A friend and I were recently having a verbal in person discussion regarding a very obscure topic. 30 minutes later, his facebook (I stopped using Social Media a long time ago) starts showing advertisements for the topic were were disusing (which he swears he had never had searched on his phone or computer). Corporations eavesdropping on discussions in the privacy of your own home may be benign to some, even more concerning is the eavesdropping that could be occurring by any number of other parties with more unsavory motives.
215
"Corporations eavesdropping on discussions in the privacy of your own home ..."
What do you mean by "eavesdropping"? Where was your friend's phone while you were discussing the "obscure topic"? Does he use any voice apps, such as Siri or Alexa?
4
This didn’t happen as your friend described. They’ve searched for it, or it’s so common a topic of discussion (eg Mueller Report) that it doesn’t mean anything.
9
What's more scary - that they were listening? Or that their algorithm independently predicted you would likely be interested in that topic?
9
Our butcher had veal ribs, something I’d never seen or noticed before. We bought some and I searched how to cook them. The next day there was an ad for a Spanish restaurant (we live in France) featuring veal ribs on Facebook. My wife watched a Tony Robbins documentary on Netflix. Soon after, Tony Robbins ads appeared on Facebook. The oddest is she bought a new brand of tea at the grocery store to try, never searching for it online. Soon after, Facebook ads for the brand showed up. All that is in Europe, where privacy laws are much stronger than the US.
76
and what was the personal downside to you or your wife as a result of seeing these ads?
@shirley freid
The right to privacy, and that includes the right to have total control over being traded or sold as a commodity.
20
@Michael
But really, so what? Does any of this harm you? Woud you rather get ads for Viagra, cars, and junk food like you would on TV?
2
A vast majority of Americans love advertising. They don't use ad blockers on their computers; they don't mute the ads on their TVs. A whole cultural glee-fest has built up around Super Bowl ads.
If so many weren't so in love, ad-centric social media would never have been invented. You love it. Enjoy it!
5
Data inferring or whatever it’s called can be done by the average person, just on a smaller scale. For example, I found a video an ex had liked on you tube. I then traced the video to the person in the video, got their name from the video, then found their instagram. Scrolling back two years in the instagram feed, there’s some pics of my ex with this person. Ohhh they have a “history”. Then found this person’s linked in, oh my ex is connected on linked in to this person. All of that information came from a “like” on you tube.
It’s all connected in some way. And I’m really good at internet research.
6
On your browser: clear out your cookies several times a day, limit your use of social media, and use adblockers (sorry NYT, but I'm giving you money each month already, I'm not looking at ads). On your phone: close apps you're not using, clear out histories, turn off location tracking (I also turn off Siri), and turn off background activity of apps --saves battery, too.
Though to be honest, as much as I hate being tracked, I still use gmail and google. I'm mildly bemused that gmail so accurate targets the unobtrusive ads to my interests. I may give nearly zero data to Fakebook (I erase its cookie from other sites), but Google knows EVeRYTHing about me. Hoping my trust is not misplaced.
5
Wow... neither Huxley or Orwell could have even imagined our present state of affairs... In short order 'privacy' will be a piece of history, much like 'phonograph' or 'thimble'... And I see little government appetite (apart from some EU legislation) to rein this out-of-control phenomenon. A short video I made a couple of years ago – Police State of Mind – seems even more relevant today...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTemZJSyzYo
4
Who thinks we're discreet online?
2
If Facebook denies it, you know it's happening.
7
Yet another piece by a highly credentialed expert that completely misses the point:
Hardy anyone's ever been harmed by the targeting of ads by legitimate companies. (I wish Dr. Tufekci could cite just one example in her piece.)
Many, many people, however, are imperiled by criminals lurking online, whether they're fraudulent advertisers or plain old criminals who use the social media to learn enough about their victims to be able to steal from, or even worse, physically-harm them.
Quite the opposite from what Dr, Tucekci says in her lede, few social media users are at all careful about they post online. They flaunt their possessions, their whereabouts, their romantic interests and even private details about their families, including young children.
Posting this stuff online is the equivalent of "flashing your cash" in the parking lot of a dive bar.
In their zeal to protect the consumer from the bogeyman of commerce, the privacy experts are ignoring the very real problem of online crime.
Peter: "Hardy anyone's ever been harmed by the targeting of ads by legitimate companies."
The OpEd is about "data inference", so you are creating a straw man.
Peter: "Quite the opposite from what Dr, Tucekci says in her lede, few social media users are at all careful about they post online."
That's not what the lede says. Here is a lightly edited version to help you with your comprehension:
'People _who are_ concerned about privacy often try to be “careful” online.'
That could be a group of size ONE, so, again, you are creating a straw man.
Peter: "Many, many people, however, are imperiled by criminals lurking online, ..."
Criminals or criminal enterprises could use data inference to choose targets.
However, you should really be thinking about Tufekci's prediction that:
"in the near future we could be hired, fired, granted or denied insurance, accepted to or rejected from college, rented housing and extended or denied credit based on facts that are inferred about us."
And that "computational inference is a statistical technique, it also often gets things wrong — and it is hard, and perhaps impossible, to pinpoint the source of the error, for these algorithms offer little to no insights into how they operate."
10
We have cameras on my job. They monitor all walkways in the building. Fortunately, our interface allows me to point them towards the ceiling. I unplug the data cable for those that can't be re-positioned. I never agreed to have my actions captured by video at work. Long live freedom!
3
"... our interface allows me to point them towards the ceiling. I unplug the data cable for those that can't be re-positioned."
Doesn't anybody notice that the cameras are pointed "towards the ceiling" or that they aren't returning any images? Who actually monitors those cameras?
"I never agreed to have my actions captured by video at work."
Some companies monitor employee internet use and what employees send in email. In more secure environments, auditing software is used to record who accesses what data. What does your employer do to monitor how employees are using the company's computers?
1
"Siri, please ask the NSA where I left my car keys."
5
"Siri, please ask the NSA where I left my car keys."
Why don't you just tell Siri where you are leaving your car keys so Siri "remembers" for you?
1
To me the crazy thing is how many people will defend constant monitoring and believe that is it necessary to keep them safe, or that there's nothing to worry about if you're doing nothing wrong.
10
They say this until you ask about all those illegally downloaded songs or games they have on their computer. Or about when they drive too fast or get a tip they don't report, or improperly dispose of household chemicals or electronics, or when they drank before turning 21. The response is usually "oh, well they don't care about enforcing those laws." Well, those laws are hard to enforce, unless there is omnipresent technology to watch everything people do. When that technology exists and can easily be used by law enforcement without constitutional protection, then everyone has something to be afraid of.
5
In the past 5 years as electronic prescribing has become mandatory for physicians in most states, one company (Surescripts) has managed to gain a chokehold over 95% of Americans' prescription medication history, whether medications were paid for by insurers or even with cash. In the near future, this information will be automatically provided to the computer database of every large health system where you might ever make an appointment.
One company with the health information of virtually every US citizen and resident. Contemplate that.
Along similar lines, private medical practices where one could once go with problems that were especially embarrassing are quickly being purchased by larger health care systems. Changes in HIPAA laws that once protected privacy now have been re-interpreted to facilitate the dissemination of your information. And none of us have control over any of it.
6
@Middleman MD Maybe the centralization of prescription data wouldn't have been necessary had the doctors and other providers been more careful about not flooding the country with so many unnecessary and fraudulently-obtained narcotics prescriptions to the tune of 400,000- deaths since the year 2000!
1
"We don’t want corporations (or governments) to make such connections, let alone exploit this to “grow” their platform.
What is to be done?"
For one thing, this issue needs to be reported on to some extent daily, not as a special feature once every few months or years. Over the long haul, erosion of privacy and the right to freedom from government (or corporate) intrusion into our personal lives, or personal beliefs and thoughts is central to a real democracy and to liberty more broadly.
Loss of privacy is a far, far, far greater threat to our freedoms and to our republic than Donald Trump is. Without privacy, we lose the ability to dissent and to hold independent beliefs.
6
As is the case with everything from a hammer to a congressional subpoena, today's tools are tomorrow's weapons. Beware.
4
We seem to have entered a post-privacy world. Good thing I am an open person.
1
As a psychologist, I wonder whether these social media platforms employ psychologists. I will be asking the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science whether such activities are a violation of our codes of ethics.
4
@Robert Johnson
Of course they do. Although, it is likely in neuroscience research. That is as important to them as their in-house legal dept. and outside counsel + DC lobbyist.
1
If you don't play their game, then you don't have to follow their rules. I deleted my FB account almost a year ago and dropped off the radar with friends. Then I also just deleted my junk account that I used for commenting and reading news articles on Facebook. I have never read as much as I have in the last few years. I constantly test my reading, grammar, prose, and spelling as common course of the day. I miss my friends, but FB has released at least five security notices, and they will never get my data again. ¶¶ Anyone is better served reading especially science-fiction stories and TV shows. "The Outer Limits" is on Amazon and the parallels between make-belief from 1995 and today are shocking. Not to mention "The Foundation" series from Asimov predicting all this stuff. Watch "Brexit" on HBO Go if you get a chance. Turn your life into a series of "burner" accounts and work on your "Plan B". One that gives you the escape velocity to get out of this madness.
1
@Mevan
FYI: HBO and Cinemax are owned by Time Warner, now AT&T Warner since Time was sold. Amazon, well, that's a top food chain predator too, and not so burner. About all we're left with for "safe" media is the local library - until they start selling their customer database to the highest bidder.
1
You’re missing the point...I have never been a “honest” user of SM...Never created an account with my real name...Barely participate in SM...Yet recently I did install a banking app and to check my identity the app asked me to identify a past address...It revealed an accurate address where I once rented a room, for a semester, as a teen college student in a private home a thousand miles away, almost 40 years ago...They know everything...
2
Thank you Dr. Tufekci; A very important article. As a parent to two eighteen year-olds who've lived entire lives in the on-line world, I am afraid they and their generation have virtually invalidated the Fourth Amendment. ("The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.")
A few years ago, when reading the EULA for an app that had important utility to me, I was shocked at how much intrusion I was permitting into my personal "effects". Not only would I allow a private company to inspect my phone and contacts, it appeared I'd allow it to inspect my contacts’, too. I felt like a Benedict Arnold to my contacts, ... but I needed that app!
When we (wittingly or otherwise) give faceless entities access to our entire on-line world, and our new automobiles record unimaginable quantities about our car usage, and "assistant" devices attentively listen to all our home activities, and cable and utility providers have in-depth records of our comings and goings, what is "privacy?"
Ours is the first generation to have our lives nearly completely dossiered. With so much privacy already surrendered can we ever meaningfully have our right to privacy back?
4
The good professor's solution is to "pass laws." All well and good--but laws don't enforce themselves; people (aka bureaucrats and lawyers) do. This suggests either a vast army of watchers-of-the-watchers...or, a rival algorithm--of course with its own inferences, machine learning, and bugs. For reference to how this might work, look at "Spy vs. Spy" in any old Mad magazine.
The idea of a "singularity," in which machine intelligence simply overwhelms human ingenuity has been denounced as a pure fantasy. Not so much any more.
1
Thank you Dr. Tufekci; Avery important article. As parent eighteen year-olds who have lived entire lives in the on-line world, I am afraid their generation has virtually abolished the Fourth Amendment. ("The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.")
While reading the EULA for an app that had important utility to me, I was shocked at how much intrusion I was permitting into my personal "effects". Not only did the permission allow the company to inspect my phone and contacts, it appeared to allow it to inspect my contacts’, too. I felt like a Benedict Arnold to my contacts, but I needed that app!
When we agree (wittingly or otherwise) to give faceless entities access to our entire on-line world, and our automobiles record unimaginable quantities about our car usage, and home "assistant" devices attentively listen to our home activities, and cable and utility providers have in-depth records of our comings and goings, what is "privacy".
Our generation is the first to have our lives dossiered by an unknown number of data- gathers. Can anything be done to regain our rights to privacy?
But it was obvious as far back as 2007 that Facebook (and things like Gmail) were set up to collect and analyze users’ personal data.
In other “news”: Laptops’ cameras and microphones can oft be turned on remotely. Yes, this has occurred, it’s not hypothetical.
Then the other computer many use, the cable TV box, and collect a lot of usage patterns.
3
The primary threat cited seems to be Facebook and Instagram, which Facebook owns. No one is required to use those services. Engage at your own peril. Use an ad-blocker, a privacy tracking blocker and a proxy server. If you're using a cell phone, you have no privacy and never will, so online discretion is a non sequitur.
1
@Paul from Long Island
I've heard and believe that our cell-phone is now our new SSN, but with potentially far more serious implications. Your SSN cannot be turned on to look through the lens of your camera, nor can your microphone be turned on to help eavesdroppers, nor can your location be tracked by a number. Yet, in our mobile phones is a wealth of information, hundreds of "cookies" that allow a variety of "permissions" to unknown counterparties. Even if "the government" respects our privacy, and companies tell us that they do, cannot the information they collect be compromised? Or sold to a highest bidder? Or subpoenaed? Or, sold to a government own shell company?
What really amazed me about "cell phone privacy", however, is that Donald Trump's cell phone is practically on 24/7, and no one knows what his cell phone security condition is like. If he raged about a home-based private server but apparently couldn't get his former KGB friends to successfully hack that server (and he probably made lots of calls in and to Russia in the months and years before his election), why didn't anyone rage about his mobile phone security vulnerability.
In most cases, all high security locations require cell phones be secured in transmission-proof safe boxes. DJ Trump barely shows the most basic understanding of even the basics about electronic-device security.
I knew the day I streamed my first movie off of Netflix and viewed a category the next day called, "Movies you might like.", I was done for. A little bit of me had been absorbed by the internet. The next major jump may have been my last, Amazon Prime, and you know what that means. God help me if the NOAA starts mining my clicks. Then the internet will have me by my Achilles heel. NYT, don't you do the dirty to me either.
2
Everything is monetized that can be. It's been like this for thousands of years, once mankind moved from hunter-gather to a commercial agricultural economy, then manufacturing and now knowledge/tech. How is this a surprise to anyone over the age of 8?
Btw, I'm currently blocking 7 NYT trackers and innumerable ads with one browser add-on and 6 NYT trackers and innumerable ads with a second browser add-on (several of those trackers are duplicates). I pay a lot for a subscription and have the right to deny access to any corporation that sneaks to invade any more of my privacy than it already does with pertinent subscription information. I also have the right not to look at online ads I don't want to (just as I do with the print version).
2
Passing laws and eliminating bad behavior are two different things. It's been illegal for banks to red-line housing districts for generations, and yet the practice still goes on, even with FEMA and Federal redevelopment agencies steering dollars to white, middle class neighborhoods. As long as western colonial capitalism continues to hold sway with the extraction of profit deemed the only social good, we will continue to be tyrannized by corporations in pursuit of their own fiduciary interest.
@Jack
As long as the planet is bloated and overpopulated, corporations will compete for consumers via a head count in the tens of millions and then billions. That's all this is - head count money using the interests and private information of 7.6 billion humans.
Basic Drucker 101: The only two revenue generators for a business are marketing and innovation. Everything else is an expense. The goal is to create more customers. When it comes to data mining and selling, no one here is a customer.
Billion dollar idea!! (For those bereft of ethics or compassion.)
1. Algorithmically identify those individuals with borderline clinical depression (or those that self-identify). 2. To these individuals, make friending suggestions to individuals that encourage others to identify as depressed. 3. Additionally, send them strategic advertisements of a depressing nature. 4. After a predetermined "optimal' time period, send advertisements for anti-depressant medications.
What a wonderful world AI will bring us.
As the author correctly points out, human beings have been making probabilistic inferences about others long before "machine learning" and "AI" became buzz-words. The question is whether the inferences made now are significantly more accurate OR significantly more detailed than those made before technology started tracking us with such great detail. That degree of significance provides the "added value" advertisers might be willing to pay for.
One can imagine a fortune teller who asks a few general questions and then is able to "infer" a number of predictions about you that feel remarkably "accurate". The fact is, human beings are predictable in many general ways.
In detail, however, I am skeptical that technology will be able to infer the types of details that will provide a significant delta against traditional methods of advertising. Ironically, technological tracking is often lagging indicator (if you are browsing TVs at BestBuy.com, you've already made the decision to shop for TVs).
I've been browsing the internet for over 25 years and can count on my hands the number of times I clicked on an online ad. My sense is that even the ads make nearly zero impression on my mind when I browse.
1
The author uses “you” a lot. Do these services really know it is me or is their “you” some data object with a collection of attributes that appeal to advertisers, but no one ever ties a name to the object? To me, that is a crucial difference. Privacy laws protect me as a person. I could care less what happens to the data object with assigned attributes. It only matters if it affects the physical me. If it triggers a lot of electronic garbage and assumptions that the physical me told the electronic box to toss and not bother the physical me, and Mark Z wants to make money off the process, have at it big guy.
If you know how to use the technology online then there are ways around everything so you can be an anonymous digital person. VPNs, fake accounts, multiple accounts, etc. I will say that everything I do online I am fine with anyone in the world knowing it -
I'm a big believer in openness. The only thing about me that is secret is what I only know and it's never even written down on my computer or by my hand, never spoken (unless I want it out), etc.
A second strategy is obfuscation if you lack the technical know how. Have a bunch of people use your phone/computer and have them carry it around and use it normally. What comes out in the end from the analytics will be garbage. This is more difficult if you're by yourself or don't have a class you can conduct an experiment with but it does work for now.
@RamS
It is not just a question of privacy but also of who can monetize you - with or without your knowledge and permission, but especially without.
1
All Times articles have subject tags. Those tags can be used to make inferences about the interests of people who post comments.
More specifically, social media services may automatically post news articles based on personal interests. The article tags are used to find matches between interests and articles. So by working backwards, it is possible to loosely infer the interests of commenters.
NB: The Times doesn't post whether commenters are social media users, but it is sometimes possible to guess who is when a lot of people with a similar point of view post comments on an article.
For the record, here are the subject tags for this OpEd:
* Social Media
* Data-Mining and Database Marketing
* Computers and the Internet
* Facebook Inc
* Privacy
* Artificial Intelligence
* Telephones and Telecommunications
* Global Positioning System
The world is now a village. There are no secrets in a village.
@Richard Schumacher
Don't be silly, of course there are. Even in "1984", there were secrets and those who resisted the omnipresent Big Brother totalitarianism.
What we have today is more like "Brave New World": totalitarianism via stable, happiness-ordered groups that agree to be controlled in exchange for loss of individualism and privacy.
1
You must have had a different edition. The Thought Police caught, tortured and brainwashed everybody in my copy.
The real solution is for people to wake up and stop allowing themselves to be the "product".
People, for reasons unknown to me, run to "free" services knowing (or should know by now) the service will sell their data to the highest bidder.
People have become addicted to the "always on" instant gratification of being available 24/7 via text and phone.
Why? what is so important the caller cannot wait for a return call?
Most folks don't realize in the front of their brain they can turn off the cell phone, which stops the tracking of location.
Their addiction makes "searching" for things on the spot the equivalent of a heroin addicts need to find their next dose.
wake up people. get off the merry go round of social media and stop being the "product"; at least of much as possible.
2
If Zukerberg can figure out how to identify teens who are depressed, don't tell me he and his business can't find terrorist death threats and Russian posting on fake accounts. They just don't want to unless they get paid.
"... don't tell me he and his business can't find ... Russian posting on fake accounts."
Facebook DID find "fake accounts", and those accounts were shut down. And the ad income of $100,000 was trivial. So you are creating a straw man.
"The ads, which ran between June 2015 and May 2017, were linked to some 470 fake accounts and pages the company said it had shut down."
Fake Russian Facebook Accounts Bought $100,000 in Political Ads
By Scott Shane and Vindu Goel
Sept. 6, 2017
New York Times
Now that Democrats control the House, why haven’t one or more committees directed staff to issue a report showing all the types of personal information collected both by business and (non-classified) by government? Only Congress can compel this from agencies and businesses that otherwise want to keep this secret forever. It could be presented in three categories: data people consent to being gathered; data we do not give any consent to but which is gathered anyway, like the “shadow” data of Facebook; and inferential data associated with individuals using the techniques Prof. Tufekci describes, for which consent is meaningless. Americans would benefit from being informed about the extent of our dossiers, and many would be horrified to see how they are exposed and categorized.
A further step would be to calculate how much money business makes from this data from uses and sales unrelated to the purpose for which the individual provided it, that is, the economic rent resulting from hidden exploitation of our personal information.
It is long past time to shed a lot more sunlight on this dark corner of our society.
2
Install the free AdBlock Plus (which blocks ads) and Ghostery (which blocks cross-site tracking tools) into your browser - I use Chrome (Ad Block for Safari doesn't quite work; it's been deliberately limited).
These plug-ins will show you what was blocked. This particular article was accompanied by 6 ads and 14 trackers. Among the latter- DoubleClick (owned by Google) and Amazon Associates.
1
These articles merely skim the surface. Amazon makes the VAST majority if it's profit, not from sales, but from cloud storage or AMS.
How much of that information is shared and sold?
From the AMS site: "When data is shared on AWS, anyone can analyze it and build services on top of it using a broad range of compute and data analytics products. Sharing data in the cloud lets data users spend more time on data analysis rather than data acquisition."
Does that make you feel secure?
We are products in this equation folks, mere data to be acquired and analyzed. The EU has taken some measures to ensure privacy. The US has done nothing at all to protect our privacy.
It's not just Facebook and Google folks.
Read up on surveillance capitalism.
This series is really just skimming the surface and over simplifying.
The NY Times can do better.
1
@Lotus Blossom
Amazon makes its profits from AWS = Amazon Web Services. i.e. cloud services that include server farms, hosting, data mining/analytics, AI.
More importantly is who its corporate and global government customers are.
1
Nowadays we have to apply online for jobs. There are times the "application" requires our social security numbers. Why anyone ever thought that asking for our SSNs online was a good idea (and made it mandatory) is beyond me. The same goes for asking for our references online. I realize that employers think this saves them time but it's also an invasion of privacy when it comes to the references. Why? Try going to back to apply for the same job after they repost it and they still have your information. They might have it for years. It's out there for anyone to steal because security is not that great.
Considering that most online applications do not lead to a phone or face to face interview why not simply have us upload our resumes and take it from there? Why ask us to create accounts with passwords? In my opinion all this online rigamarole is contributing to the problems businesses have finding qualified people. It's too limited and doesn't screen out or include the right people.
As always in America, we go for the technology without considering the implications: too much information that can be stolen or corrupted. It's time to consider adding privacy to the Constitution as a civil right.
4/22/2019 12:03pm
2
I consider most of this stuff public domain. Shopping extra-marital affairs online from a known IP address is about as smart as hitting on women in front of your wife. You wouldn't do that, would you? The point is your IP address, like your phone number, is not ever truly private. In fact, you probably don't even own it.
When you pay an internet bill, you're essentially paying to lease an IP address from your local ISP. This is your unique identifier. Everything that passes through that connection is tied directly to your name and address. Ergo, everything you do online is traceable even if you avoid the more notorious data harvesters.
Sure, there are ways to mask your internet identity. A few simple steps can basically anonymize the average person's online presence. Once you understand the systems, you can actually have some light-hearted fun messing with your online identity.
"Really? You mean I'm not a 55 year old baker from São Paulo? I suppose you should stop sending direct mailers then."
The one thing that's still relatively difficult to get around though is geolocation tracking on cell phones. You can do it but the process is not exactly easy. If I were going to start anywhere, I would start with that one first.
My second priority would deal with everything related to employers. This includes the online software they force employees to use while performing their duties. An employer is much more likely to compromise your online identity than to find out about it.
Sounds like the recently cancelled "Person of Interest." I've looked at my Facebook profile. It's wrong. Bad enough that we're being tracked let alone making erroneous assumptions.
In reply to an earlier comment about facial recognition, Tamza (California) suggested these counter-measures: "Wear a hoodie or cap! And glasses."
1. You would have to change your attire each time you go into the same store.
2. Facial recognition is effective with partial faces.
See:
We Built an ‘Unbelievable’ (but Legal) Facial Recognition Machine
By Sahil Chinoy
APRIL 16, 2019
New York Times
Thank you for yet another very informative article!
It matters who you vote for....
@Janis Hopson
Everything's relative.
This stuff has been evolving since the 1970s. It's all presidential administrations, both parties and a society + electorate always behind the intelligence curve of their own choosing.
Most of the articles written today that sound warning bells are 1 to 2 decades late. If you didn't pay attention by 2004-ish, and most people didn't, you're treading water - part of the problem for gleefully hopping on the digital train for a joyride without having clue one. That anyone still has a Facebook or Instagram account speaks volumes about both group stupidity and addiction.
1
...and now advertising companies are buying companies that have assembled our digital profiles, to “deliver personalized advertising.” Big brother is reading your diary to sell your cornflakes, but also drugs, political manipulation, and probably a service to opt out from blackmail, for a fee :(
1
either i missed something fundamental in this article , or it did.
¶ i told facebook that i was born in 1966. not even close to the truth.
¶ i told facebook that my name is fred smith. ditto.
¶ facebook doesn’t have my real phone number, nor anything else by which they can identify me.
¶ i never use my real name, or real anything else, on social media.
¶ every social media platform that i use knows me by a different name.
if social media wants to “computationally infer [a] wide range of things about” fred or whoever else they think i am, they’re more than welcome to do so.
what am i missing?
ps: “and don’t call me shirley” because..... well, you get the idea.
2
@shirley freid
"Shirley," if you use Google, Amazon, and bank online (for example) these corporations who trade and sell information know everything about you and more. Your cell phone can tell exactly where you are at all times. Your shopping history tells much about you, including your health. Your emails can reveal much personal information. Are you starting to get the picture?
They probably know more about you than you do. What are you missing? You are missing the big picture.
Read up on surveillance capitalism.
1
What does or can the NYT do to protect the privacy of readers who post comments here when they do not provide their own name, initials, or a specific location?
1
@AMR That is a good question. A few years ago, there was a prolific commenter on one of the NY Times blog who used only her initials and her city as a handle. She was writing very controversial things that were angering a whole bunch of readers. I decided to try and find her online even though she had never posted her actual name. My only objective was to try to better understand what made her tick and be so troll-like. Guess what, I found her. Turns out she had a blog with screenshots of her NY Times comments on it. It took minimal sleuthing. Now I know her name, face, and more. So yes, be careful. Be very, very careful.
2
there is an irony here....I wanted to sign-up for the limited newsletter and NYT uses Google's captcha method of 'human' recognition. Since I don't want Google to 'know' what I'm reading or subscribing to, I began to click on images and after the third set realized that something else must be going on and stopped.
Pretty sure this is another issue of privacy that the article was 'warning' us about....yet here NYT is colluding with the enemy - so to speak.
2
@sam frybyte
Don't disagree. But they are colluding with the enemy because they are fighting for their survival in our digital age. Colluding so their stats will make them appealing to advertisers. Colluding so they can get new subscribers. I really like the NYTimes and want them to stay around so I, like so many, try to ignore these intrusions.
Isn't this what Edward Snowden already told us?
Oh no, you're not tricking ME into commenting on a NYT article. That will just reveal way too much information about me to these sorts of algorithms.
Wheee! So fun to be folded, spindled and mutilated!
Wow, now I guess I should be afraid to even post on the NYT's comment column.
4
Google your name--says everything about privacy..........
How much information is gathered by whom every time I post a comment on a Times article?
This assault on privacy is scary stuff, even for someone
using a 3-g flip phone instead of a smart phone.
The timing of surveillance results is startling. It takes between 30 minutes and 24 hours for any potential purchase I look at on this computer to show up as an ad the next time I open the Times web page.
We do have a chance for some fun here; loved it when Tiffany's and Sotheby's took the bait and showed ads with very pretty pictures for a few weeks. Next stop is shopping for a Bentley. Tomorrow's ads should be amusing.
If someone is gathering data - screw it up just for fun. The more people mess with the algorithms, the less reliable they'll be.
3
I've been working in nonprofit development (aka fundraising) for 20 years. Even in the late 1990s, if I was asked to do prospect research on a potential donor, I could easily come up with a 5 page profile on most people. Give me your name and in a couple of hours, using Lexis Nexis, Wealth Engine, and a few other tools, I will write up your work history, your family, where you went to school, a list of all the philanthropic and political gifts you've made, how much you paid for your home, and your household income and net worth. And it's completely legal.
3
Computational inference seems made to order for control of the conversation, convincing the future consumer what's best for him/her...by bombarding with information that seems 'miraculously' made specifically for their needs and desires at this time and place, available by a simple request now. Smart but deceiving. Is seems as though the only way out is shutting down any electronic communication, become a social pariah living in the boondocks, feeding on strictly natural tubercles mother Earth provides, and in a tropic environment where even clothing becomes superfluous; in other words, utopia, only disturbed by it's short-term viability for human insistence in accelerating climate change...to screw the very place kind enough to house us for now...and without paying our rent.
"What were you doing at a cancer clinic?"
Checking on the aunt of a friend who is on a business trip and asked me to help her out with a beloved family member. This friend is the one who cheered me on in that marathon I finished last week.
"Why were you leaving the house of a woman who is not your wife at 5 a.m.?"
Because my wife asked me to go feed her friend's cat so she can take her friend's aunt to the cancer clinic this morning. I wouldn't go at 5:00 AM, but I left my phone there by accident last night when I went to feed the cat and I need it back. Also, it is right on my way to the gym which I always hit at 5:30 AM so I can finish, shower and get to work by 7:30.
Pretending you can figure out meaningful data from this level of information is absurd. And a company that relies on these assumptions will find themselves spending quite a lot of money targeting people who have no use for them.
1
"I left my phone there ..."
"Also, it is right on my way to the gym ..."
If you have location tracking enabled on your phone, then your "gym" is also located.
BTW, would you like to buy some new gym clothes? :-)
1
The only certainty in the technological age is that what is worrisome today will be commonplace tomorrow.
1
A policy which requires transparency would be helpful. Algorithms employed for predictive purposes should be impossible to copyright. Their assumptions and the calculations should be open to public scrutiny. When used for making qualifying or disqualifying decisions about specific individuals, these individuals must be informed and must have a mode of recourse.
Currently, corporate and government actors who employ predictive algorithms do so at little cost to themselves. A policy that emphasizes transparency and accountability changes the game.
1
One thing that's helped with ads seems to be providing random information when required: zip code, phone number, birthday & so on. I still get ads of course, but random zip-codes and local area codes seems to have produced significant results in the last three months.
Example: some retail stores require a zip-code. At one store, I entered the zip for an exclusive part of San Antonio where the mean income is approx. $500,000 per year. At another retailer, I entered a zip-code where average income was at or below poverty level.
Now the ads seem random. Inexplicably, I'm getting advertising to buy a car or truck. Mercedes Benz, Lexus, or a sales pitch for "EZ Car Loans-- No Credit Checks!" If nothing else, provides some amusing variety. Not even in the market for a car and Mercedes is out of my tax bracket!
Final thought: if the article is about privacy, and unknowingly providing data that is sold without my knowledge or consent...
...Why would I 'follow' on Facebook or Twitter?
1
@B_Bocq
Why are you getting ads at all?
Use ABP , young jedi.
It's been nearly 15 years since I've encountered online ads.
I remember in the 70’s watching a man on 60 minutes infer everything about a couple merely by reading their check book entries. He was astonishingly accurate. The internet know you better than you know yourself.
2
Yes, it is astonishing what technology can do. So why can’t technology figure out who is illegally robo-calling me all day and arrest them? These calls are against the law, but we are told it is not possible to stop them. Seems like it should be easy for the geniuses you describe to use their powers for good and solve this one.
3
@WDP - download Robokiller app. They'll stop it all.
1
@WDP
Good doesn't pay as well...
1
@WDP
It can.
The geniuses have long known how to stop robocalls.
Telecoms choose not to. Because...they make money off that traffic, at your expense. Literally.
1
I do not use social media, but am on my Mac every day. A week ago I posted an ad on E Bay to sell a rather esoteric wristwatch, an Invicta. 2 days later, an ad for the Invicta watch appeared on the front page of my online New York Times. How did it get there?
1
"How did it [the ad] get there [on the Times home page]?"
Do you log into eBay and the Times using Facebook or another social media service?
Do you allow third-party cookies in your web browser?
1
@happy
If on Safari, go into Preferences.
Adjust your privacy settings, particularly:
Security
Privacy
Websites
Extensions
Use DuckDuckGo as your search engine, never Google.
Download and install these browser widgets:
Web of Trust
Adblock Plus
Ghostery
Blur
(There are others, these are the best known.)
I allow next to no cookies and only once a blue moon have to double back to open the castle wall - usually for the stray educational site. Those companies are forever behind the tech curve by a decade.
I take revenge by spiking my browsing with false data. The corporate AIs can’t figure out if I’m a cranky old Trumpist man or a teenage girl, black, Hispanic or white. The targeted advertisements are a riot. GIGO!
2
I'm much more worried about what my employer knows about me than what Facebook or its advertisers do. I work in a hospital that recently purchased the intrusive and demeaning BioVigil system.
This is a device that is supposed to monitor when I wash or fail to wash my hands after entering or leaving a patient's room. It glows green if I sanitize my hands with alcohol (and then hold my hand up to the device so it can sniff the alcohol) and red if it thinks I didn't (or just isn't functioning properly). This routine, incidentally, has to be performed whether or not I actually touch anyone or anything. Aside from the demeaning aspect of wearing what is basically an ankle monitor that telegraphs to all of my patients that my employer thinks that I cannot be trusted to observe basic hand hygiene and standard sanitary precautions, the device sends constant reports to my employer about my comings and goings and every time the device thinks - correctly or incorrectly - I did or did not observe proper hand hygiene. A colleague who now works for a different hospital system is required to wear a device that reports how much time she spends in the bathroom. I mention these things not because I think that the Tufekci's warnings about data inference are unwarranted but because I think technology poses an even greater threat to the privacy and dignity of employees. After all, I can opt out of Facebook. Unfortunately, I cannot opt out of my job.
146
This reminds me of the apps car insurance companies now push. They claim you will see your rates go down but at the cost, unstated, that now your insurance company will know everything about where you go when, how long you stay, on and on.
22
@David
Having called, written and hollered at my hospital and clinic numerous times about the lack of compliance of hand washing, and knowing how much compliance can reduce infection, I am glad to hear of this “intrusion”. No, many people cannot be trusted to follow the rules, and even if they do, they don’t wash properly or they use sanitizer when they should be washing. You are free to work elsewhere or retrain. And why would you be entering my room if you aren’t going to touch anything?
19
@Gary
So what? Sorry, but I just don’t see any danger in my insurance company knowing that I went to the grocery store, or even the doctor.
This explains why I am constantly seeing ads for
sixties memorabilia, music accessories and drug rehab joints in my news feed.
To tell you the truth, we are living in a Bizzaro world. The fact is Night is Day and Day is Night in Reality. And events are cascading in time. Live the Illusion. You must have heard of the Idiom, "Man proposes, God Disposes"
1
I was unsure if I should login with my Facebook or Google account to make this comment. Oh well hopefully nothing too weird is tied to this account. If the New York Times encourages people to use VPNs, proxies and plugins to mask their browser fingerprints then would that disrupt their minority report advertising model? I think they are over exaggerating their data science abilities. Using u-block origin means I never see their ads. I would like to see more advertising dollars going into journalism instead of social media vapor ware.
In a reply to an earlier comment, tom harrison (seattle) said: "lol, I welcome the algorithm that can make any kind of prediction about me other than I am unpredictable:)"
tom posted two replies that say a lot about him:
1. tom is an older male living is Seattle.
2. tom is employed.
3. tom dates people who know about foreign films (Fellini).
4. tom does not always capitalize proper names ("tom", "seattle").
5. tom has a high opinion of himself (you can't predict anything about me).
BTW, tom posted two replies, but no comments, so tom is cautious.
Anyone want to try the same with my comments and replies?
3
6. tom has a computer or phone.
7. tom reads the NY Times.
8. tom is interested in technology.
1
@DGR
You’re a know it all. Lol
O brave new world,
That hath such people in't !...
Henri
1
I used to think living a rather boring life, avoiding social media, rarely carrying a cell, and paying with cash would guarantee some degree of anonymity.
But every time I open the internet, it's clear that there's no escape from prying advertisers.
58
@KJ: I have a very minimal Facebook presence, with no personal info beyond my name, and no photos at all. (My friends know that I have a "no photos on Facebook ever" policy and no tagging me.)
I have a landline phone, that I used most of the time -- my cell phone is a 7 year old flip phone for emergencies.
I do have credit cards, and use them, but I pay for a lot of stuff (groceries, incidentals, gasoline) with cash.
Yet....advertisers online know a disturbing amount of info about me....things I've never discussed or revealed online, even things I have only TALKED ABOUT with friends on a landline phone.
It is very creepy and "Big Brother-ish".
4
@KJ
Every newspaper and almost every magazine I ever subscribed to in print was chock full of advertisements, mostly for things I had absolutely no interest in--but they were easier to ignore.
People go on about the internet, but they sit in front of a TV for hours with an ad in their face about every 5 - 8 minutes for cars, bad food, creepy lawyers, and dubious non-generic drugs without complaint. I killed my television 30 years ago (which doesn’t mean I can entirely escape it). Marketing is the real culprit, not data, for advertising anyway. Two words: Ad Blocker.
16
@Pundette Ad Blocker can block ads, but it can't stop tracking, and the many ways that corporations and individuals can track us.
2
O brave new world,
That hath such people in't !...
Henri
2
It's a numbers game. It's about risk vs reward. It's much more costly to hire and train the wrong person than it is to reject qualified candidates in error, because there are way more candidates than positions. Similarly, with health insurance, it's cheaper to reject healthy candidates in error, than to insure a single sick person.
1
So we have finally arrived at what McLuhan fifty years ago called the global village. The essence of village life is that everybody knows everybody else, either first hand or by reputation, and everyone is subject to the constant scrutiny of the community. In contrast to the city, there is no obscurity in a village. That's what we have given up in return for the ability to self-advertise and to watch the rest of the world go by.
After reading this opinion, I started to think maybe I was becoming depressed. So far, there's been no onset of clinical symptoms, but one never knows. Now, if there were someone out there who could predict whether or not I was for sure going to be depressed, I'd feel deeply comforted. Knowing that, through the magic of data inference technology, my state of ennui, or anguish, would be screened and detected and I would be carted off to somewhere to get over it. Which would of course be a boon to public health.
So if you don’t buy junk you don’t need, if you’re an upstanding person with no skeletons in your closet, if you look after your health...seems this is much ado about nothing.
For now, this is just about corporate greed, no one actually cares who you visited at 5am - except maybe your spouse - but then perhaps you deserve to be found out.
Oh good, are you saying that my profile is now inferred to be what my 'friends' are? That is great because my friends are totally white bread Good Americans. So I guess that's the monkey wrench: hook up with your mom and her friends on fb and you should be all good.
I block a lot of these data tracking services on my computer by using the hosts file from MVPHosts (http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm) and using a JavaScript blocker in Firefox. It’s a pain at times, but worth it for a bit of privacy and safety. Need to figure out how to do that on my Apple devices.
@Steven Pugh
Ghostery works on OSX and iOS.
Can the NYT do an article on what it does with user comment data? What inferences does it it make. Does it share it it with anyone or sell? Does it buy data about its users from others? Is there anyway users can see what information NYT has about them. Can they change it?
@Shipra: they gather info to buy and sell you to advertisers.
Your data is valuable!
They are not yet -- I think! -- selling your political opinions or compiling dossieres on "people who are not politically correct, so that a future President Ocasio-Cortez can those of us who do not conform into "political re-education camps".
I learned this simple fact long ago: Although I may be careful never to click on a link that will expose my name and personal contact info, all of the people in my contacts may not be as careful. So if they click on such a link, then my info, name, address, email, cell and work number, place of employment, etc., are exposed unknowingly.
And, if all of my contacts are careful, then it just takes one of their many contacts to expose their contact lists, which will lead right back to me. You can run but you cannot hide.
1
They also get so much wrong, which is a waste of money for the companies buying your information. For instance, the example in the article of entering a cancer clinic. Maybe you were taking a relative. Maybe you were delivering a bouquet of flowers or a package.
I get followed around by advertising I'm not interested in. Once, I was reading an article on veterans' suicides. What ad followed me everywhere? A recruitment ad for the Army. 1) That's in awfully bad taste for the army, advertising on a veterans' suicide article 2) I'm over sixty. What's the chances I'll join the Army or the Army will want me?
Waste of money for the advertisers.
27
Unfortunately, those insidious advertisements are hardly a waste of the advertisers’ money.
Unlike paper junk mail, which costs something to print and even more to post, most of the ads you receive, gleaned from privacy inferences, even incorrect inferences, cost advertisers next to nothing. And if one out of every couple hundred recipients clicks on a link - BINGO
16
@Linda
A long standing fact of print advertising and mailers is that a 2% response was considered an excellent return for your hundreds/thousands of dollars spent.
That same dollar amount spent on the internet ads buys 100 times the reach and the returns for a single ad can be 10% to 15% on a bad day.
Internet spammers and scammers operate on the same principles. Take for example If the scammers send out a thousand phishing emails that greedy people open and then the scammer hijacks their computer for ransom. If 2% pay that ransom the cost to the scammer is measured in pennies while "earning" thousands in illegal ransom payments.
What about the Nigerian Prince emails that have been around since Day 2 of the Internet? If they did not produce results the scammers would stop using them.
ROI is the point and Internet ads are cheap compared to print.
6
While I commend the NYT for publishing these sneak attacks on our privacy, I continue to be angry with you for tracking my reading habits of your newspaper and refusing to offer at least an opt-out option. Your own corporate behavior undermines your editorial stance that privacy is important in this technological era. I urge you to reconsider your Big Brother collection of my data.
9
When I was first exposed to the term algorithm I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it mostly because it can be used for so many tasks. I’m now beginning to understand. This article is must-read for understanding the term and what it means on a personal and day-to-day-practical application. As frightening as it is inevitable. The storage of big data has become too cheep to meter and will find countless uses, many unfortunately insidious.
3
Full disclosure: I subscribe and read the WSJ daily, in spite of the fact that I always have been a Democrat. In earlier days and, still, in villages all over the world, everyone knows everything about everyone else. The sun keeps rising in the east every morning nevertheless. Much ado about not much, imo.
1
Dr. Tufekci of course knows that we're required to give our personal information, including phone numbers, to many retailers and other businesses, which makes essentially pointless any attempt to avoid keep phones or other devices private. Oh, and I recently wanted to buy a new wallet, but every wallet on sale that I could find in the town where I live had a chip in it, supposedly to "protect" my ID. Yeah. I recently made a dental appointment with a university-related office, and soon started seeing dentistry-related ads online. It's much too late to avoid either loss of privacy, or our being classified according to stereotyped thinking encoded in algorithms. Regardless of changes in law, our privacy is lost. But perhaps we could return at least some of the ownership of our data to us, and require that we be compensated for its use. Companies would be very ingenious in avoiding paying us, but I'd like to see a battle on that front.
5
Who knew that George Orwell's " Big Brother" would be named Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, etc.?
Who knew that the new John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford etc. gilded age. robber barons malefactors of great wealth would be from the same pack?
There is no privacy.
Because of human diva narcissist nature. Driven by a primate ape biological DNA genetic evolutionary fit quest to crave fat, salt,sugar, habitat, water, kin and sex by any means necessary. Including conflict or cooperation humans are innately social animals.
Humans are either socioeconomic political diners. Or they are on that menu. Humans are either predators or prey. About 99% American humans are on the menu or prey.
4
@Blackmamba
Aldous Huxley wrote an entire novel with Ford as the stand in for all mass production and corporations, in his 1932 classic "Brave New World".
Anyone with even minimal tech awareness since the 1980s has known its Orwellian foundations; 1984 was more taunt than threat in the 1980s and as more humans on the planet embraced groupthink and conformity handed down by media corporations. But then, consumer tech has been combined with media and entertainment since the 1970s.
Science/science fiction and dystopian societies have been a topic of discussion for 90 years. Can't say we weren't put on notice.
1
If you can't beat it, confuse it. Big Data already thinks I'm retired, size 38DD bra size, and into window blinds and surfboards, none of which are true. (Or...are they? I'll never tell. ;) )
9
@Boggle
I got those ads for bras "up to 38DD," too. No surfboards, but oodles of "haute joaillerie." Where on earth do they come up with this nincompoopery?
A few simple things: Never give your real birthday unless you have to, like on your medical record. (If hospitals are selling our info, we're all sunk anyway.) Never give your real phone number. Never reveal your high school or college. Stay off social media. There's still life out there, without it.
8
@Godfrey Goodbee: LOL! hospitals above all others are selling your data -- to Big Pharma and other advertisers.
Stay off social media -- OK, but can you keep your spouse, kids, parents, friends, colleagues off? because they will lead advertisers straight to you. Your best friend sends you a tennis racket for your birthday off of Amazon -- bingo! they now know you play tennis, and when your birthday is, and the name of your friend.
1
This reader very much appreciates the insights this ongoing series on privacy is providing. Facebook and all social media, after more than a decade of unregulated practices as detailed in this disturbing essay have clearly enjoyed free rein long enough. According to one of Mr Kristof's recent columns The Times itself actually provides data to its columnists giving them a sense of how long readers spend on their latest offering, if they aren't avoiding it altogether, a thing which suggests editors at The Times could do even further good in this area by running an article that as transparently as possible reveals where it will and will not go vis a vis the uses it makes of its own already huge and ever growing data base.
4
No social media, browser extensions to block ads and cookies, purge all saved content from browser at end of session with dedicated software. Use Mozilla Thunderbird for email. Use a VPN. Do what you have to do. Facebook and Google are not your friends, they're evil.
6
I have two lunatic relatives who's Instagram and Facebook are wide open. Anyone can see them. They post where they are going. Post everything their small children do. It is beyond creepy.
They will tag me, and post pictures of me without permission (at a family event).
Through their action, a classmate from high school was able to track me down. I live 400 miles away from my old high school. I was NOT happy about this contact. Didn't know the person from Adam.
While people post "I don't do social media", and believe they aren't traceable, think again. Your privacy is only as good as your least discreet relative/friend.
22
Sounds like the less you interact with social media the more likely they will get stuff about you wrong.
4
There is an app called Ghostery that can show you which services are tracking you and you can block them with this app. It is amazing. It is also terrifying. Some sites have over 20 trackers. And yes the NYT has trackers; Facebook, Google and Amazon. and a couple others you have never heard of. They all hate Ghostery and pop-ups will appear asking you to allow trackers to "improve their services". Note- the site works fine when they are blocked which should tell you they are not essential. The NYT uses less than most sites but there it is. Physician heal thyself.
16
@Julie Parmenter - thank you for this. What about for our computers (not just our phones)? Is there something similar?
@V
Ghostery is a multi-platform downloadable free browser extension widget for 'puters and as a standalone app for mobile. It's been around for eons, as has Adblock/Plus.
Do a search, just not with Google. ;-)
The idea that our data is never ours, because it’s also a subset of the data of someone else, is a nuanced idea seldom discussed.
Your friends upload mobile numbers frequently? That’s their contact book. Your relative donates DNA analysis to an open source project? Their blood. But in both cases....all your information goes with it. Not much you can do.
3
Neolithic archaeology interest has led to indications I like Game of Thrones (no). Science related searches flag me as being interested in science fiction (no). Bulgarian tombs searches has the digital world stumped. Heaven knows what Bronze Age diseases and causes of death combined with forensic reconstruction of causes of death has done to my digital profile.
That April Fools Day way back 1998 car would be a hot seller. My car is so digital it is a distraction when I drive and fast decisions have to be practiced (I do that) given how many small dimly lit buttons are on the dash. Perhaps there is a market for minimally digital products. I am in on that choice.
3
While this article lays out a number of troubling practices carried out by various companies, by far the worst, most deliberate and persistent offender is Facebook. FB is a company run by thugs who have demonstrated an overwhelming urge to do the wrong thing at every turn. What’s worse, is that they fully understand that they as “Facebook” are widely disliked these days, but they have managed to fool people into thinking that they’ve given up FB whilst they still snap away with Instagram. I can’t for example seem to convince my wife that Instagram is FB and that it’s just as evil. Once people finally catch on to Instagram and realize (hopefully) that there is simply no need to share your life every second of the day, FB will find something to fill in the gap and keep the flow of data coming.
5
Yes, Facebook is truly evil, but so is Google and so is Amazon, and so are all the others. (I never joined Facebook, but FB even tracks people who are not on Facebook.) Google is Evil. Most companies make a lot of money selling and trading our "private" information.
Privacy is starting to be an antiquated notion. My students are fairly blasé about this development. They just accept that there is no privacy.
2
Capitalism has always been rapacious; eased somewhat when regs were more prominent and effective.
Unless phony "capitalists" are made to feel real fear nothing will suffice to fight them effectively.
They are loved less which each passing day. When they laud "free markets" for example they mean free to monopolize. Buffet, for example, tries to only deal with monopolies - do not let his folksiness fool you.
3
You may be correct that “We also need to start passing laws that directly regulate the use of computational inference,” but does the US Congress have even an iota of competence to get that right?
4
“You go to war with the army you have”: D Rumsfeld.
This is getting really ominous. If I was able to get an “untrackable” phone, would companies infer things about me because I made myself untrackable? The way its going in China, you may literally have no place to hide. The seeds of righteous dissent might be inferred so quickly that it almost becomes like “Minority Report” in real life. The idea that major telecom companies are selling my location data is also outrageous. That’s a gross invasion of my privacy. It furthers the notion that you’re not a “fellow citizen”, you’re a data unit to be tracked and exploited for financial gain. I don’t trust Facebook or Google, and many others. I would gladly pay for useful services that collect and track nothing.
3
All these stories about how we should be afraid -- very afraid -- of our eroding privacy are starting to annoy me. Yes, there should be laws to prevent people from tracking your every movement. But some of the other privacy concerns seem overblown.
I post a lot on Facebook. And yet, most of the ads I see on Facebook are completely irrelevant to me. I am sure people can infer a lot about me from my posts, including my religion, politics, marital status, sexual orientation and more. So what?
Why do I want to hide these things? So I can start dating someone who is gay when I am not? So I can get a job working for firm that is ultra-conservative when I am a liberal? So that I can persuade a neo-Nazi to rent me an apartment?
In real life, we make tons of inferences all the time, based on how people dress, comb their hair, cross their legs, what car they drive, etc. And sometimes our inferences are wrong. We hire the person who is prompt to the interview, thinking they will be prompt to work, but they are not. We don't ask the guy (or gal) out because we think they are probably gay, or probably not gay. When we make the wrong inference we may be punishing the other person unfairly, but we are just as likely to be punishing ourselves unfairly, passing up the good job candidate, or the good marriage partner, or the good tenant based on an incorrect inference.
Maybe the real crisis is not the erosion of privacy, but the ongoing lack of transparency.
1
"Where dating meets data"
Introducing Tinderillow (tm), the new app from the makers of Tinder and Zillow.
Trying to find that someone special in a bar or party?
Just point your phone and Tinderillow does the rest.
Seconds later, swipe right if you like the looks of your candidate's looks and bank account, swipe left to leave 'em behind.
Use every night the same power that mortgage brokers and insurance companies use every day.
Tinderillow: Get big love in a big house.
2
@Eben You should stop kidding around and go launch that tech start-up that is going to make you rich. Just make sure your app also provides insights into such difficult-to-measure things as loyalty, empathy, stability, , love, fun, humor, etc.
Asking for government regulation of social media to preserve citizens' privacy is like asking the fox to guard the hen house.
Who do you think is weaponizing all of this data to identify activists and possible "threats" to their status quo?
The ACLU has filed suit against the FBI's program aimed at targeting "Black-identified activists..."
Our strength is and will always be in our numbers and our principled solidarity with each other. It's a mistake to think that we can rely on the very institutions and policing agencies who are benefiting the most from domestic spying. Just ask the NSA.
4
This is why I find the U.S. government's cyberespionage accusations against Huawei to be laughable and hypocritical. Our own American tech companies (Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon) are spying on our every move and our every insecurity, and these companies pay little to nothing in taxes. What has the U.S. government done about them? But we're supposed to be scared about a Chinese company; sounds like the government is employing a smokescreen to distract us.
4
I've been following the Times's Privacy Project and find all of this almost overwhelmingly depressing. I have three suggestions:
1) Make it unlawful to serve content that the user has not specifically requested. So, if I went to a site's home page, clicked on a link, and went to a new page, that page could include nothing but the content that I requested. Hard to write that law, I know; harder still to enforce it. But changing the economics of the web—making it explicit in many dimensions what "free" means—is critical to privacy and our political health.
2) Make it unlawful for sites to use your bandwidth to track you. Right now, if I click on a link to a page and that page has an Amazon or Facebook or Google ad tracker, it can use a huge amount of data as it gathers information. Ad services would have to reimburse you for tracking you.
3) Make it unlawful for sites to serve up content without the user having a comprehensive understanding of its terms of service. You'd actually have to read the TOS, then get quizzed on them and pass the quiz before you could use a site. That would force sites to have TOS that are much easier to understand, and it's safe to say that virtually no one knows what they're agreeing to, now, when they click "I accept."
Instead users trying to opt out, force sites to establish that every use knowledgeably opt in. These three measures would obviate a whole lot of the picayune regulation that rightly concern Professor Tufecki.
4
It seems somewhat naive to think you can put the genie back in the bottle. Perhaps one solution is to educate each other not to share so much of ourselves on line.
1
I get ads in my feed for Redi-whip daily. If the internet really knew me, it would certainly know it is wasting its time.
I do a lot of searches for medical and scientific info- for friends, to expand on info while reading articles, to clarify something I don't understand. If the internet is trying to make some inferences about my searches it is going to get very confused very quickly.
"Shadow profiles" does get my attention.
And this - "The journalist Kashmir Hill has reported on cases in which Facebook suggested to a psychiatrist’s patients that they were potential “Facebook friends,” suggested that people “friend” the person with whom their spouse was having an affair and outed prostitutes’ real identities to their clients. "
Good grief.
I think if I were young I would be much more worried, because it will get worse, not better.
Fashioning laws and trying to directly regulate is not going to help much in the wild frontier of digital.
2
@Marjorie Ditto!
1
All these years I thought Tracey Walter' comment in Repo Man was prescient. "Miller:
A lot o' people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch o' unconnected incidents 'n things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice o' coincidence that lays on top o' everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconsciousness."
It was always about the Intertubes.
5
This is why I use fake information as often as I can, no smart appliances and use non-digital means of communication, except unfortunately for here.
Facebook thinks I'm a woman and maybe sometimes I am except for when I'm a guy.
1
When is society going to wake from its catatonic state? All these claims of government threat, invasion of privacy, and loss of freedom, yet people continue to willingly provide accurate, factual information about themselves to faceless, mindless computers.
The machines only know what you tell them and machines do not need to be told the truth. It is also not necessary, or mandatory, to tell a corporation your life story in order to buy a pair of shoes - if they have a burning desire to know more about you then tell them a lie.
You give cash for a good and in return the good is transferred over, that is the extent of an honest, legal transaction. If it is not absolutely necessary to divulge, or legally required, why bother being honest.
Algorithms can only predict accurately based on information provided and input. The more accurate the information people provide in the early days of data collection the more accurate the predictions will be in the future. So, do yourself a favor, provide false data every chance you get. It is okay to lie, you are only providing it for a machine algorithm.
For those who doubt that lying will thwart algorithms from making more accurate predictions about you - by all means continue to fall for the, “accurate data will save your life”, mantra. If data ultimately leads to an accurate picture of a person then telling a lie, or the truth, doesn’t matter. In the meantime, why provide an honest view into your life for every Tom, Dick, or Harry?
23
"... and machines do not need to be told the truth."
You can't lie about what you are ordering online, nor can you lie about your mailing address. So your "strategy" is unworkable.
"Algorithms can only predict accurately based on information provided and input."
The brand of toothpaste you buy, when you buy it, and what else you buy with it are all "information provided". What's more, if you pay with a card, your purchases can be tracked over time.
"... provide false data every chance you get."
Explain how to "lie" about the brand of toothpaste you are buying with a debit card.
NB: "brand of toothpaste" is a placeholder for any product. Replace it with "title of a book", if you like.
1
@DGR
I will continue to pay in cash as long as society allows it.
Data processing technology has advanced by leaps and bounds in the last decade. Smaller computers, and linked computers coupled with ever evolving software code. In my old job about a decade ago, there was marketing group in the org whose job was to "know the customer" and target your market efforts to that customers needs. Well, the marketing people would have to research other sections in our own organization, like ask the sales department if a customer has bought from them in the past, and what they bought. Or ask the companies product support desk, to see if the customer has called and what their issues were. Where did all these efforts lead? Soon, a project was underway to record every transaction in the org (in a computer file/table), so that some whiz programmers could access all of those files and link the information automatically. So if I wanted to know if John H Smith of 123 Main Street contacted our org in any way, I'd hop on an application that would search all sectional records in the company, link them, and present me with a tidy report in a few seconds. I think they call this "Customer Relationship Management" in today's par!ance. And linking information about a customer (person or org) from disparate sources was possible usually by a unique field (think SSN), but could be done with a combination of fields (like Name and address, or phone). Today's technology and the trails we leave online make it easy to know who we are.
1
The extortion of an individual's personal information has been a money-making enterprise for eons. Social media is now one of the most lucrative resources and is here to stay. I don't know if there ever be a means of employing effective regulations that protect our privacy other than killing the entire Internet system.
3
Add me to the count of people who have had their doctors recommended to be "friends" on Facebook and LinkedIn. And I am talking about doctors that I haven't seen since the 1990s. VERY, very scary!
4
Those who argue that they personally "don't care if their personal data is used to target advertising to them" have failed utterly to grasp the magnitude of this problem.
Data about individual is gathered, aggregated, sorted, and used for one overall purpose: to gain advantage over us. The problem isn't targeted advertising, but all of the other myriad ways this data can be used not only against individuals, but to suppress free speech, free association, and political and human rights generally.
Big corporate and government interests have access to extensive data about everyone. Individuals do not. Individuals are under pervasive surveillance every minute of their existence.
Insurance companies can use your data against you to deny you insurance. Employers can spy on you. Banks can deny loans to people based on their private data. And people will edit what they say, and with whom they speak, when they know they are under pervasive surveillance. This, in turn, makes it far easier for the few to control the many, for authoritarian and totalitarian governments to seize and maintain power, and for powerful corporate interests to vastly expand their power.
We Americans who think that life under East German or Soviet-style surveillance would have been intolerable are allowing this total surveillance to seize and maintain power. Why?
8
Scientists have said the world was flat yet when I remind my STEM loving compatriots of this I am admonished. I would say that the problem was technology if it were. I hate computer technology. The problem is not computer technology in this case. The problem is human faith in science. STEM will destroy humanity because the creativity it produces is used by the faithful corporate disciples to misguide the spirit of human creativity. We’re doomed to go out with a whimper.
3
@D
So if not STEM, then what?
There will be a day when a despot (Trump ?) uses this technology to predict who will question their rule, and they will take measures to silence those people. The same autocrat may use the technology to predict who is vulnerable to manipulation, and who will believe the lies they tell. Maybe this is happening already in China, who knows.
Worrisome indeed.
4
Let's face it. There is no such thing as privacy. With all these techniques for surreptitious tracking, it is time to accept that we need to agree on guidelines and regulation to set standards for acceptable uses of personal data.
3
As a boomer I am naturally cautious about sharing very personal things, though I am most cautious about information belonging to family and friends.
That said, in terms of my own privacy, I figure that ship has sailed long since. My info has been stolen from the government twice (including SSN and electronic copies of my fingerprints the last time).
My political views are out there as obviously I use my full name on line. I have my reasons for that.
What I do do with great care is protect my financial accounts. I do not, for example, link any of them to my phone. I consider that too big a risk for something I often carry in my pocket and might lose.
If I really cared about someone knowing my location, I'd simply turn off my phone. It's not that I want to be tracked, but I don't care so much. In fact, as a woman who often travels alone, I find a certain comfort in it at times.
Might government regulation help? Might and might not. In this country, in particular, we run into the struggle between liberty and control. Additionally, on Facebook one cannot control what others do. What I do do (for many reasons) is keep my "friends" list small and limited to people whom I know outside of FB (and a few with I have not met, but have a connection with). Beyond that I figure it's out of my hands.
3
@Anne-Marie Hislop
I couldn't help notice a very specific name along with a specific city and state location in your Times profile.
Having read your account of identity theft (twice!) I must say it seems you haven't yet learned your lesson.
2
@Anne-Marie Hislop
You wrote my post, so thanks for that. I used to use my real name, but people who care asked me not to and so, to be a nice mama, I complied, but I still use my real location. I get so annoyed at people who cryptically say, “in my city...” and such when the content of the comment is rather useless without the location. I also dislike the supposed cuteness of things like “Anywheresville” or “the planet” and such.
All in all, I post very little on FB, but I do look in on the grandkids and download their photos sometimes.
I really don’t care who knows my health status, (simple laws forbidding use of data for hiring can fix that one, no?) and I see no particular reason why some fool leaving another woman’s home at 5 am should be granted “privacy”. The credit report folks already own us and have for decades, and no one seems to mind, even though they can ruin your life because you couldn’t pay a medical bill.
1
Just because certain personal data can still be ‘mined’ from those of us who do not use any of the many device-requiring apps and limit our online presence to email and texting and commenting now and then, doesn’t mean we have lost control of our personal choices. I personally don’t care if I am targeted by an ad for sleeping bags because I sent an email about camping out. Nobody twists my arm to either write the note or choose to buy the sleeping bag. It is impressive how fast that ad appears, though. If the technology existed to know about what was on our minds back in the heyday of television, I am 100 percent sure the companies sponsoring the shows I watched would have pitched directly to me. They just didn’t have the tools yet. If you have something private to say, write a letter.
I have no social media accounts, and to my knowledge no profile pictures posted. The thought that I may be nonetheless tracked by Facebook is bothersome. I do recall once, stumbling across my Facebook "shadow" profile, and there I was, name and relatives all setup all I had to do was sign up and take it. I was, at the time, somewhat stunned. I have also Googled my name and been amazed at not just the accuracy but the detail they have of me.
Years ago I maintained a LinkedIn profile and was somewhat active. I was appalled to find out, through family, that they were receiving incessant invitations from me to join my network or some other contact request. With my face picture! It really offended me, that suddenly it was I, unwittingly, who was that annoying person constantly bombarding you with a connection request. I immediately closed down my account.
I also, on occasion, get emails from my father, who passed away almost 10 years ago. He wants me to click a link, which I don't.
8
First of all, I don't post photos, anywhere.
You can be paranoid and attempt to stay off the grid. Or you can share minute by minute accounts of your activities and moods, your political views and consumer preferences. Most of us opt for somewhere in the middle.
Algorithms can predict a lot about aggregate, or most statistically likely, behaviors. But they need hard data to learn from. The more hard data you share the less fuzzy the predictions.
I get that there is information about me floating around the Internet that I never intended to share. But there's less than if I indiscriminately shared everything with little benefit to me, and for there to be less than there is would be an undue burden. Decide for yourself how "fuzzy" you want your Internet dossier to be and act accordingly.
5
Sociological research points out that most primitive human communities are comprised of about 70 family units that live in close proximity. Most voluntary organizations, regardless of the overall size break down into these smaller units where everyone knows everyone else. Frankly, there aren't any secrets.
The internet is just the same community writ-large. We all have "tells" that inform others of who we really are. Add to that the fact that humans are almost pathological in their desire to know all about others and that companies will exploit that knowledge to sell you everything.
Awareness is the key. I'm sure, thanks to all the sales messages that I get, that my shopping habits are well known, but I probably spend more time deleting than I do investigating. Some levels are creepy but generally most of the acquired knowledge is trying to sell me something or get me to vote on some particular issue.
I've found ignoring the messages is better than fighting them. However, I don't have a social media presence so I don't have to deal with the bots and trolls or the malevolent individuals/groups.
Human life has never been private. Your friends, neighbors, family, and other associates know more about you than you think and moving to a small community would only make it worse.
1
Thank you for your article!
The thing that frightens me even more is how much big data gets wrong.
I have power of attorney for my mom who lives in another state. My partners' sister was living with us for a year (she has since moved to yet another state).
I googled myself and to my horror more than one of those information sites showed my mother living at my address and that my mom was related to my partner's sister. Interestingly my partner's sister was not shown as living at my address.
7
The First Law of the Internet:
If you're not paying for the service you're not the customer - you're the product.
70
@DaveInNewYork
This should be the #1NYT pick comment!
@DaveInNewYork
"There is no free lunch" is an adage that's been around since the 1940s, thanks to economist Harley Lutz.
I had to hold near daily tutorials in the early 2000s for older relatives who "discovered" the internet and began robustly signing up for every free email and internet portal as if it was an all you can eat buffet. They didn't grasp my warning, no matter how simple or deep I went. Finally, I just drew a line in the sand and told them all that I would not respond to any email sent from Hotmail, Yahoo, etc..., that their email with a crazy quilt of weirdo internet links and malware would likely end up in my spam filter, if not altogether blocked.
Some still don't get it 15 years later. Those are the ones who are forever asking for pictures and personal info they can post on their "family" Facebook page.
We are decades past when American schoolkids desperately need to instructed in basic Economics 101: Who does what, who pays for what.
I don’t participate in Social media other than email and texting. This minimum social internet activity plus regular shopping, reading digital news, and financial research is tracked by Google and others. I’m targeted with ads based on my searches. I don’t like it at all. I have no choice other than quit the internet altogether. I won’t do that. The other option is to hope that one day our Government will stop this by regulation. Now, I limit my activity and accept the fact that I’m an open book and that’s just the way it is.
20
@Peter Z I do they exact same thing you do. I miss FB now bc of family posts....it just irritates me that the government will not make nor enforce any rules. I listed to Sam Harris and his interview with the guy who wrote "Zucked" and I'm hopeful someone is giving them grief. Bc I'm busy working on climate change which will be the real deal-breaker. Thanks for letting me know I am not the lone ranger.
4
@Colleen Thank you for working on climate change. None of this tracking and snooping is going to matter very much if we do not address climate change and global warming. Thanks for your good work!
7
@Colleen
Peter Z, you, and I are all participating in a form of social media simply by making these comments. You think we're not being tracked, and maybe having our comments read? Think again.
1
It has now been years since I deleted my FB and Twitter accounts. I don't use Instagram. I have a wide range of friends, all of whom I message, email and phone. I'm especially fond of video conference platforms like Zoom, BlueJeans and Facetime.
The social media outlets are an icon of the past for me. I feel lucky. I feel embarrassed for the news media and for the officials who feed them stories through Twitter. Twitter demeans content. Twitter dilutes content. Media outlets should be the contact point for official outreach, not the third party interloper. I know, it's the great new thing and there's no "putting the genie back in the bottle"...but there is...and it's up to the media to push back on social media fed content. In the not too distant future, the person occupying the office of the US President will not be allowed to have a personal cell phone and will certainly not be allowed to use Twitter. Social media for the next president will be reserved for an assistant posting pictures of the White House Easter egg hunt.
11
@Skidaway I agree about your points about Twitter, but what makes you so sure the next potus will not be allowed to use Twitter? I hope you are correct, but I highly doubt it. The current potus has repeatedly broken the basic rules of Twitter and yet he has not been cut off Twitter, likely because Twitter is afraid of him using executive powers to go after Twitter, but short of an act of Congress, in conjunction with the Senate and SCOTUS, I don't see how future Presidents would be forced to stop tweeting, unless they just decide not to use Twitter.
Twitter has been wildly irresponsible, in my opinion, in allowing 45 to tweet much hate and bile and many untruths and personal attacks. Twitter should be held accountable, but I doubt that will happen. (Potus should also be held accountable, but that's another issue.)
9
We have movie stars and politicians who seem to thrive in the spotlight. Celebrities, people whose every move from brushing their teeth in the morning on is reported in sound, screen, and print - and they seem to love it. I like my privacy (note that I use a pseudonym here), but maybe I'm dead nuts wrong, maybe those who dread anonymity are right (whatever wrong and right mean in this context).
3
I think that people tend to overestimate the degree to which others are actually interested in them. I recall my 80 year old mother in law, who, when the Patriot Act was being debated in Congress, exclaimed to me that she did not want to US government knowing which books she checked out of the library. I suggested to her that the US government might be interested in her reading selections, but only if, for example, she had regular telephone contact with certain individuals in Waziristan.
About 15 years ago I decided to set up an online business. In so doing I effectively sold my soul to Google and Amazon. It is counterproductive to try to run an online business -- and mine has been moderately successful -- whilst pretending to be someone other than who you are, or refusing to provide your real identity. Consumers want to know who they are dealing with.
At my age (almost 60) I am not concerned that machines or corporations will learn anything more about me than what I advertise about myself. And today I receive no more spam, ads or other electronic detritus than any of my friends who are terrified of "big brother."
8
@Frank J Haydn
I would assume you are correct — these platforms aren’t interested in you per se.
But they are interested in selling stuff very directly to you and the 10,000 people to whom you are most similar in their database.
So it’s worse than you think. They are interested in harvesting your most personal data to exploit your habits and patterns.
But no, they could not care less about you as a person.
8
WOW! I'm not a social media person for exactly the reasons you had mentioned, but I now see that does not really matter all that much. Thank you for "enlightening" me on this topic.
13
@Dave I am not a social media person either. I never signed in to Facebook but the interesting and creepy thing is that FB even tracks people who are NOT on Facebook. So when Zuckerberg announces that he is making privacy a concern, I know he is flat out lying. The only person who gets privacy in the FB world is Zuckerberg.
There is a wonderful book out called Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff. Her book is an eye opener, if a bit too long. She tends to do better in interviews, so look up Zuboff and hear what she has to say about the neew economy of surveillance. It's worth your while.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/03/harvard-professor-says-surveillance-capitalism-is-undermining-democracy/
Another example of socializing the cost (to all of us) and privatizing the profit. If the companies are profiting off our information, and much of it is not freely given, than we should be meaningfully compensated for it. Or it should stop. And if the required amount of compensation outweighed the value of it then it would stop via market forces.
19
This is a helpful and valuable reminder to be extra careful but it may be too late for those early adopters of the internet. The barn door has been open for too long.
6
Knowing as much as I do about the technological infancy of the Internet, I've never considered myself to be discreet online. I just haven't done anything online that I wouldn't want published to the world.
6
@Richard Mclaughlin
But even if you are incredibly discrete, data gatherers likely have your social security number, date of birth, address and all kinds of personal information about you. Read Shoshana Zuboff.
Like it or not, the machines are fast gaining on us.
We have to stop thinking about permanent fixes and begin adopting temporary ones.
For openers, I advocate all us changing our names tomorrow to Smith or Jones or Wu or Zeynep Tufekci,
7
If our privacy is profitable, it is for sale. Everything is for sale, since the object of life, citizenship, existence, is to make profit off of everything.
We already are limited by how our credit rating values us. And if the credit rating industry is a hint of the future, accuracy is not a necessary component of the sale. Credit raters sell faulty information frequently, the buyer and seller profiting from it, but the person on the hook to suffer for it, and straighten it out has no say in the transactions.
I expect that will be true of all aspects of our privacy. And if government continues on the current path, as long as there is a buck to be made, it will be right and just in our government's eyes/
10
Since the purchase of an iPhone X, I have seen regular ads in my google search and Facebook feed about things I NEVER searched for but merely mentioned in conversation. It happens within the same day.
I have made sure my microphone is off and I do not have a Facebook app.
The weirdest one, I was talking about foot pain while planning a hike, and I started getting ads for hiking shoes for Plantar Fasciitis, a painful condition of the foot.
These ads did not appear when I had my iPhone 5, but stalker ads appeared for things for which I did an internet search.
Is it Apple that’s listening in and selling my conversation data?
44
@Dee
Have you considered that the other person to whom you were talking had THEIR microphone active on the phone they use?
Apple has been straightforward in stating their privacy views; none of which include the 'spy' model employed by Google, Samsung, and their ilk.
7
My husband had his microphone on only for certain apps. He turned the mic off on these. So we’ll see if that theory is possible. It’s creepy that google or apple would be spying through someone else’s phone.
I’ll be eliminating my gmail and possibly Google Maps in my attempt to root this problem out.
5
@Dee
Yes. Throw away your phone and buy a Huawei one. That one will be much more trustworthy.
The problem of information collation has been with us for a long time (I wrote about it in the "Internet Security" chapters of the Computer Security Handbook two decades ago).
The accuracy of such correlations has always been an issue. Accurate enough for advertising is one thing, although a discrimination aspect is omnipresent. Certainly not for proof in any form of proceeding, civil or criminal. In between these two extremes, there are infinitely many shades of gray, with much potential for misstep and harm. Consider the case of the man who received a "intense" visit from law enforcement. He had purchased backpacks for his children and his wife needed a pressure cooker. A doting family man was identified as a terrorist.
A major retail chain used purchase data to identify pregnancy. The scheme did not consider that one account could account for purchases by multiple individuals. Oops.
Similar problems have occurred in other contents. Often a correlation is nothing more than a proxy for something deeper. Sometimes this is merely confusing, other times it is illegal (e.g., food choices might correlate with ethnicity). Imagine a landlord claiming "I did not discriminate by ethnicity. I just dislike a particular style of music".
It is a very complex area. There are many examples of situations where out technological abilities have outstripped our maturity.
14
"Predicting depression before the onset of clinical symptoms would be a boon for public health, which is why academics are researching these tools; they dream of early screening and prevention."
This points to a far more disturbing aspect of "data inference" than obvious malevolent purposes. Just consider exactly how this "boon for public health" would play out to achieve the "dream of early screening and prevention".
You don't have to read Kafka to visualize someone at the door saying "I'm from Public Health Services and I'm here to help you."
29
@GerardM Good point. Seems to me I just read an article in the Times about the harm done by anti-depression drugs and the difficulty of coming off them.
4
@New Jerseyan Get ready for an onslought of ads for drugs that supposedly treat depression.
Regardless of the future fixes to the collection of data, I would like to see a report that specifies the data collected about me. Just because my phone goes somewhere it does not mean that the service being rendered is for me. Assuming I am similar to the people who have my phone number is cheap and inaccurate data collection. Have at it, no wonder most of the ads the come through my feeds don't interest me.
3
Indeed, tracking a person is not that difficult these days. Even if one tries hard to be discreet. Even if you use VPN and encryptions, someone knows.
A more relevant question is this: can people have it both ways, or more precisely, multiple ways. They want it free, be exhibitionistic when they want and private when they don't like it. The proverbial "have the cake and eat it too!"
That said, there are many levels of tracking. If it is at the aggregate level, perhaps it is a win-win in the hands of ethical data brokers, if they exist at all. At granular level, perhaps people need to be aware of it. And who is tracking you makes the world of a difference. You have to trust someone at some point. Why, I stopped using Trend Micro virus because it uploads my data to a questionable server.
1
This is the case for regulation. Only regulation would enable us to uniformly say this is okay and this is too much. In the rest of our society we regulate activities by making the practitioner responsible for following regulations. This is true of your accountant as well as your doctor, beautician and plumber. But we haven’t taken that step in social media yet and it’s time. Time to tell practitioners, not just vendors like Facebook, go no further than this or there will be consequences.
8
The more of anything there is, the less each unit of it is worth. Even data becomes worthless when there is too much of it.
3
My privacy is more than just a collection of data units. Details about my existence and how I live my life will never be worthless to me, regardless of how much of it is accessible.
3
The comment that as data increases it becomes less valuable is missing the point. The value of each data point does become less valuable. But, it’s the aggregate (data converted to information and to knowledge) that increases in value. With ever increasing computer power the ability to extract knowledge is the target and not data directly.
8
There is a fine line between a grove and a rut. Changing behavior out of fear or by education is the challenge.
Trump has put the nation in a rut of fear and we mustn't Capitalize on his approach it to deal with privacy issues.
We have to approach privacy in a positive way and understand we are learning to know what we don’t know. We are all getting massive computing power which appears free. However, it isn’t and we are paying for it through the monetization of our personal information by the Googles of the world.
We are in an information bartering age now. The next stage
will be the creation of an information transfer economy infrastructure. Dare I call it a Bitcoin used in trading information,
maybe?
No we can’t all become Computer Scientists. We will need them in an institutionalized Information Management and Enforcement Agency, the IMEA.
If this is too controlling for the second amendment folks fine. You can communicate without privacy protection but, stay away from breaking the IMEA rules of the information economy.
If this all sounds cockeyed imagine unregulated atomic energy. Yes folks, the internet is more powerful than nuclear weapons, it’s the command and control structure for hate at the speed of light!
2
Does this also mean that our conversations on landline phones are being monitored? And flip phones not connected to the Internet?
I'm not involved in anything illegal or immoral but am by nature private, and fear the abuse of power and distortion of truth technology makes possible.
I especially fear for the future of children being born today. They will never know about a relatively private world. This cannot have a positive effect psychologically.
14
I run a medium sized website for over a decade. I recently disabled all Google page tracking codes - they took the website out of their search engine shortly after that. These companies are using strong-arm tactics.
Since our government is doing nothing to stop these companies and their egregious behavior, I have reached the conclusion that our government itself is buying this data and paying handsomely for it.
25
@Positive Change Required: If one is out of favor, one can be very hard to find on the internet.
3
The problem with the remedy you propose, legislation, suffers from two debilitating drawbacks.
The first is ignorance; the vast majority of legislators haven't got the beginning of an understanding of what computer software is or does or indeed of what statistical analysis is or does. The second is that legislation, in a democracy, is specific in what it prohibits. Writing a law that finds the correct balance between criminalizing precise actions and behavior, without impeding other, beneficial uses of data will be hugely difficult, especially as identical data sets may very well be put to different uses, depending on the intent of the user.
Moreover, software is malleable. It is not at all hard to rewrite code so that it still does what an ill-intentioned person wants, but no longer violates the particulars of the law. On the other hand, the people owning and working for these corporations are equally vulnerable... This technology doesn't discriminate and so the best response may be to turn it against them.
9
Phone number is the new SSN. When we keep the same number, as we move state to state, or change carriers, we bring everything about every chapter of our life with us.
Also, buying a home. It’s funny/sad to hear the Millennials at the office realize just how public their lives are once they buy a home (and they think they can curate your digital presence....). Where you live, how much your home was, and how you bought it....all public record. In the old days, it was also public, but inquiring minds would have had to go to the local/state government office to request all that. But, now? All there digitally for anyone who wants it.
How do you opt out of that?
31
@Brian Zimmerman
Yes. And your bank has been "sharing" your data forever. But who read the fine print on a new account? It was all down the slippery slope. It is truly Pandora's Box.
2
We should find a way to charge companies for collecting and using our information. Right now, they get all the benefits and we are subject to all the risks. If our personal information is to be monetized, we need to get paid for it -- especially if we're the ones assuming all the risks. (We can't even sue for damages if we are harmed through these inferences.)
42
@RMS
From their point of view, we are getting paid via their free service.
We need laws to enable us to *purchase* access to the service. This would also allow legislation to limit what is permissible in one-sided end-user agreements. Right now, the only way to get their service is to agree to whatever they want --which is, of course, unlimited personal information.
16
So when do we get the fortune telling software? If the machines know everything about us and the world we're embedded in, it means they should be able to predict whether we'll get that job, whether we have aptitude for that course, or whether we'll make a good match with that person. Bring on Delphic Oracle I.
5
Τhis is why I ended up keeping my social media accounts. The privacy ship that could have been kept in port has already sailed. It was anyway problematic to say, as many did in this forum "what do you expect on social media" (while commenting on an online forum, no less). The fact is, we're all in this together and only regulation will fix it.
(Many thanks to Zeynep Tufekci for her articles on this topic, they are a fine resource for all of us.)
16
@S North: "while commenting on an online forum, no less"
An online forum that is doing POST to the following interestingly named URL :
https://a.et.nytimes.com/track
1
This bears repeating.
We are not the Customers of these businesses, we are the Product. The rights to our selves are being bought and sold, and we are powerless to do anything about it unless we want to live like hermits.
47
When you dont PAY for it you are the product. I am stopping using ANYTHING that has a google connection - waze, nest, email. Pay for private servers, and nothing to worry. The unless you plan to run for president.
1
@left coast geek We're not just the product any longer. We're the raw material, as this article just hints at.
1
Trusted Identities in Cyberspace is an outline to resolve this issue. Whether substance wins over form is unclear. What is absolutely certain is that data will be used, for better or worse, on our behalf at our direction, or on behalf of others if we continue to remain publicly uneducated and timid. There are divisive forces on the field suppressing innovations developed in the public interest. The public simply can not afford to wait for a proxy referendum to arrive via the press.
5
What exactly is ‘Trusted Identities in Cyberspace’ ?
These machines are touted as the epitome of civilization. But you can't civilize a machine. At some point it's going be like dealing with Trump. The machine won't be able to admit it's wrong. And we'll be in thrall to ham-handed algorithms, like Europe was once in thrall to the Vikings.
13
I like the recognition that the big threats are not the government (in Western democracies) or even companies trying to sell you stuff. It's more other people having vastly improved access to information about you. It's your "unlisted" number now effectively being listed in your friends' phones which in turn is uploaded to large databases so is in fact more listed than before and subject to reverse lookup services. So you just give your phone number to your drug deal, mistress and they can learn everything about you and your family.
6
Maybe you shouldn’t do drugs or have a mistress. Crime simply doesn’t go undiscovered any more in this day and age!
Perhaps, hopefully...the only thing that saves us from the potential pitfalls, bad consequences, invasion of privacy and loss of freedom that all this activity along with technology is potentially taking or could take from us is the safety in numbers.
In other words, the sheer amount of data coupled with the huge amount of information that can be garnered from each of us multiplied by the hundred and hundreds of millions of people that are being data mined and whose information is being added...is SO LARGE ...in itself becomes a maze and more difficult for those who would wish us hurt /loss/theft/harm.
It's certainly not a solution or a panacea...but it is better than nothing which is ironic in and on a subject which more and more , is about Everything , about almost all of Us.
2
Walmart recently installed cameras over its self-checkout stations. They are not discreet because the cameras have a small display under them.
Presumably that is intended to discourage theft, but with facial recognition it would be possible to track customers over time, even if customers pay with cash.
Worse, with the inference technology described by Tufekci, it would be possible to make predictions about personal traits of customers.
13
@DGR - lol, I welcome the algorithm that can make any kind of prediction about me other than I am unpredictable:) The last person I dated said it was like stepping into a Fellini film:)
@DGR
I got photographed (for facial recognition) at an international airport (Europe) by my own government last summer, so why should I worry about Facebook?
1
Wear a hoodie or cap! And glasses.
We should all look up stuff we're not interested in just to mess with the systems that are tracking us.
136
@Linda - I do that with any and all surveys. If companies want to keep bugging me and collecting data, I have no problem messing with the results. Sometimes, I'm female. Sometimes I shave off about 35 years and triple my income.
24
@Linda, advertisers pay Facebook to find users who are interested in the things they sell. If a lot of people pretend to be interested, Facebook makes more money.
1
@Linda They'd still win. The more time we spend online, the more they can sell us for.
So what happens when all that can be inferred, is inferred? Do we exist once all has been disclosed? Can an algorithm get blood from a stone?
2
The fact that Facebook tracks me even though I don't have a Facebook profile seems like a crime is being committed. How is that even legal?
233
@C. M. Jones
Yes, it's creepy and frightening - I agree. However, in the analog world, stalking another human is OK until one obtains a restraining order.
6
If the POTUS says that getting [stolen] info from Russia is not a crime, and gets away with it, we ate indeed in trouble.
1
Why not legal? It’s like going through your trash is also legal, right? Ditto with taking a DNA sample from the glass you used.
1
I generally keep the location tracker off on my phone. I know where I am, I don't need my phone to tell me that. The only time I turn it on is when I'm driving and I want real-time updates on traffic.
9
@MD reader if your phone is turned on at all, it can be approximately located via cell tower tracking, which wifi networks are in range, and so forth.
23
@left coast geek
What you say is absolutely true. I was on a jury for a murder trial in Mercer County, NJ last year. Part of the evidence for tracking the path of the perpetrator after he shot the victim was the pinging of his cell phone off of various cell phone towers in Trenton, NJ. Tech experts from Verizon were brought in as witnesses for the prosecution. Your phone being on is enough.
1
Government regulation? That's very quaint concept. And, in what strange exotic land does that take place?
Our laissez faire - free market - economy, those "efficient markets," will take care of everything, including our privacy which is under assault.
I saw a guy in Walgreens, in line ahead of me, who wanted to buy a pack of cigarettes. He was about 70 years old with white hair. The clerk at the register demanded to see his driver's license, which she summarily scanned into Walgreen's system (with his name, address, date of birth, license number). Then he paid with his credit card. He protested a bit. But was instantly read the riot act by the clerk who was "just doing her job."
Well, there a lot of people who are just doing their jobs these days: at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, helping people befriend their spouse's paramour and selling their data to the highest bidder. That's how capitalism works. And that's a good thing. Right?
God forbid that the "socialists" have the temerity to suggest that Americans should have access to reasonably priced healthcare. Or believe that people who paid into Social Security their whole lives should actually get their retirement benefits: "It's a Ponzi scheme that can never work - get rid of it!" And that Medicare isn't "broke."
Now, where was that strange land shrouded in mystery and horror? I think they call it the civilized world, or Scandinavia, or maybe something like Europe.
Privacy? Let's just try for a government...
159
I am surprised that the stores can do that in MA; in California that intrusive ID’g is prohibited - they can LOOK to confirm age for cig/alcohol etc purchases, but cannot scan them.
13
My local school district scans in your license and records your thumb print the first time you enter one of their facilities since their installed the current security system and protocols. Each subsequent time you appear, the thumb scans presents your photo, into and entry history to the guards along with a cross reference to who you have attending and if they’re present on the campus.
4
@From Where I Sit
Same here in Georgia. To protect students from being checked out by ex-spouses who don't have custody or by other unauthorized people. Also does criminal background check, especially with regard to potential child molestation. Of course, all teachers are finger-printed, too.
George Orwell would not know in which world he is inhabiting if he lived today...1984 now an anachronism compared to 2019. Big Brother no longer may be symbolic of a totalitarian government (aside from Trumpism) but instead seems to represent the intrusion upon our personal lives during the digital age. Just as an example let us use my comment and those of others to this piece. If we do not talk in the first person, readers can still infer who we are and what we are about. Even when we shop on-line regularly, in my case Amazon Prime, how many times are we "alerted" to a product which accumulated data have already deciphered would appeal to our tastes? It is creepy, but I and many others continue to be dependent on our computers, iPhones, or tablets. However, most of us want certain things in our lives to be kept private; and it is ominous indeed that we are being analyzed so closely. Yes, we have to be careful, but just how careful is the question.
18
@Kathy Lollock
My big fear with Amazon is that it will soon put most local retail stores out of business and its prices will raise astronomically. I've already seen it happen with several items I purchase regularly. I noted the price rise in one review and received a notice that my review broke one of their rules and had been removed. Talk about power corrupting! There are some things I can only find on Amazon, but I'm going to support local stores now. Still, I truly fear for children being born today.
8
@EB Agree. And although the “damage” for me has already been done re my personal data, I, too, patronize my local stores and small businesses more and more.
5
@Kathy Lollock Good idea. Just never never never pay by credit/debit card, or use a rewards card, email or phone number to get a shopper's special !
1
I've always been hypercritical about privacy, and have watched - slack-jawed, as people willingly give it away (there was a terrific show an artist did, about a year ago, in which she simply offered anyone free bisquits in exchange for something 'inconsequential'; just some information on the average form.
People stupidly were willing to give away the 'keys' to their castle; information - for a sugary snack.
Ankur a month ago, CBC's Marketplace did a piece with a could of 'white hat' hackers ( the ethical ones), and they showed the reporter that they could easily gain access to her bank account - drain it, and with absolutely NO assistance from her (i belle got can see it on YouTube). The reporter was gobsmacked.
I've never used social media, and in addition to a lot of simple things everyone should do (a VPN - NOT the 'free' ones), and disposable email addresses, I've always kept my social contacts VERY limited (I can't say how), as well as any information they have. I never used/needed credit (my parents taught me the value of money, and other things), and things which I can't write out here.
Suffice it, I'm not a paranoiac, my life is quite fine, and I'd be more than willing if this reporter wanted to.. try if they could find out anything about me (I'm always amazed by people who never realise my name).
What I've done I've done my whole life. It's not something most people (absolutely not ONE so-called millennial - ugh). could do.
1
@U.N. Owen
The author's point is that even those who think they're safe because they don't use Facebook or other social media really aren't, because data is collected (or inferred) on all of us, even those who think we've "opted out." There are some things you can't opt out of. Your vital records, for one. ANY encounter with the medical system since it's all computerized now (and nobody avoids the medical system, unless you're willing to just die in bed untreated from a disease). And what about shelter? If you rent, you've got a financial trail. And unless you're privileged enough to buy a house with all cash, you've got a credit trail as well. And with cameras getting cheaper and smaller, you can be tracked in both public and private places without even knowing.
In other words, except folks who live like the Unabomber, living in complete isolation in a cabin in the woods, privacy should be a concern for all of us. We need to figure out ways to reform our society (including both corporations and the government) so we don't turn into a surveillance state. Sneering at "millennials" may boost one's ego, but it's not going to solve anything.
60
@Scott Here's an odd observation. Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Bill Gates can afford real privacy. You can't.
If you own a home, your address is public information that is published online.
2
I'm thinking it might be time to change my phone number
6
@sjs
Point taken but you'd have to think that the computers could tweak your "profile" with a new telephone number update. There's a downside to all new tech. Many die in car mashups now but before the auto invention, no one was roaring down the freeway at 75 mph. I gave up Twitter and FB for these reasons but if I can watch the latest Bosch episodes on Prime in my living room I'm thinking I'm probably giving up a sliver of my privacy in the bargain. I don't buy much anymore at age 67 y/o and the main frame knows that I'm a pretty useless consumer cohort.
3
This has been going on for a long time. Over thousands of years, our brains have developed the ability to glance at someone, and instantly imagine what sort of fellow he might be, and what he might be up to. Clothes and body language provide important clues.
Of course, back in days when everyone lived in a village of a few hundred people, everyone knew what everyone else was like. There was very little privacy to speak of, and it wasn't necessary to evaluate strangers.
10
@Jonathan
And your Android devices sends Google all your WiFi passwords.
OK. So what.
Every email I write has a signature that links to my page on my departmental site and that contains, CV, List of Publications etc. etc. etc., including phone #s.
How much privacy do I need?
What can anyone do with my information apart from trying to sell me something, but I am blind to advertisements or block them.
Having access to information does not mean that anyone can actually do something with it.
And yes, I am aware that there are exceptions, the type of stuff that makes a good movie plot.
As for FB, I use it so that people will know exactly what I think.
10
@Joshua Schwartz You don't understand. Selling you something is just the tip of the iceberg. Inferences about you are probably already being used to limit or enlarge your access (and your family's access to) a variety of things - insurance, access to housing, education, employment, entertainment choices. You don't have to be notified about it, either. You already live in a world where your job application may be tossed in the "reject" file because you used Internet Explorer instead of Firefox to upload it.
2
"Having access to information does not mean that anyone can actually do something with it."
Yes they can, and it can terrible consequences. Here are two examples:
1. A man was falsely arrested because police tracked his location using his phone and his location happened to be near the scene of a murder.*
2. Terrorists used voter registration lists to track down people to attack based on their religion.**
* Tracking Phones, Google Is a Dragnet for the Police
By JENNIFER VALENTINO-DeVRIES
APRIL 13, 2019
New York Times
** 2002 Gujarat riots in India.
1
Thank you for this very useful article! Glad to see journalists like you keeping us up to speed!
12
I live in the seventh most segregated city in the US by housing patterns. A river divides this city, with the east side being White, and the west side Black. I live on the west side. The majority of members of my family are Black, however the 'inferred conclusions' that 'are highly likely to be accurate', can also be wrong.
12
@Ann Paddock
Absolutely. My experience with internet tracking is that it's a very stupid bot. It may be a slight improvement on the intelligence of a dog. Buy something online and prepare for an avalanche of ads for the very thing you just purchased. Book a hotel somewhere and you're expected to want to stay there again very soon.
The internet bots are always predicting your future from your past in a ridiculously primitive way.
worrying and yet at the same time interesting.
I wonder if, for example, this kind of technology would be able to screen for someone who is about to commit mass murder (school shooting, workplace shooting, etc...) as sometimes it seems that the only place where indicators were was social media.
Same thing with the problems that Facebook has been having with politics. This kind of algorithm might be able to spot Kremlin interference or the problems it was having in Myanmar.
3
@Dundeemundee
Paradoxically, screening to identify people who might commit certain crimes is perhaps the most dangerous use of technology with severe consequences. Unless you’re talking about someone who literally posts “I am going to do xyz” or equivalently obvious statements.
There have been puzzles where given a set of incomplete characteristics about a set of people, the objective is to determine all of the characteristics about all of the people. The method is deductive logic which can be described mathematically.
Taking isolated facts and using facts about the likelihood of those facts belonging to people with well known preferences or circumstances, and the inferred conclusions are highly likely to be accurate.
All of this is reasonable, but really, nobody is prying into my personal life in a personal way. Algorithms are parsing what I'm likely to buy, or how I'm feeling, and so on. But every inference and detail about me is not being pored over by some cyberstalker.
The people being hugely affected by this are the famous or infamous, who are subject to more stalking than ever before. But the unimportant peasant, like myself, can be fairly assured that nobody is following their every move.
As for changing the laws to protect privacy, good luck, because the laws don't affect a good deal of what goes on in the internet.
17
@Dan Stackhouse This is wrong. It IS being pored over, and not because you or I are interesting or "important." It's because our data tells a story about us that helps the institutions that dominate us determine our commercial and civic "value" to THEM. Our data profiles affects everything being supplied to us in our feeds (product advertisements, services, political messages, etc.), but they also increasingly determine life prospects. Your insurance costs will be determined in part on the basis of inferences from your "data", and you will never know about it. Your access to education, health care, housing, too. Even your hold time when you call Verizon or the electric company - EVERYTHING can and will follow from inferences drawn from data about you. It's DEEPLY personal. It couldn't be more personal. It's just not what we're trained to think of as personal.
8
@Dan Stackhouse
May your feelings of imperviousness never be disappointed, Dan. Laws are never perfect, or perfectly applied, but they reflect the perceived best interest of the community, and have succeeded in restraining the immoral purposes of opportunist deviants over countless eons.
Another good reason to go back and review the unusually prescient film, Brazil, by Terry Gilliam.
37
@Alan Cole
Great movie! Also check out the sci-fi book “Shockwave Rider” by John Brunner. Pretty amazing what he foresaw in 1971.
@Alan Cole Also Minority Report with Tom Cruise or the book by Philip K. Dick.
Thank you, Professor Tufekci, for another hugely informative article into an aspect of info-technology that I could not have even imagined. As usual you have given me another scare-of-my-life. Keep up the good work, though.
47
While I do not do Facebook and the like, it's clear that the internet knows all about me. If I give to a charity online, my name shows up on a Google search in connection with that charity. If I google rattan couches because my old sleeper-sofa is looking seedy after 25 years and my living room could use a new look, suddenly the pages of The New York Times are sprinkled with ads for rattan couches.
Ditto for Sunbrella pillows.
And lightweight fishing vests.
The internet is more myself than I am.
Nelly, I am the internet!
38
@B.
I get ads for clothing (ugly) meant for women that weigh twice what I do. Because I read about fashion and often look at what Whole Foods has on sale? Fat chance I'll buy those clothes.
@B.
Really? So what if you get ads for couches, when you are indeed looking to buy one? Ditto for the rest.
1
I am sorry you took my post seriously.
I do not really care about the ads; I only find interesting the whole idea that even if I tire of thinking about purchasing a new couch, the ads persist.
More important: Did you like my take-off on "Wuthering Heights"?
2
Online privacy is an illusion these days. Either get over the angst or quit membership in all social media. You didn’t think you gonna get those wonderful ways to share or video chat with the friends and family for free, did you! No free lunch in this world.
7
@Observer what others have tried to patiently explain in the comments is that even if you don't have social media, you are being tracked. If a friend of yours has FB Messenger, for example, then your contact info is there and FB has it. And Google tracks you and Gmail "reads" your mail.
1
It is only going to get worse with the internet of things. The hype machine for the internet of things is already going strong. These companies are using offline as well as online data to predict behavior. They cast a very wide net to get data. Shoshana Zuboff has labeled what these internet companies are doing as surveillance capitalism which seems to be an appropriate term. Her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism lays it out in over 500 pages. My impression is that we are not hearing much from Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and other progressives about taking on Google, Facebook, Micriosoft, and other companies making money from gathering personal data and predicting behavior even though progressive views focus on excessive corporate power. These politicians are among the loudest voices in Congress and it would be very helpful it they would start to speak up on this important issue.
50
Being online excessively, with lots of friends on Facebook, having a Twitter account, etc. is nothing more than a transference from small town gossips, who are too unevolved to ever talk, honestly, and directly to anyone, so they not only gossip about things that aren't true, they make things up. Also, algorithms about what people are more likely to do, or say, or want, are totally lacking. I remember when the New York Times, recommended articles for me. However, very few of them did I ever read, or want to read, and the ones that were the most read were the ones I was reading, and also those related to fiscal issues. That algorithm totally, at least for me, was about 99% wrong. Plus, I digitally subscribe to many newspapers because I like to read. However, I haven't wanted to vote for about 28 years, because I know too much about how government doesn't function well, so I decided what is the point? I did vote, though, most of the time for those who didn't win. I don't have a cell phone, nor do I do a lot of things online. The worse thing about the digital age, is that with it, has come, people who are no longer doing anything, but eating out at restaurants while they look at their phones, or sitting home doing that same, and with it the obesity epidemic has become worse!
3
@MaryKayKlassen
"...and with it the obesity epidemic has become worse!”
Correlation does not prove causation. There are many other cultural factors feeding (lol) the obesity epidemic besides social media.
1
I periodically wonder if the NYTimes and the WSJ, both of which I subscribe to, are collecting data on which articles and columns I click on and what they're doing with the information...
296
Of course these papers are collecting data . If you have a concern, but a paper from the local kiosks . We get access to lower cost online papers BECAUSE we are selling our data.
64
They are.
And your phone listens, as well.
Example: I was once talking to my wife about going to the movies, but how I do not need to get any popcorn. Less than a minute later, a NYT notification popped up on my home screen for a NYT recipe for spicy pimentón popcorn.
So when you click on political reporting, or articles about aspirational travel....
2
@WJF ditto.
1
I was always under the impression from 20 years ago about the internet that being: "more junk in,more junk out".
6
While many applications and the corporations behind them exist purely on the organ-harvesting of individual privacy and represent an unregulated miasma of privacy invasion, a good rule of thumb is to delete Facebook yesterday.
Facebook in particular seems to specialize in the destabilization of society through a modern iteration of causing millions of people to effectively yell 'fire !' in a crowded theater.
We've got to start curing data and misinformation cancer at some point before it consumes civilization.
We might as well start with Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg and work down the digitized misinformation bacteria food chain.
169
@Socrates - you see that "share" button at the bottom of your comment, just for example? And of course, even without that, you must know how easy it is to take a screenshot. The point of the article is that it doesn't matter whether you're on Facebook or not. You have a strong online presence here at the New York Times (which at one time published an article including your real identity). You've voluntarily shared huge amounts of information about yourself on this platform, and that information has already been monetized and widely shared.
3
@Socrates
Or just limit your “friends” to people you know well in real life. I also follow the rule of what then only applied to letter writing, that my Grandma taught me: Never write anything you wouldn’t want to see on the front page of the local newspaper. If you need something more personal, keep a journal--even then, think twice about what you write.
4
i don’t get it. would you start “yelling fire” due to something you read on facebook? are there actually still lost souls out there who believe that because they read it on the internet, it must be true? i’ve been a hardcore consumer of the good things that facebook has to offer for many years and if i’ve been damaged in any way as a result, then i guess i’m clueless.
1
Alvin Toffler's book, "The Third Wave," had a big impact on me (in the early '80s). I loved the idea of an "Information Age" where technology would help spread knowledge. It set me on a path of a career in information technology.
However, back then (being a bit naive and young), I never imagined what a dystopia information technology would help bring about, as it was "kidnapped" and misappropriated by individuals motivated by unadulterated and unquenchable greed, as well as oppressive and exploitative governments, from China, to Saudi Arabia, to the U.S.
This all led to a situation where huge amounts of research went into finding ways to turn people into "screen" addicts, now causing all kinds of health and psychological problems at a massive scale.
Psychographical algorithms, massive surveillance, new tools used to discriminate against people (housing, work, ideology, etc.); the rapid spread of hateful ideologies; tech monopolies, oligopolies, and cartels. On and on...
What to do? People need to reclaim the promise of technology by breaking up or undermining tech monopolies (and hegemony). Stop tracking and manipulating people; set up real social networks (independent, local). Respect people's privacy. Facebook, Google, Apple, nor any of the big tech monopolies are going to provide solutions to these problems. Only grassroots efforts by a well-informed citizenry will be capable of wrestling back the promise of technology for the common good.
80
@Luis Mendoza
I agree with everything you've said here except for the idea that the panacea is simply a variation on "break up the big banks," "break up…tech monopolies."
No. What we need is actual legislation enacting regulation and the budgets and jobs to enforce it.
Apple is not a monopoly, there are many alternatives to their phones, computers, watches and speakers.
Google is a bit more monopolistic, but in addition to their phones and speakers you can search with Bing.
On Apple and Google devices, you can call, text, email and interact via app with people on a whole host of other corporations' devices, you're not required to have their device or service. You send an email from Apple Mail and your coworker opens and responds to it in Gmail. Your family calls or texts from their Android phones and you answer it on your iPhone.
Facebook is the true monopoly. Your friend has to click onto Facebook (or an alert) to see what you post there and vice-versa. To "like" or "share" or comment or reciprocate in any way they have to both have an account and log in and interact with it.
But how do you go about breaking Facebook up when the point of it is to get everybody in the same tent establishing these dependencies, these invasive, nagging webs of connections?
I'm with you on grassroots efforts, but let's make sure we don't fall for the dumbed-down populist rhetoric of "break them up" like we heard about the banks. What we need to do is a lot more complex and persistent.
The Greeks famously said "know thyself." In a very real way, tools like computational inference and the incredibly sophisticated algorithms companies like Facebook and Google use are beginning to know us better than we know ourselves. Technological apologists state that any technology can be used for good or evil, and that all technologies are neutral. But never before have we used technologies that are so personal, so geared to us individually, as well as to our preferences and biases, of which, we may not even be aware. Someone wielding a hammer can build a house or hurt someone. But a hammer doesn't constantly modify itself, exploiting its knowledge about each individual user, in part to keep people hammering away even if they don't want to.
As Ms. Tufekci states, data inference affects us all, even if we choose not to use social media, or to limit our use of browsers. And she is absolutely correct that we need to pass laws regulating how our data is collected and used. The European Union's GDPR is a good start and model for us to follow. But such regulation is predicated on an understanding of the problem, as well as a political willingness to regulate technology. Unfortunately for all us, our politicians seem little concerned with really tackling the issue, aside from show hearings in Congress.
40
@jrinsc
They don’t “know us better than we know ourselves”, they just know where we shop and where we go. If the ads I get from the NYT are any indication, them is some very dumb algorithms. Ditto for Apple Music. I quit that in frustration over what the algorithm “learned” about my musical tastes, nor do I like being confied to a “genre” or receiving “for you” content I mostly find annoying.
Oddly, although I send many, many emails about knitting and post pictures of knitting, I have yet to receive any kind of ad for any kind of knitting product, so go figure.
These data folks know nothing about me from what I can tell.
2
@Pundette
I appreciate your comment, but with all due respect, companies like Facebook and Google are indeed becoming able to predict our behavior, biases, and preferences of which we're not even aware. Tristan Harris, former "design ethicist" for Google has written and spoken about this eloquently. This goes far, far beyond knowing where we shop and where we go. Here's one example: your key clicks are all logged, and that data is shared. If there's a disruption in the pattern, that is analyzed as well. If there's a continued degeneration in your key clicks, perhaps that's indicative of a health condition, and you might not even know it. This information can be forward to your health insurance provider; there's no law saying it can't.
There is a real danger here, and people like Ms. Tufekci are on the forefront of sounding the alarm. Left unchecked, data inference does indeed have the potential to know us better than we know ourselves.
2
Bravo! Great article. I agree, but can we get the agreement of the powers that be?
14
So, the inference is direct. Stay off the internet.
27
@DENOTE MORDANT It doesn't matter; if you use a phone you'll also be placed in a network graph and inference will be made about you.
Even writing letters through the mail or sending and receiving packages through UPS is data on you, since all but the content is logged and sold, and that information is sufficient to infer a lot.
In short, if you use any kind of communication, including walking in a public area where cameras are recording and recognizing you, the "matrix" (aka any company with Data+Machine Learning deployed) knows you better than you know yourself.
This is real; this is now. This isn't science fiction.
It's the equivalent of waking up and discovering that ISIS has taken over your town, and the authorities are nowhere to be seen, like happened in parts of Iraq in 2014. Your only choice is to accept it and hope for the best.
In this case, hope that Congress enacts laws to protect the public, and convince yourself that the chance of that is non-negligible.
Hello Big Data, nice to meet you, my little comment here looking up at ya from below.
76
@DENOTE MORDANT It doesn't matter; if you use a phone you'll also be placed in a network graph and inferences can be made about you.
Even writing letters through the mail or sending and receiving packages through UPS is data on you, since all but the content is logged and the data sold, data that is sufficient to infer a lot.
In short, if you use any kind of communication, including walking in a public area where cameras are recording and recognizing you, the "matrix" (a.k.a. any company with data+machine learning deployed) knows you better than you know yourself.
This is real; this is now. This isn't science fiction.
It's the equivalent of waking up and discovering that ISIS has taken over your town, and the authorities are nowhere to be seen, like in parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014. Your only choice as a lay citizen is to accept it and hope for the best.
In this case, hope that Congress enacts laws to protect the public, and convince yourself that has a chance of happening.
If you object, you can be tagged for higher insurance, more police monitoring, or lower credit.
The other possibility is to be on the other side as a billionaire, where you do everything through intermediaries woven into a self-monitoring web which you feed with your money. They will shield you and construct a fake public persona for you, like our own DJT. This, however, is a only a choice for the very few.
Hello Big Data; nice to meet you, my little comment here looking up at ya from down below.
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@Yasser Taima also any transactions using debit or credit cards can infer a lot about a person.
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