On Wed, 15 Jun 2016 00:36:23 +0200 Louigi Verona <louigi.verona(a)gmail.com> wrote: I have concerns about a company that is increasingly aggressively data mining, and is now buying yet another source of personal information and based in a country with virtually no consumer protection. Before you ask, I regard Google with exactly the same disquiet. -- It wasn't me! (Well actually, it probably was) ... the hard part is not dodging what life throws at you, but trying to catch the good bits.

On Wed, 15 Jun 2016 09:32:55 +0200 Louigi Verona <louigi.verona(a)gmail.com> wrote: I can say that the same concern exists for V2X applications in development. There is a concern that the public will not want to have them tracked and identified as they drive their cars. So great effort is made to design and eventually implement anonymous car communications with land units. By doing so it also makes it much more difficult for hackers to simulate cars on the road, control cars, etc.

This is ridiculous! By using the word 'fear' you are making totally invalid emotive claims. I do not 'fear' a knife, but I would not hold one by the blade. I do not fear dogs, but if I come across one I don't know, I treat it with caution - especially if it is of a breed with a known aggressive history. I do not fear any person, but when I see one behaving furtively I am on my guard. Get the idea? Very large international corporations? We all come to our own conclusions. -- It wasn't me! (Well actually, it probably was) ... the hard part is not dodging what life throws at you, but trying to catch the good bits.

On Wed, 15 Jun 2016 17:17:58 +0200, Louigi Verona wrote: No, you spread misinformation. Will's fear is based on facts. What do you think is the interest of companies to provide freebie services and to collect endless histories of user data and to take over other companies that are doing the same? Assumed you are using such a service, then request all the data that is stored by your account. This seems to be possible, at least in some countries. Usually they not only store the current data of your account, they store histories of your account and everything they are able to track. Even storing all this data does cost money. Why should they do this, if there shouldn't be an interest. What do you think is the reason for the enormes market value of some known companies? This data is used to control people. Apart from water and food companies, those companies are the most controversy and richest companies. At the moment there are also some other companies on top of those lists, e.g. a known oil company, but the richest and most controversy already are water, food and data mining companies. Will opened the thread, with an explanation, but he didn't start a discussion. Begin forwarded off-list message (with two corrected typos = 2 additional characters, compared to the original off-list message): Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2016 15:03:45 +0200 From: Ralf Mardorf To: Louigi Verona Cc: Will Godfrey, "jonetsu(a)teksavvy.com" Subject: [off-list] [LAU] Linkedin - Out On Wed, 15 Jun 2016 14:23:09 +0200, Louigi Verona wrote: Hi, it's off-topic and apart from this the assumption is idiotic. Even data mining of anonymous data is evil and it becomes more evil, the more data is in the hands of just a few companies. If you don't understand this, it makes no sense even trying to explain this. So please, stop this off-topic discussion. There's no indication that Will wastes his time with hate. He's just naive to think that "poisoning" the existing data, will make the already stored data less useful for misuse by such companies, or that this data would be overwritten. Such user profiles have a history, not accessible for the users. This is an important topic for the EU and especially German data protection supervisors and activists. Feel free to inform yourself about this serious issue, instead of assuming hate. Regards, Ralf

On 2016-06-15 19:21, Paul Davis wrote: I feel very strong for this line. It also reminds me that it is weird that we imagine ourselves being able to keep secrets in a system that was designed to spread information as fast and widely as possible. But i guess that down the lane of that, banks and money would no longer fit on the www...? I feel like data mining and computer security largely thrives on missinformation and computer illiteracy, something i like to refere to as "analphabetism 2.0". I'm not saying everyone should know how to program, but everyone should know some basics. Just like reading and writing: most people can, but it doesn't necesseraily give them the skills to write a book. I don't really believe in concious conspiracies, but i get myself wondering why we call things "privacy" on internet when it really is nothing but "exclusivity". The existing data is begging to be abused. It would take Hitler2.0 five minutes to get the list of his potential detractors via facebook. Will that happen? I don't know, but the potential is there. Will i be safe without a facebook? Probably not... Hitler2.0 will go after the 16 guys who have no facebook first since they gotta be suspicious. To be safe, its maybe better to have a facelink and post some cats and meals and casual bathroom gossip. :D At some point, i'm sure we will learn how to behave on Internet. I just hope it will not be the hard way. -- Set Sakrecoer

On 2016-06-17 14:23, cbannister(a)slingshot.co.nz wrote: Well, as soon as someone uploads a foto of these 5 people their facial recognition data is linked in the graph. Every time i give my phone number to someone who's agreed to let facebook upload its contacts to the database, i'm a linked to them in the graph. Being "on" facebook reaches far beyond opening an account. There might be a non-human readable name attached to my facebook ID, all that prevents someone from abusing that data (translate my non-human readable ID to my real name) are moral-barriers. On 2016-06-16 23:21, worik wrote: We should indeed, however, it is very hard to have control over the data available about us without being totaly off-grid. Using the existing tools to process meta-data, any anonymous communication-medium that has been connected to 10 different identified communication medium, it is possible to deduce with very high accuracy who is behind the anonymous medium. That is to say, inputting inaccurate data in your facebook profile is good for fooling your entourage, not so much for fooling the system. -- Set Sakrecoer

On 2016-06-18 15:51, Louigi Verona wrote: [snip] Not that i think i'm better in anyway and i hope i will not come off as trying to superpose myself with this comment: I for one think this kind of insight and self-analysis is a sign of both intelligence and strength, Luigi :) Yours, -- Set Sakrecoer

On 2016-06-18 16:08, cbannister(a)slingshot.co.nz wrote: maybe, yes. I certainly hope not. I am not an expert in netiquette, but i i figure top-posting would be at fault for the miss-communication in that case, i included the date and the author... Anyways, far for me the desire to put myself out of blame. Thank you Chris, I'll try to think about it next time i participate in a sensitive thread. Sorry. -- Set Sakrecoer

On Fri, 17 Jun 2016 12:26:19 +0200 Set Hallstrom <public(a)sakrecoer.com> wrote: I do not think that the internet can be taken out of context. It is a media, a tool, part of a whole. Then: If we will learn how to behave with the whole ? I am not certain there is that much of a choice. There are determined people who do not care about the lives of others one fraction of a cent. Years ago, when the 'no' vote was high, Anna Lindh. Now, the 'no' vote in the UK is high, Jo Cox.

Okay, I will investigate the links you provided, they look interesting. I certainly will not go against the facts and try to change my opinion when presented with new evidence. On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 9:17 PM, Fons Adriaensen <fons(a)linuxaudio.org> wrote: -- Louigi Verona http://www.louigiverona.com/

On Fri, 17 Jun 2016 09:21:23 +1200, worik wrote: You fake your IP before you visit facebook? However, you are using facebook with faked data only? You are writing with other people about something, that has nothing to do with your interests? If so, then your interest is to fake a life and facebook knows what life you fake. As an employee I take a look what superiors are doing. Some already were pissed off, imputed that I hacked their accounts, but actually I'm even not subscribed to facebook and things like this and I never hacked anything. Many people are simply to stupid to know what they made public for everybody. A list of servers in mail headers + a service such as https://www.denic.de/en/service/whois-service/ could provide useful data. Even if you are using tor, you aren't safe. You e.g. visit facebook by tor and at the same time Ardour phones home, this doesn't help facebook, but anybody else watching you. This and other pitfalls are explained on the tor website and as Fons already pointed out, Schneier is one of the most important sources. Sometimes spying isn't done by complex algorithms and hacking accounts, it's just reading public data and calculating that 1 + 1 is 2.

On Fri, 17 Jun 2016 11:23:52 +0200, Louigi Verona wrote: My last mail regarding this thread ;). Yes, lot of us are a lot emotional, but not necessarily with hate. If a company several times tried to introduce a monopoly and/or manipulated search results and/or cooperated with governments against data protection, kept this secret as long as possible and even didn't considered legal steps and/or make unethical misuse of tax loophole and/or have bad workers' conditions, they simply lost trustability. I don't hate those people, I dislike them and just decide to be careful. Will is simply careful, too. Hate is, if you dislike people just because they have another coloured skin. It's not hate, if you dislike untrustworthy people for good reasons. We cannot know their targets without doubts, we cannot prove suspicions without doubt, but we can react to what they did again and again. Sometimes we have no choice, we need to buy something to eat, but we not necessarily need all information technology services or each online shop. Regards, Ralf

On 16Jun17:0810-0400, Paul Davis wrote: I refer you to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Insurance_Portability_and_Accountabili… : Title II of HIPAA defines policies, procedures and : guidelines for maintaining the privacy and security of : individually identifiable health information as well : as outlining numerous offenses relating to health care : and sets civil and criminal penalties for violations. Ask your doctor's office if they've ever heard of HIPPA. I think you need to qualify "data protection laws"; e.g., Ed Snowden would probably disagree with your statement as it stands. The IRS is extremely touchy regarding the handling of taxpayer personal information--mishandle such and getting fired may be the least of your problems; likewise, the SSA. Most organizations have their own internal policies that have the force of law for employees and contractors, and those policies are often required by law; e.g., the Sarbanees-Oxley Act, well-known to the IT employees of large financial establishments. -- <not cent from sell> May the LORD God bless you exceedingly abundantly! Dave_Craig______________________________________________ "So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You'd better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can't rearrange the universe." __--from_Nightfall_by_Asimov/Silverberg_________________

[Please don't top post in mailing lists.] On Fri, Jun 17, 2016 at 11:23:52AM +0200, Louigi Verona wrote: As far as gathering my data anonymously: I like to *know who* is gathering my data, and think it's *extremely* rude that anyone thinks it's ok to use it to spam me with advertising! I guess the similarity would be that they are both doing their best to do it anonymously. :) -- The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. -- Malcolm X

On Fri, Jun 17, 2016 at 02:32:37PM +0200, Louigi Verona wrote: This will confuse the data gatherers! Nice one! :) -- The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. -- Malcolm X

Hey everyone! I am very thankful that everyone corrects my words. I agree that my choice of words is not always accurate. I will definitely use your advice to be more accurate in the future. Fons, I agree about your note that it can just be a sign of frustration. This is an option I did not list, although this is probably a very frequent reason for posting such things. Len, I agree that hatred is unlikely to be applicable to Will. At this point I was referring to the community at large. And, of course, this is not mind reading, this is how I perceive this attitude to be. I may be wrong in calling it hatred, perhaps. But my perception is really this, I have encountered not one venomous pronouncement against Microsoft and Apple in the free software world. Even if this is not meant to be hatred, it certainly looks like it. Now, concerning your other arguments. A paycheck argument is really vacuous, as it can be used both sides. You tell me my arguments mean nothing, because I am paid. Well, then, your arguments mean nothing because you are not paid. This simply reduces our conversation to shit throwing. I hope this mailing list can enjoy a more fruitful discussion. As for the vested interest, I do not agree that simply working in the industry is a vested interest. Vested interest appears in particular situations. Talking on a mailing list is not a situation when I may have any vested interest. And what do I win in persuading some of you to be less anxious about data on the Internet? That you will remove AdBlocks and someone in the ad instustry will get 5 more clicks? Oh, come on. Additionally, I don't think that just having a job constitutes a vested interest when discussing the whole industry. After all, I am not advertising the company I work in. And the position I hold has nothing to do with promoting less emotional views on personal data. I am a Product Manager and while I enjoy ad tech, I am not especially committed to it as necessarily a lifetime career. As for arguments, adtech is largely based on open standards <http://www.iab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/OpenRTB_API_Specification_Version_2_3_1.pdf>(pdf). Read more here <https://openrtb.github.io/OpenRTB/>. Read about the industry here <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_bidding>. You can actually see what is being sent and everyone in the industry can. In our company we have many engineers committed to free software. In fact, one of my colleagues is much more paranoid that anyone I've seen in this thread so far and we are sometimes having same arguments. But he is not too anxious about the ad tech, because he knows how it works. And not a single one of other engineers working in adtech tells the world that something fishy is going on. What is a more reasonable assumption - that they are all paid and decide to just shut up or that there is really nothing fishy going on? Additionally, you can see what kind of data is being written to your cookies. Just use Developer Tools in Firefox or Chrome to peek into any cookie. Some of this data will be difficult to make out, but a lot of it are also open segment data, see here <http://www.iab.com/guidelines/iab-quality-assurance-guidelines-qag-taxonomy/>. Data that is custom is typically standard stuff that you can see in the pdf I linked to above - gender, age, country, user segments. It can also be some parameters that are used to understand how likely a user is to click on an ad and how likely he is to buy something or register on a website and whatnot. Identifiers are used for pragmatic purposes of targeting ads and making sure that there is no fraud and the ad is not shown twice to the same user, for example. So my arguments are based on showing that assuming global nefarious purposes is assuming a pretty unrealistic conspiracy theory, of hundreds of thousands of people being silent about how the world is being spied upon. Again, my message is not black and white. I totally agree that this is an important issue. I just don't think that conversations about this are always about the true problems and that they are rational enough. With your help, I am learning about your concerns. But I also hope that my experience and information can help someone else as well. Louigi. p.s.: more serious problem to discuss, for instance, is how one can identify a person reliably even with anonymous data by simply analyzing patterns of browsing, etc. Now, this I believe deserves a lot of thought and discussion. On Fri, Jun 17, 2016 at 8:54 PM, Fons Adriaensen &lt;fons(a)linuxaudio.org&gt; wrote: -- Louigi Verona http://www.louigiverona.com/

You know, Set, I firmly believe in the necessity of dialog. A community that can't handle challenges to the principles it is based upon is intellectually dead. I hope this isn't true of the Free Software world. As for emotions and hints at my indecency simply because I happen to work somewhere or because I've raised a certain question is something that I've been exposed to constantly as I started to promote science and critical thinking. The anti-science crowd is much more vile than anything I've ever seen on our mailinglist. And as for whether it makes sense to bring such topics on this mailinglist, I think that this is the only place where it makes sense to bring this up. I want to be in the dialog with people who align with the ideology and who can correct me - or confirm - some of my concerns. John's response to my polite argumentation perfectly demonstrates that my concerns are not totally void. Either way, if the message that some of us take from this thread that it is better to just shut up if you do not agree with something is a message that is unlikely to create a world envisioned by freedom loving people. A world where any dissent is silenced, even at the level of a mailinglist discussion, is incompatible with human well being. On Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 12:47 PM, Set Hallstrom &lt;public(a)sakrecoer.com&gt; wrote: -- Louigi Verona http://www.louigiverona.com/

On Fri, 17 Jun 2016 14:32:37 +0200 Louigi Verona &lt;louigi.verona(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Simply go. Bet on the psychology of the masses. People in groups behave differently. Gustave Le Bon, 1895. For example, if you're yahoo, ask for the cell phone number of the member. Say it's for their good. It will work in a worthwhile percentage. Distance gouvernements from channels of expression which are then owned by private companies. Private companies take business decisions, not political ones. Private companies can limit expression of people, can narrow fields of expression and this is not going against democracy which is presumably guarded separately by governments. Bring turmoil to countries by taking supposedly uninformed wrong decisions then use security as cover to gather information and restrict liberties. Make earning a living and entertainment the top priorities so that only very few who have the leeway, the spare cycles, to think and ponder on societal issues. Keep people busy. People should not be intimately aware that they are living. Always out going. Never inside. On these enjoyable thoughts, I would like to close with the trailer of a film to be made about a band I like much, whose music is now more than 45 years in existence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V80oFyeJh1g And the apt-titled piece for the context of this thread, "Zombies", live in Utrecht, November 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhiuoxuU-9o

On Fri, 17 Jun 2016 11:23:52 +0200 Louigi Verona &lt;louigi.verona(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: When you added you are "working in the adtech industry" to your humorous attempts to show the human side of MS, I was pretty convinced you're trolling. I now think you're genuine, so well done if I was initially right. :) Perhaps you are new to the Internet and only know it the way it is. Perhaps you only know Windows 7 and 10 and have not had to deal with earlier versions, all the while knowing this wonderful alternative you can't convince 'them' to adopt because x feature of y software. You probably don't remember when MS thought they could own the Internet and stuck the browser deep where it really didn't belong, in the hope that alternatives could not be used I guess. Or the way they used the FreeBSD network stack without crediting it, or the hotmail takeover fiasco, or the stupid new USB driver every time you plug a device in, or... updates. Man that thing sucks, but I'm sure everyone who works there are jolly nice people. As are arms manufacturers. Most everyone needs a job, but advertising? I'd better not. I'm sure you're a decent person too. -- John (haven't willingly used anything Google since they demanded I sign something) Murphy.

On 2016-06-16 23:21, worik wrote: My good but not so clever friend was recently stopped at the border of the US. He had a tourist visa, but he had told his friends on facebook that he was going to be working in a bar. I guess he was stupid enough to think that platform was a private sphere.. I should some music about this sometime :) -- Set Sakrecoer

Too funny, on http://www.sigwatch.com/ even Google isn't one of the most targeted corporates. Supermarket working conditions allegedly are more important for activists, than data protection. However, Microsoft, Facebook etc. are on top of the lists of market capitalization, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_corporations_by_market_capital… . Big companies still make more money by oil, energy etc., than the water and food Mafia and data mining companies, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_revenue . Seemingly I was mistaken, but at least data mining is not that far away, they join in. OTOH, the EU data law might become null and void due to TTIP, https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/keno-franke/ttip-and-right… . Actually my source for this toppic are Bundestag session live broadcasts on German television (Phoenix). Many people listen to radio music while doing their housework, I listen to the Bundestag on television.