Surveillance and Tracking Matters

[stylofone]

How many surveillance capitalists does it take to change a light bulb?

If the world wasn't dazzled by the bright hope of the internet back in the 2000s, the whole foundation of data markets and monetising personal information would have been made illegal. Brin, Page, Zuckerberg and the rest would all be in jail for doing what they do now, instead of normalising it as a business practice so the likes of Philips get on board.

Shoshana Zuboff has an example of a "smart mattress", which is controlled by an app, and its selling points include therapy for sleep apnoea. But when you examine the capabilities and the "privacy" agreement, you realise that you are telling the company when you have sex, for how long, the physical characteristics of the people you sleep with, the number and variance of different sexual partners you have, even whether your children climb into bed with you when they have had a nightmare. The EULA paragraph about "sharing data with third parties" was there for that product too.

https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2023 ... -to-cloud/

[Irrev-Black]

Heyyyy, remember when it was all "don't be evil"?

Well, now the greedy fucks will actually pervert your search terms so they can get more moolah.

Google likely alters queries billions of times a day in trillions of different variations. Here’s how it works. Say you search for “children’s clothing.” Google converts it, without your knowledge, to a search for “NIKOLAI-brand kidswear,” making a behind-the-scenes substitution of your actual query with a different query that just happens to generate more money for the company, and will generate results you weren’t searching for at all. It’s not possible for you to opt out of the substitution. If you don’t get the results you want, and you try to refine your query, you are wasting your time. This is a twisted shopping mall you can’t escape.

Why would Google want to do this? First, the generated results to the latter query are more likely to be shopping-oriented, triggering your subsequent behavior much like the candy display at a grocery store’s checkout. Second, that latter query will automatically generate the keyword ads placed on the search engine results page by stores like TJ Maxx, which pay Google every time you click on them. In short, it's a guaranteed way to line Google’s pockets.

It’s also a guaranteed way to harm everyone except Google. This system reduces search engine quality for users and drives up advertiser expenses. Google can get away with it because these manipulations are imperceptible to the user and advertiser, and the company has effectively captured more than 90 percent market share.

https://www.wired.com/story/google-anti ... h-results/

[stylofone]

There was also this about google today, posted on Mastodon. Google calls its surveillance a "privacy feature", and tries to trick you into accepting it.

If Trump is in court for lying about the value of his assets, why isn't google prosecuted for doing this?



(Content below in case link fails)

A new low, even for #Google. Giving Google permission to share information about you with third-party websites is being falsely advertised as an "ad privacy feature". This is privacy washing at its most extreme. But it gets even worse.

There is a dark pattern on the second screenshot. It isn't just informing you about the fake privacy features. Clicking on "Got it" actually turns on these features that allow Google to use your recent browsing history for ads on third-party websites:

g1.jpeg (91.34 KiB) Viewed 1623 times

g2.jpeg (98.09 KiB) Viewed 1623 times

[stylofone]

It's a bit of a shocker that car makers (in the US at least) are allowed to snoop on your text messages. You can avoid it if you never install a data-sucking app. Basic bluetooth functions should be able to provide hands-free access to essential phone functions. No doubt they will try to remove this and make surveillance the default, or even require surveillance features to be activated if you want to drive the car. That sort of thing should be illegal. If it's not, then a bit of car hacking and/or hard consumer choices will need to be made.

https://therecord.media/class-action-la ... es-privacy

[Irrev-Black]

It's a bit of a shocker that car makers (in the US at least) are allowed to snoop on your text messages.

(SNIP)

The company that aims to sell me a light, simple, slow, safe, electric vehicle must surely exist, or it really needs to.

I'd expand on all those desired properties, but for a start, why does a car need to access my phone?

[Irrev-Black]

Google was apparently thinking of not tracking you, for a price...

In 2018, concerned about the public's perception of its privacy practices, Google leaders proposed a subscription-based private Search service, one that doesn't log queries and other data.

According to testimony in Google's ongoing antitrust case, Danny Sullivan, public liaison for Google Search, endorsed the subscription idea in an email discussion with Meredith Hoffer, then director of marketing for Google Search, and numerous other Chocolate Factory executives including the then-head of Search Ben Gomes, who forwarded the discussion to a subset of participants.

Sullivan argued that if Google wants to win over search users who resent being data-mined, "we need to offer them our own alternative to ourselves."

The email [PDF] is part of a discussion thread released on Wednesday by the US Department of Justice amid its antitrust trial over Google Search. The government contends that Google has unlawfully monopolized the search advertising market through a series of exclusionary deals with rivals, a charge Google denies. The trial began on September 12 and is scheduled to conclude in mid-November.

The discussion in the email illuminates Google's desire to avoid being seen in the company of Facebook, now living under the name Meta.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/08/ ... id_search/

[joele]

At least we are not in China hey.. maybe we can still get there.. sigh..

A programmer in northern China has been ordered to pay more than 1m yuan to the authorities for using a virtual private network (VPN), in what is thought to be the most severe individual financial penalty ever issued for circumventing China’s “great firewall”.

VPNs, which help users circumvent the “great firewall” of internet censorship by making it look as if their device is in a different country, operate in a legal grey area in China. Technically, companies are allowed to use government-approved VPNs for commercial activities. Businesses and universities rely on the software to communicate with international partners.

The government generally turns a blind eye to the relatively small number of individuals who use the technology to access websites such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and, often, view pornography. But in recent years the government has been making it harder for people to access the VPNs, and in rare cases has punished their use.

Several people have been jailed for selling VPNs. In 2017, a man named Wu Xiangyang was sentenced to five and a half years in prison, and fined 500,000 yuan, for selling the software. In June, Radio Free Asia reported that a Uyghur student, Mehmut Memtimin, was serving a 13-year sentence in Xinjiang for using a VPN to access “illegal information”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... te-network

[Irrev-Black]

If you use Grindr, or know someone who does, please note that it seems security and integrity have been enshittified.

https://kolektiva.social/@holyramenempi ... 2188399863

https://www.them.us/story/grindr-conten ... new-report

[Irrev-Black]

Why not click ALL OF THE ADS?!?!?!?!?

As online advertising becomes ever more ubiquitous and unsanctioned, AdNauseam works to complete the cycle by automating ad clicks universally and blindly on behalf of its users. Built atop uBlock Origin, AdNauseam quietly clicks on every blocked ad, registering a visit on ad networks' databases. As the collected data gathered shows an omnivorous click-stream, user tracking, targeting and surveillance become futile. Read more about AdNauseam in this paper.

AdNauseam is a free browser extension designed to obfuscate browsing data and protect users from tracking by advertising networks. At the same time, AdNauseam serves as a means of amplifying users' discontent with advertising networks that disregard privacy and facilitate bulk surveillance agendas.

https://adnauseam.io/

[Irrev-Black]

I'm sure that, if this was a thing, I'd get a few SWAT teams surrounding the house every time I stood on a sharp, half-eaten dog kibble before I'd gotten my coffee.

But Monash University researchers found the potential solution was also loaded with ethical considerations and could put the onus of responsibility on victims, produce too many false positives and negatives, and remove pressure from the government to address the causes of domestic violence.

The findings, in a report called Should We Embrace Big Sister, comes weeks after a woman was killed by her long-time partner in Brisbane, bringing the number of women killed in 2023 to 59, according to Destroy the Joint.

The study, published in the Ethics and Information Technology Journal, noted one in four Australian homes used smart speakers like those produced by Amazon, Google and Apple.

It found companies including Google had already raised the possibility of using a speaker’s sensors to detect the “emotional state” of those near it, while US university researchers had started work on artificially intelligent systems for detecting “screaming, siren, explosion, gunshot and glass-breaking” data.

“Smart technologies for detecting (intimate partner violence) are already being developed – we suspect it is inevitable that more will be proposed in the years to come,” the study noted.

“The widespread presence of smart speakers in domestic spaces offers an unprecedented opportunity, both rhetorical and real, to enlist Big Sister in the cause of combating (intimate partner violence).”

https://inqld.com.au/crime/2023/12/18/h ... -violence/