Comcast, Verizon, and other Internet service providers got the go-ahead from the Federal Communications Commission today to sell your personal information without your permission. …
Last October the agency passed a set of rules that would have required Internet providers to take steps to protect your private data from hackers, notify you if someone hacked your data, and require your explicit permission before selling your data. Today the FCC suspended those rules before they took effect.
(Wired, March 1, 2017)
I trust this betrayal – of tech companies selling your personal information – does not come as “breaking news” to any of you. After all, this has to be an abiding concern to anyone who uses the Internet for anything more than posting self-flattering selfies or attention-seeking tweets.
I, for one, have been sounding alarms about this betrayal for years. Not least because of the vexing, Big-Brother phenomena of, among other privacy violations,
- Google monitoring every stroke you make on your keyboard;
- Amazon knowing every thing you need to buy … before you do;
- Facebook choosing all of your friends of you.
Unfortunately, for all intents and purposes, my alarms registered like the sound of one hand clapping – in the wilderness.
And, the concomitant outrage Edward Snowden was inciting only exacerbated my consternation and dismay. Perhaps you recall how he was demonizing the NSA, while saying nary a word about these tech companies; this, even though the scope of NSA surveillance was only a fraction of theirs.
Here is how I decried the penny-wise, pound-foolish outrage he incited in “Facebook Complaining about NSA Spying? Ha!” March 15, 2014.
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You are probably aware that President Obama appointed a commission to recommend cosmetic changes to the NSA programs. But he only did so to avoid having to point out how stupid the American people are for buying into Snowden’s self-righteous and misguided outrage.
After all, the NSA collects metadata for the sole purpose of trying to keep them safe. By contrast, these outraged nincompoops are showing nary a concern about tech companies tracking every move they make online for the sole purpose of trying to sell them stuff. Which makes the open letter Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and AOL sent to Obama last week complaining about NSA surveillance a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.
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Yet, thanks to Snowden, the Obama administration was forced to put a band aid on the scratch to privacy concerns, which surveillance by NSA represents, while leaving untreated the hemorrhaging wound to those concerns, which tracking by tech companies represent.
Now, thanks to the Trump administration, tech companies are now free to sell your private browsing habits even to porn sites. Which might explain why ads for sex toys keep popping up wherever you go online.
Again, the NSA is only interested in determining whether you are complicit in or tied to any terrorist activity. Whereas tech companies, and every company that collects any data about you, are interested not only in selling you stuff, but also in selling your data without your permission – often with grave consequences.
What if you were to have a medical operation refused, without knowing it was because the hospital obtained a secret report that listed you as unlikely to pay? … What if you didn’t get a job, without knowing it was because of a report that listed you as a possible drug addict?
Those are the claims being made by critics of data brokers, companies which collect personal information on people through both public and private sources — from court records to websites [think Facebook] to store sales [think Amazon] — and provide it to a wide range of buyers.
(Newsweek, May 30, 2016)
So netizens beware: Private companies are not just watching you (irony intended). They are pimping you out.
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