If you're not paying for something, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold.

[jtuck004]

Quote from Andrew Lewis.

With all the discussion about privacy, I thought this story might help those who think it exists any longer. There is actually more data being gathered by private companies about individuals than the NSA might even dream of, (The NSA's purpose is, ostensibly, to look for criminal activity. The other's is to take any money you may have.) It makes me wonder if we should push more to share in the wealth.



You Are The Product, Not The Client: The Personal Data Economy Explained

...
More accurately, the product is our personal data, which is being sold to advertisers, collected in massive databases, and used to target advertising and built up detailed profiles on us.

You’re Part Of Many Huge Databases

As you’re no doubt aware, advertisers collect data about everything you do online – from the websites you “Like“, to the articles you read and the videos you watch – and this information is stored in massive databases. Social-networking websites like Facebook, which users provide with a lot of information, can build up even more detailed profiles about you. Increasingly, these databases aren’t disconnected silos of information – they communicate with each other to share information about you and build up even more detailed profiles.
...

Here

[VanillaRhapsody]

1. Ding Ding Ding...this is the real story...

[Whisp]

2. Ty, haven't read yet but someone last night posted a toon saying that.

It hit me like a ton of bricks at the truth of it and who are the real surveillers.

===

Think you can avoid this tracking by signing out of websites like Facebook and clearing your cookies? Think again. Technologies like BlueCava’s Device ID create a “fingerprint” from your browser and computer’s settings that can be used to identify you even if you’ve logged out and cleared your private data. For a demonstration of how this technology can work – and just how unique your browser fingerprint is – check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Panopticlick page.

ugh.

[dgauss]

11. Thanks, I did check that out and learned something new.

"Fingerprinting" your browser so you can be identified, profiled, packaged and sold to whoever would like to extract money from you is creepy to me.

Then again, if marketers use this method I'm guessing the NSA does, too. And while the marketing use of this information probably has more direct impact on my life right now, the potential of government misuse of this information, or more likely some unforeseen government/corporate collusion, seems to me to have a far worse potential.

Think Citizens United, redistricting, GOP house, GOP Senate, ALEC, a Tea Party fuckhead president, insatiable corporate greed.

[MADem]

3. Always take out supermarket/drugstore loyalty cards in the names of dead relatives.

It will cause you think of them every time you get a piece of junk mail for them, and it will fuck up those databases.

Also, you'll get a good idea of when and to whom they sell "your" name.

[LisaLynne]

4. Ha!

I actually have a thing about those loyalty cards because ... you know, you can tell a lot about a person from their drugstore/supermarket purchases. Especially the late night Saturday purchases of wine and cat food that they would see on mine.

[gateley]

8. ....

[BlueStreak]

5. A private company can throw an ad at you. The govt can put you in prison.

Do you see the difference?

[jtuck004]

6. Sure, but in prison chances are I won't starve or freeze to death,

or burn myself up by having to try to burn newspapers in the electric stove that no longer works because they shut off the power I can't pay for.

And while I lose my "freedom", I don't live 40 years at a less than min wage job at Walmart, paying tribute to the banks and whomever else finds a way to take fees out of my ass while I live "free".

Sure, I see the differences.

[BlueStreak]

10. Those things you mention are NOT the result of the "data mining"

Those corporate behaviors are simply the result of the system that has evolved where corporate greed is allowed to be boundless. I certainly agree that the net result of American corporatism today is in many cases pure evil.

But the purpose of corporate data mining is to entice you into VOLUNTARILY buying more goods that you probably don't even want or need. That is simply not the same thing as a spying program that can be abused by a government that has the power to kill or imprison its citizens and deny them legal due process.

Please don't go there. They are not equivalent at all. We certainly need to make sure that all the data corporations crunch is properly obtained and properly used. And we certainly should have a huge concern when the same contractors engaged in UNCONSTITUTIONAL spying for our government is also in a position to provide"intelligence" to corporate clients. Those are certainly valid concerns.

[jtuck004]

12. They are in fact the result of greedy capitalists sucking resources unfairly out of the society

that might otherwise use them to educate their children, feed the hungry, or provide medical care for those who have none. And data mining is for damn sure one of their tools, so there should be no pretence that such activity is anything but immoral. That same data mining is used to find areas of the country where they can sell people more alcohol, cigarettes, and fast food, replacing better foods with poorer quality, more expensive 7-11's than even a Walmart.

And one misses the point to think they aren't providing a profit unless they buy something.

But it is farcical to say it's voluntary, after training people most of their lives to be consumers, pitting them against each other by the amount and color of the stuff they have. Voluntary my ass.

You are right in that it's not equivalent. But that doesn't mean it can't be just as evil, mean, and immoral as denying someone their rights and putting them in a prison of another kind.

What I want is for people to know that they are the product, and are being sold and profited from even if they aren't "voluntarily" buying anything. They make nothing from that, just like any field hand on a plantation. Some people don't have a problem with that, but that doesn't mean it needs to be kept under wraps. I think a lot of daylight would do it a world of good.

Does that mean it's all bad? No. For example, it helps pay for DU to be here.

For example, the software listed in the article will show the connections you have visited and the links between them and others. The ones from the third party cookies used by DU show

Check out what it says about the connections between DU and whomever

When you visit

democraticunderground.com,

it informs the following websites about you.

tinypic.com
advertising.com
invitemedia.com
invitemedia.net
amazon-adsystem.com
bp.blogspot.com
smugmug.com
billking.net
gay.net
247realmedia.com
ru4.com
clearspring.com
akamaihd.net
ipaidmytaxes.org
imgfarm.com
occuprint.org
adtechus.com
quantserve.com
advansenow.com
adroll.com
w55c.net
mathtag.com
adnxs.com
mookie1.com
fbcdn.net
adsafeprotected.com
truste.com
adsrvr.org
facebook.com
facebook.net
photobucket.com
googleadservices.com
twitter.com
questionmarket.com
betrad.com
2mdn.net
googlesyndication.com
gstatic.com
criteo.com
blogads.com
mediaplex.com
youtube.com
doubleclick.net
google-analytics.com

Does that mean anything out of context? Doubt it. But pair it with a few links from other sources, now you have something I, and a lot of others, can mine for analysis. Ask a woman who has to explain why they are suddenly getting ads for diapers and baby shower suggestions before she has even told her spouse or significant other that she is pregnant.

I have never been to some of those sites, yet there is a list. What might it tell you about me? What information is being shared? And with whom?. And now it is in several huge databases, as yours may be, as is the data from thousands of others. Databases owned or controlled by, say, the nice folks at Koch Industries, perhaps. Databases that have data from other sources to help learn things about us.

As bad as it is for the government to be doing its snooping, that's nothing compared to that data and what it is revealing about people. And they don't need no stinkin' warrant.

We know that in the 1920 the government had a commission which estimated business was spending $88 million a year on finks, spies, and killers, or over a billion dollars a year in today's bucks. Here's a link to Nestle infiltrating and activist group, http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014386107, another showing Walmart, another corp with big databases full of our personal information, infiltrating worker organizing, http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2379353. I can't imagine what they are spending today, but I bet it's in the hundreds of billions, all to gather info.

There are a lot more. Ask anyone affiliated with Occupy. Did Kerr-McGee kill Karen Silkwood after she found evidence of their mishandling of nuclear materials? We will never know. And, as I am sure you are aware, a number of these business have connections with other governments, who, now, also have access to all that info.

Honestly, I hate that the government is doing what it is doing. But those black helicopters overhead may stand as good chance, or better, of being private rather than government run, and we may have just as much to fear from them. Or maybe more.

ymmv, of course.

[BlueStreak]

13. A agree it is insidious and deserves to have sunlight

But I don't think it is the same thing as a government accumulating a vast dossier on all its citizens because ultimately all a corporation can do is try to sell us more crap.

I do think it is really horrible that a person has to spend so much time defending against the onslaught of advertising. It is a real hassle to clean up those cookies regularly. I have to seek browser solutions that suppress the advertising, and really, there is no escape. We can see where this is headed. Now I have to listen to completely unwelcome ads just to buy a tank of gas. Companies won't be happy until they have us suffering continuous advertising 24 hours a day.

[jtuck004]

14. Let me suggest something else to you. We both know that people with billions of dollars and

evil (or at least what you and I would consider evil) motivations owns those databases. And they do. And instead of checking sites with kids names on them, the woman looks at some abortion provider sites.

So instead of getting diaper coupons, the next day she sees a car following her. When she goes to the drug store she thinks she sees, just for a moment, the driver, but then he walks away. The car reappears as she heads somewhere that evening. And she sees it again the next day when she goes to talk to her doctor about some options.

Or worse, she doesn't see anything at all. All from private data collection.

You are correct, there is no escape. If nothing else most people's IP address is logged somewhere. A crazy true believer contacted by someone with a pipeline to data could find out the general location of what netblocks are being used, and then it's just a matter of a few bucks to a cable employee to find your address, a few more if you are important.

Kinda takes it out of the realm of cleaning cookies off a computer, ya' know? And besides, when the cookies are there, your information is already halfway around the world.

I agree that we have to worry about the government surveillance. But private companies (who have great influence over our elected officials) hire people with far less concern about their morals or background. They just want results. And at least with the government we have some chance of transparency, or maybe stopping it. I doubt enough people would educate themselves and be willing to do whatever it would take to end the data gathering and mining of the private companies, in a country where you can hire half of the people to kill the other half.

That said, there are some tremendous advances in medicine, safety, and a few other things coming down the pike, part of this whole data accumulation and analysis thing, advances that may well help us in many ways. So it's not all bad

[BlueStreak]

17. I agree that we are approaching a time when we need to talk about a "Consumer bill of rights"

But job #1 is to get the original bill of rights put back in place, especially the 4th amendment.

Fortunately the Europeans are way ahead of us here. This really is a struggle for all time. This bullcrap about "American exceptionalism" is at the heart of all this. What is exceptional is the ability of corporations to run roughshod over the best interests of the people. The real struggle is this:

Can Europe hold on to their ethic of consumer protection long enough for us to join them, or will the "American exceptionalism" overtake Europe first?

And speaking of a clearly stated agenda that might take the form of a "Consumer bill of rights", the party that first puts this in front of the American people will win the next election in a landslide. I often look back on Gingrich's Contract with America. As a political tactic, that was hugely successful. The policies in that "contract", individually, were actually not all that popular, but the American people are so sick of deceptive, evasive, flat-out lying politicians that they will naturally gravitate toward anything that looks like a solid promise. You give the public a solid set of promises and plans on issues they actually agree with and you would have an unstoppable force.

So why don't the Dems do this? Well, the sad answer is that the corporations don't want that, and they own the election process now.

[jtuck004]

18. "...corporations...own the election process now." This. n/t

[Initech]

7. You know maybe the advertising industry is the root of all evil.

Ad companies have become vultures anymore just circling around, waiting to strike.

[Catherina]

9. There's that profit again. Rec

[Douglas Carpenter]

15. has it ever occurred to you that maybe Facebook, or Yahoo or whoever might be providing these

services to people out of the sure goodness of their heart because they want to help?

[jtuck004]

16. Certainly. And I know that Walmart keeps prices low because they have such a deep and abiding

respect for women (google Tom Cruise's speech at their last shareholders meeting - he was very persuasive)., despite the 1100 people killed in the latest building collapse where some of their clothes are made, or the women burned to death in another, or the many who cannot afford health insurance in their employee structure which keeps them working at near poverty levels. And the Koch Brothers, who have access to a lot of these resources, are only involved in conservative politics because they love this country so much, what with their deep and abiding respect for the democratic process, cooperative living, and commitment to a diversified culture in this country, despite the money they gave to screw over the Democrats in the last election and foment hatred and racism in the country by underwriting the Tea Party.

And I am quite sure Facebook has wish to maximize profit, and I am quite sure it was accidental that they paid no income taxes in 2012, here.

...
Facebook didn't pay any federal or state income taxes last year and will receive a hefty tax refund, according to a recent report.

According to the Citizen for Tax Justice report, the company benefited from the tax deductibility of executive stock options, which reduced all of its income taxes by $1.03 billion in 2012, CNBC said.

The social media sit ealso has another $2.17 billion in extra tax-option breaks to carry forward in the future, according to the report, which means Facebook gets to deduct a total of more than $3 billion in current and future taxes, according to the report.

I am quite sure that Target, who employs statisticians to find pregnant women before they have their baby because that is the time when they are most vulnerable to marketing campaigns is only doing it out of love.

On the other hand, I do know there is data being collected on drivers and driving habits that will lead to safer travel, so, yeah, sometimes it can be used for good.

Perhaps it comes down to how someone views "goodness of their heart".