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Could you elaborate with specifics? If it's this bad, why haven't we heard anything from a whistleblower or seen a good demo?

rapind 1y ago
We hear about it all the time but no one cares.
seplox 1y ago
I guess you were just distracted by all of the other house-on-fire crap going on. https://therecord.media/ftc-complaint-against-kochava-unsealed https://therecord.media/ftc-complaint-against-kochava-unseal... Among the additional information Kochava collects and sells are non-anonymized individual home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, gender, age, ethnicity, yearly income, “economic stability,” marital status, education level, political affiliation and “interests and behaviors,” compiling and selling dossiers on individuals marketed as offering a “360-degree perspective,” the FTC said. ... According to the FTC, Kochava’s data can identify women who visit reproductive clinics by name and address along with, for example, when they visit particular buildings, their names, email and home addresses, number of children, race and app usage. ... Kochava marketing materials tell customers it offers “rich geo data spanning billions of devices globally” and that its location data feed “delivers raw latitude/longitude data with volumes around 94B+ geo-transactions per month, 125 million monthly active users, and 35 million daily active users, on average observing more than 90 daily transactions per device.” ... The complaint also alleges that the company has lax procedures for determining who it is selling data to, saying purchasers are allowed to use a generic personal email address, label an alleged company as “self” and explain they plan to use the data for “business.” And then there's this: https://therecord.media/data-brokers-are-selling-military-secrets https://therecord.media/data-brokers-are-selling-military-se...
- chasd00 1y ago
  I was on a team of about 25 involved in pitching a particularly large deal to a public sector client (think US state/local governments). The audience was about 50 people from different departments and agencies throughout the state and our pitch team consisted of about 6-8 very big shots + me the computer nerd. During our prep and rehearsals a "look book" was distributed which consisted of write ups on each person expected to be in the audience. It was very detailed with a career and education history of each person, a personality analysis, where their interests/passions lie both at work and personally, and what topics and key points set them off. The deck was very professional and not something thrown together, i was impressed but a little taken aback too.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
JohnMakin 1y ago
Because none of it is really unknown? People know about it and don't care. Hell, even people on this forum that should know better and care that don't, or think when they hear about stuff like this it's FB pixel or google analytics stuff. The simple fact is with a few basic pieces of information on somebody, there's almost nothing that is sacred or not for sale. People mistakenly believe they're protected by adblockers and stuff, or by avoiding social media, but the simple fact is that it is unavoidable while simply existing and the 1000x comment is from my POV the scale of it is astounding and growing every year and people really don't have a good understanding of the subtle and not subtle ways it can affect you, or when told, don't care/dismiss it. So I don't really feel anymore like explaining it. If more people understood, I'd also stand to profit quite a bit from it, so that's where my frustrated tone is coming from.
- genghisjahn 1y ago
  I'm pretty sure it was over when we switched to debit/credit cards. Everywhere you go, how much you buy, all that stuff has been sold for quite a while now.
  - chgs 1y ago
    People voluntarily used loyalty cards well before then.
    - hnlmorg 1y ago
      I remember when loyalty cards first came to England. There were consumer rights shows on TV devoting entire episodes to the evils of their spying. It’s amazing how much worse things have gotten, yet how people seem to care less now than they used to. I wonder if it’s just consumers being so overwhelmed by their lack of control that they’ve become apathetic to the problem as a whole.
      - tpxl 1y ago
        Legitimate question: At this point, what could a loyalty card possibly measure that isn't already measured on a bigger scale? The cc/bank provider already gets an itemized bill, and they get it for everywhere you shop as opposed to a single store (so a superset of this data is already collected). This is in some (most?) cases already shared with stores, and even if it isn't, what can a store do with it the bank/cc provider can't do worse.
astura 1y ago
Cuz it's not really unknown nor is it illegal. I know someone who bought the address of everyone with a specific first name.
- timeon 1y ago
  > nor is it illegal Where I live it is.
  - astura 1y ago
    I simply don't believe you that all data brokers are completely and entirely illegal where you live.
roadside_picnic 1y ago
I could give you some great horror stories, but honestly I don't see the benefit in either potentially harming former coworkers of mine that still work at those places or ending myself in some sort of career/legal trouble for something people generally don't care about (other than a few points on HN). If you were caught demoing something both horrific and internal you would risk serious damage to your career, and ultimately will have zero impact on the industry as there's just too much data out there and too much money wrapped up in it. Plus, most people working with the data don't bother to look at it. The places I've internally demo'd massive privacy risks were shocked because they didn't realize what their own data was capable of. Most people are just writing jobs that run and shuffle data around from one place to another never really asking "what is this data?" Even among data scientists I'm routinely surprised (so maybe I shouldn't be surprised) how frequently data scientist never do any real error analysis by looking at what the model got wrong and trying to understand why.

rapind 1y ago

We hear about it all the time but no one cares.

seplox 1y ago

I guess you were just distracted by all of the other house-on-fire crap going on. https://therecord.media/ftc-complaint-against-kochava-unsealed https://therecord.media/ftc-complaint-against-kochava-unseal... Among the additional information Kochava collects and sells are non-anonymized individual home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, gender, age, ethnicity, yearly income, “economic stability,” marital status, education level, political affiliation and “interests and behaviors,” compiling and selling dossiers on individuals marketed as offering a “360-degree perspective,” the FTC said. ... According to the FTC, Kochava’s data can identify women who visit reproductive clinics by name and address along with, for example, when they visit particular buildings, their names, email and home addresses, number of children, race and app usage. ... Kochava marketing materials tell customers it offers “rich geo data spanning billions of devices globally” and that its location data feed “delivers raw latitude/longitude data with volumes around 94B+ geo-transactions per month, 125 million monthly active users, and 35 million daily active users, on average observing more than 90 daily transactions per device.” ... The complaint also alleges that the company has lax procedures for determining who it is selling data to, saying purchasers are allowed to use a generic personal email address, label an alleged company as “self” and explain they plan to use the data for “business.” And then there's this: https://therecord.media/data-brokers-are-selling-military-secrets https://therecord.media/data-brokers-are-selling-military-se...

chasd00 1y ago
I was on a team of about 25 involved in pitching a particularly large deal to a public sector client (think US state/local governments). The audience was about 50 people from different departments and agencies throughout the state and our pitch team consisted of about 6-8 very big shots + me the computer nerd. During our prep and rehearsals a "look book" was distributed which consisted of write ups on each person expected to be in the audience. It was very detailed with a career and education history of each person, a personality analysis, where their interests/passions lie both at work and personally, and what topics and key points set them off. The deck was very professional and not something thrown together, i was impressed but a little taken aback too.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

JohnMakin 1y ago

Because none of it is really unknown? People know about it and don't care. Hell, even people on this forum that should know better and care that don't, or think when they hear about stuff like this it's FB pixel or google analytics stuff. The simple fact is with a few basic pieces of information on somebody, there's almost nothing that is sacred or not for sale. People mistakenly believe they're protected by adblockers and stuff, or by avoiding social media, but the simple fact is that it is unavoidable while simply existing and the 1000x comment is from my POV the scale of it is astounding and growing every year and people really don't have a good understanding of the subtle and not subtle ways it can affect you, or when told, don't care/dismiss it. So I don't really feel anymore like explaining it. If more people understood, I'd also stand to profit quite a bit from it, so that's where my frustrated tone is coming from.

genghisjahn 1y ago
I'm pretty sure it was over when we switched to debit/credit cards. Everywhere you go, how much you buy, all that stuff has been sold for quite a while now.
- chgs 1y ago
  People voluntarily used loyalty cards well before then.
  - hnlmorg 1y ago
    I remember when loyalty cards first came to England. There were consumer rights shows on TV devoting entire episodes to the evils of their spying. It’s amazing how much worse things have gotten, yet how people seem to care less now than they used to. I wonder if it’s just consumers being so overwhelmed by their lack of control that they’ve become apathetic to the problem as a whole.
    - tpxl 1y ago
      Legitimate question: At this point, what could a loyalty card possibly measure that isn't already measured on a bigger scale? The cc/bank provider already gets an itemized bill, and they get it for everywhere you shop as opposed to a single store (so a superset of this data is already collected). This is in some (most?) cases already shared with stores, and even if it isn't, what can a store do with it the bank/cc provider can't do worse.

astura 1y ago

Cuz it's not really unknown nor is it illegal. I know someone who bought the address of everyone with a specific first name.

timeon 1y ago
> nor is it illegal Where I live it is.
- astura 1y ago
  I simply don't believe you that all data brokers are completely and entirely illegal where you live.

roadside_picnic 1y ago

I could give you some great horror stories, but honestly I don't see the benefit in either potentially harming former coworkers of mine that still work at those places or ending myself in some sort of career/legal trouble for something people generally don't care about (other than a few points on HN). If you were caught demoing something both horrific and internal you would risk serious damage to your career, and ultimately will have zero impact on the industry as there's just too much data out there and too much money wrapped up in it. Plus, most people working with the data don't bother to look at it. The places I've internally demo'd massive privacy risks were shocked because they didn't realize what their own data was capable of. Most people are just writing jobs that run and shuffle data around from one place to another never really asking "what is this data?" Even among data scientists I'm routinely surprised (so maybe I shouldn't be surprised) how frequently data scientist never do any real error analysis by looking at what the model got wrong and trying to understand why.