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>It'd take a whistleblower for anyone to ever find out. No it won't. If you have a hypothesis you can just test it out. Go submit some fake personal data and t

>It'd take a whistleblower for anyone to ever find out. No it won't. If you have a hypothesis you can just test it out. Go submit some fake personal data and then see if it shows up anywhere else. This trick is as old as using a honeypot name or email address to test if a service signs you up for junk mail.

autoexec 5y ago
> Go submit some fake personal data and then see if it shows up anywhere else. this is not a valid test, for a whole lot of reasons. especially not in terms of internet search engines. One reason for this, is that the specific things you search aren't what's actually valuable. Companies use that data to make guesses about you. It's those guesses, not your specific search terms, that are used to profile you. So why not just try to get yourself profiled a certain way? Search a bunch of stuff about a specific disease and click a bunch of the links and see if you start getting targeted ads about those diseases? Well, who is to say who sold that data? Was it the search engine, or the websites you clicked on? Not all the data collected on you is used for targeted ads, and of course even when it is used for ads not all of those targeted ads demonstrate a proven link back to your search teams. If you see an ad for cheap airline tickets maybe it's because you've been searching for stuff about another country, or maybe some algorithm thinks your bipolar and entering a manic phase since they are more likely to buy tickets. Maybe it's just an ad for cheap airline tickets because the airline wants more people to fly right while weather warms. You can't know. Better ways to test what DDG is doing behind the scenes might be things like get hired there in a central role. Have the government or an independent auditor review their data collection practices.
- throwaway82652 5y ago
  >this is not a valid test, for a whole lot of reasons. especially not in terms of internet search engines. Then come up with a better test. I'm sure you can think of something that answers those questions to a reasonable level of confidence and can be targeted at any data broker. This is literally what a lot of independent auditing actually is. The reality is, you can't go and work on the inside at every data broker and that defeats the purpose of an independent audit anyways. So you have to come up with something else.
  - autoexec 5y ago
    As I said: "Better ways to test what DDG is doing behind the scenes might be things like get hired there in a central role. Have the government or an independent auditor review their data collection practices." > The reality is, you can't go and work on the inside at every data broker and that defeats the purpose of an independent audit anyways. So you have to come up with something else. It's true that it's unreasonable for people get a job at every company they have to work with. The real solution is regulation and oversight to protect our data from being collected, sold, and used against us. Experts all agree we need it and they've been saying so for a very very long time, but so far there's not been much effort from congress.

autoexec 5y ago

> Go submit some fake personal data and then see if it shows up anywhere else. this is not a valid test, for a whole lot of reasons. especially not in terms of internet search engines. One reason for this, is that the specific things you search aren't what's actually valuable. Companies use that data to make guesses about you. It's those guesses, not your specific search terms, that are used to profile you. So why not just try to get yourself profiled a certain way? Search a bunch of stuff about a specific disease and click a bunch of the links and see if you start getting targeted ads about those diseases? Well, who is to say who sold that data? Was it the search engine, or the websites you clicked on? Not all the data collected on you is used for targeted ads, and of course even when it is used for ads not all of those targeted ads demonstrate a proven link back to your search teams. If you see an ad for cheap airline tickets maybe it's because you've been searching for stuff about another country, or maybe some algorithm thinks your bipolar and entering a manic phase since they are more likely to buy tickets. Maybe it's just an ad for cheap airline tickets because the airline wants more people to fly right while weather warms. You can't know. Better ways to test what DDG is doing behind the scenes might be things like get hired there in a central role. Have the government or an independent auditor review their data collection practices.

throwaway82652 5y ago
>this is not a valid test, for a whole lot of reasons. especially not in terms of internet search engines. Then come up with a better test. I'm sure you can think of something that answers those questions to a reasonable level of confidence and can be targeted at any data broker. This is literally what a lot of independent auditing actually is. The reality is, you can't go and work on the inside at every data broker and that defeats the purpose of an independent audit anyways. So you have to come up with something else.
- autoexec 5y ago
  As I said: "Better ways to test what DDG is doing behind the scenes might be things like get hired there in a central role. Have the government or an independent auditor review their data collection practices." > The reality is, you can't go and work on the inside at every data broker and that defeats the purpose of an independent audit anyways. So you have to come up with something else. It's true that it's unreasonable for people get a job at every company they have to work with. The real solution is regulation and oversight to protect our data from being collected, sold, and used against us. Experts all agree we need it and they've been saying so for a very very long time, but so far there's not been much effort from congress.