be an obvious objector than annoyed by donkey porn adverts :) I don't see ads either (Firefox+Adblock+ghostery+noscript).