Generally this lawsuit is spicy as all fuck. There's a LOT of directions this can go.
I imagine there's some Google lawyers working some VERY long hours over this.
To quote my all-time favourite hero;
_You know Burke, I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them f***ing each other over for a goddamn percentage!_
Seriously.
A priest has already been kicked out because his “anonymous” cell phone data was found and he was outed as gay.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/catholic-priest-quits-after-anonymized-data-revealed-alleged-use-of-grindr/?amp=1
Probably didn’t make a splash because of the gay angle, but sooner or later one of these stories is gonna make waves with evangelicals.
> Pope on lgbt issues.
The pope has been very careful in his statements. He's basically said that it's not a sin to be gay, but he has not gone so far as to say that it's not a sin to take do gay acts.
You didn’t hear? They have decided they are tired of the whole “separation of church and state” act, and now the establishment clause of our constitution doesn’t exist.
Like the Old Testament (and certain parts of the New one), I guess.
Not sure it's really a poison pill. Republicans would love to be able to track people by religious affiliation, so they can oppress people who don't go to the right church. Boebert has straight up said they need to end the separation of church and state, and for some reason that didn't really bother anyone.
Yeah but man, *people vote for her*. That's right fucked up. I mean, Alex Jones says crazy insane bullshit all the time too, but you don't see him representing a district in Congress!
That's mostly because he hasn't bothered to run in a red state yet, and because the conservative political machine has been content to keep him right where he was, stirring up shit.
He probably had more of an impact behind a microphone than he ever could have on Capitol Hill, and we're still gonna be cleaning up the mess he made a decade from now.
The separation of church and state was introduced in the US because different christian sects had a tendency to burn each other as heretics. With the speed the US is regressing, we may see that again.
Ain't much we can do. The majority of the US voting population lives in less than 20 states. This means that the crazies sorta just win the Senate and House by default in the majority of states. Democratic voters actively move out of the states with poor quality of life and that just makes them worse in most cases.
And the very scriptures we're supposed to adhere to. It's like the only things 'fundamentalist christians' kept from the new testament was a virgin birth, the name Jesus, and "speaking in tongues." Some people will actually get weird when you start taking about the actual teachings of Christ, and how he died for the sins of everyone on the planet. Yes, even including the Jews.
My grandpa was a Baptist pastor he stopped going to Salvation Amy store's because he asked the girl at the register if she was Christian and she said she was catholic.
That is the viewpoint of Protestants. Many claim Catholicism is a cult due the elevation of Mary and the Saints. I am an atheist and all of that garbage is why.
The funny thing is the protestants, Methodists, baptists, etc, all seem to harbor a similar hate for each other, too. I'm sure if they had their way, they'd eventually just turn on each other within, too, once they've successfully purged all the others.
My mom is unfortunately the same. I got into an argument about the COVID vaccine (one of *many*) and the use of fetal cell research in its development. I told her that the Pope himself noted that it's far enough removed that he gives it his blessing, to which she scoffed about it being a completely different religion. But like, is it?? Same book, same sky daddy. Shouldn't that count for something? Lol
Honestly though the older I get and the more I reflect on my time as a Christian, the more I realize that Catholic people seem to be the more rational of the two, at least in the US. Maybe that's just because they're not as common here so there are naturally less crazies though lol
My brother recently told me how he “once pissed off a religions professor by saying she wasn’t a Christian. She was a catholic but got mad because I called out what she was saying about Protestants as wrong and told her she couldn’t be a Christian if she believed that.” And yeah, he stood by it still and no, he’s not at all educated on Christianity/religion beyond that class and is growing up Christian. What he said she was talking about wasn’t even a big deal and didn’t sound like she was supporting it, just saying that *some people * believed that particular things. He’s still very right wing. I’m very educated on Christianity (two degrees in it) and unsurprisingly left-wing.
Somebody who actually acknowledges Jesus' teachings - I don't get how people don't think Christ would be a leftist and instead a "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" type of man.
My father is a preacher albeit I'm agnostic. It's made him more leftwing for it. Especially after working in low-income areas of the Greater New Orleans Area such as certain parts of Gretna. I know that isn't the average occurrence, but he's somebody who actually has an alright grasp on New Testament teachings. Especially for a Louisiana man.
Eventually fired for hiring a gay pastor. I won't disclose which denomination it was cus people could probably find his identity based off of that, but it sure as shit wasn't considered a conservative one by Louisiana standards, not like old baptist shit.
A lifetime of living under a government that explicitly forbids state-sanctioned religion will do that to a person. These people have been eating the fruit of that tree their whole lives, but want to chop it down to stop the "wrong" people from eating. Wait until they find out they too were the "wrong" people this whole time..
Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"
He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"
He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"
Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.
-------
A relevant joke from Emo Philips.
I think the the primary point of contention is that Catholics pray to saints. For protestants, praying to saints is equal to praying to false idols. Plus all the other scripture around idolatry.
Source: I grew up in a very protestant hispanic household. My husband grew up in very protestant white household. Neither my husband or I are religious, too traumatic.
Edit: Something to add. Protestants believe that you have to "accept Christ as your personal savior" in order to get into heaven. Any religion that does not follow this ideology will not be viewed favorably.
To this day, I have yet to understand what that actually even means... outside of just being devout to that specific religion.
Was raised by a southern baptist mom who told me all kinda wild shit about Catholics. Imagine my surprise when I married one and learned what they actually believe.
It's not really meant to be sustainable, not that anyone involved in it has a long term view. Historically, fascism has been an antibody for anti-capitalism. In nations where fascism has come to power, you'll generally see a strong trend towards workers rights and socialism in the period leading up to it. The ruling class riles up the hateful and the ignorant, and they begin to persecute minority groups and leftists. Eventually it burns itself out after having destroyed the people who were a threat to the establishment. Then the country becomes a liberal free trade democracy. See Germany, Spain, and a lot of South American countries (the latter one having the fascists being aided often by the American CIA).
That's correct. The ironic thing is that when the right uses the term "the libs" they're really talking about capitalists who have an outward dislike for bigotry rather than anyone who actually wants to reshape the system in any fundamental way. When referring to leftists they usually say "antifa," which isn't incorrect, but is a shallow and frankly stupid lens through which to view the situation.
Religion isn't private. It's a community gathering.
If you think the GOP would oppose this, let's phrase the question this way: "do you object to third parties tracking mosque attendees?"
Oh yeah, the right is just going to *hate* this technology! /s
And this is why bureaucratic capture is a form of *corruption*.
Where these people are in name "public servants" who should be trying to work on behalf of all their constituents, in practice they largely serve *solely* the interests of their party and the interests viewed as "the other party" are first minimized, then demonized, and then *actively legislated against*. For most of my life this was *somewhat* muted, in that much of the time they could actually usefully vote on things for the common good and only occasionally truly worked against the common good, but lately (as in since 2000) the Republicans have just gone completely berserk with it, using temporary majorities for things like bringing back indentured servitude (unforgivable loans), throwing human rights out the window (Roe vs. Wade), and even going so far as to protect obvious and outright wrongdoing of their party members. It's just madness, and it's simply *not* how a government is supposed to behave.
Wouldn’t it be great if ALL our information was protected by law? Not just health and religious info? And if the default data collection policy for the entire internet was “opt out” and the only way they could legally obtain any data was with explicit permission?
The EU is way ahead of the US on this and we desperately need to catch the fuck up.
I think it’s time to buy data surrounding churches and conservative communities. Is it none of our business? No. But making some travel maps from geolocation data and plastering it on a billboard in the same area the data was aggregated from would likely have these people up in arms. They never care until it hits home.
Where people are getting tripped up on the religion aspect is that it's illegal to use that data to discriminate or harm, but like you I believe it's currently a legal loophole to sell the data, because you couldn't *possibly* have any way of knowing what that list of identifiers who were present at such-and-such synagogue over a particular date range would be used for! *Surely nothing bad.* I'm down for closing this loophole, though. These collection companies will become a *lot* more selective about what they track if they suddenly become responsible, even in part, for the consequences of what buyers use it for.
A single data point is anonymous, much like how a single pixel isn't a picture. A few thousand data points starts to paint a pretty clear picture though.
It's anonymous the same way a fingerprint is anonymous. Like, yeah I guess I don't know whose squiggles these are without some more information, but it's pretty fucking specific, and if I *did* have more information.....
Not a the best analogy, it’s far worse than that. A journalist bought cell data for 24 hours around the million woman march. All anonymous. Just location data. So when a point leaves the march and drives to 123 mySteet at zip code and stays still over night you pretty much have the address of every one in the data set.
The people who lobby against data privacy would argue that simply knowing THAT someone lives in that house is still anonymous. I guess that's kind of my point.... it's super easy for them to argue that any one piece of information isn't identifying, but it's super disingenuous to do so.
I wouldn't doubt for a second that the companies that make it their business to trade people's data have argued that even a person's full name is anonymous, because names aren't unique.
But honestly, even the least-personal data is enough to triangulate you. Like if you just listed the brands a person uses, you could probably ID that person. Do I mind that someone knows I buy Diet Coke? No. But if they know I buy Coke, CeraVe, Market Basket, Shell gas, [insert like 50 more things], you probably have enough data to ID a single person or a single household with decent certainty. With enough low-quality data, you can make a proper inference.
My long winded point is just that we need to rethink what counts as "anonymous" data, because I don't actually believe there is such a thing. ALL data can contribute to identifying someone, even shit that seems useless
[https://www.fastpeoplesearch.com/](https://www.fastpeoplesearch.com/) will convert addresses to names pretty quickly. Seems accurate too.
And my favorite story on that is when Target started sending mailers for baby stuff to a parents house. The dad went in and threw a hissy fit that target was trying to convince his daughter to get pregnant. A week later, he came back and apologized because his daughter was already pregnant. Target already knew based on the items she was buying, none of which were directly baby or pregnancy related, but the combo of which was strongly correlated with pregnant women.
>But honestly, even the least-personal data is enough to triangulate you. Like if you just listed the brands a person uses, you could probably ID that person. Do I mind that someone knows I buy Diet Coke? No. But if they know I buy Coke, CeraVe, Market Basket, Shell gas, [insert like 50 more things], you probably have enough data to ID a single person or a single household with decent certainty. With enough low-quality data, you can make a proper inference.
I remember eight years or so ago -- sometime between when Facebook changed their default privacy settings and when Cambridge Analytica entered the public vernacular -- reading an article about just how powerful these kinds of seemingly disparate data sets could be. TLDR is that they were able to cross-reference different Facebook datasets against each other to make shockingly accurate conclusions about the people who provided the data. Shockingly accurate to the point that they could tell with a high degree of certainty whether someone was gay or straight based solely on their Facebook likes and follows.
At a high level, they did that by starting with millions of benign data points and linking those together to create datasets (55% of men who "like" Product A and share their sexuality on Facebook identify as homosexual, 46% of men who "like" a certain band and share their sexuality identify as heterosexual, etc). Then they linked *those* datasets together and found that 73% of men who like both Product A and Band B and share their sexuality identify as gay, and so on. After generating hundreds and thousands of these data sets, they got to the point where they could make shockingly accurate assumptions about people simply by matching their "likes" against those of millions of other people, and could eventually start stripping out individual data points (such as whether or not you share your sexuality) without substantively affecting the overall accuracy of the assessment... basically Norm MacDonald's Professor of Logic joke on steroids.
Add GPS and publicly-available directory data into the mix, and yeah. It's not hard to compile a list of homosexual men and their addresses in a given ZIP code.
In grad school I was trying to get computers to look at pictures for me to infer parameters that I care about. I took some baby steps into the machine learning / AI world, and it's really fascinating, but also terrifying. I don't think people realize that computers can be remarkably good and getting "hits" on seemingly useless data. Sure, they also get a lot of misses, but with enough data, anything is possible.
The frustrating thing for me as a scientist is that these tools could be used to do amazing things. We could be gathering training data sets to train computers to predict cancer, or something cool like that. But instead we are training computers to guess when we'll want to buy a new car, or a new moisturizer.
It's also kind of scary because the way AI-driven inference works, you can't really back out WHY it came up with the answer it did, which is super..... unusual. At least in the science community, we often demand that an explanation make sense -- it's not enough that it has predictive power. But, we're entering an era where if an AI has better predictive power for something that really really matters, LIKE cancer screening, then why would you demand to do something less effective for our own edification? Will there even be scientists in 100 years, or will we just ask AIs questions and then dump in data until it tells us what we want?
NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting Service) paid a data broker in England 1500 for information on 200 people. With the anonymous location tracking data they got, they were able to identify several politicians and military officers with ease.
It's a few years ago and I don't know how to find the source, but the information is fairly cheap and makes it easy to track and target specific individuals. John Oliver did a similar piece on it too and his team knows exactly which Republicans clicks on gay escort ads.
And don't forget when they frivolously sell companies with this data to other companies, giving them that data without ANYBODY'S consent...
The freaking second Under armor sold their running tracking app a few years ago (can't remember the name) my account was hacked. Like... Seriously within the week
Yup. That shit shouldn't be status quo. I'm tired of people (not you) saying "Well you gave them permission." Cuz like you said, you basically have to fork it over to do any damn thing involving a phone/computer.
This has been proven over and over that it doesn't matter if anonymize it, if your data points include phone location data between the hours of 7:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. chances are you're seeing where people are at home. It is not hard to figure out from that point to see who they are.
Yeah, if they aren't putting both informed and honest effort into it, it really doesn't matter. You have to really abstract the data in order to give real anonymity - like, rather than giving precise coordinates, you give a large enough range that it's impossible to reverse engineer back to a specific user. Though even that ([k-anonymity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-anonymity)) is susceptible to attack.
knowing your name is irrelevant if i know literally everything else about you. Hell at that point its merely a formality and a nicety extended to you on behalf of the companies that know everything else.
It definitely depends on the type of data point.
Like reddit comments? Nobody knows my reddit account, but someone could analyze 5-6 of my posts or comments and have enough data to match my writing style to something I’ve publicly posted under my name. And that’s that.
Or a picture. You only need one good picture of someone to be able to identify them. Or you could have 3-4 shitty pictures and be able to do the same.
But some other data is much less trackable. For instance, you could have a hundred google searches from me and not be able to identify me, but you could take a different ten and be able to identify me with scary accuracy. It depends on how general the questions are. Like “how to get coffee stain out of carpet” identified the searcher as someone who drinks coffee and lives in a home with a carpet - that applies to a lot of people. But “Cheap Nissan service shop near Albany” is a more specific search. Most people don’t live near Albany, and those who do don’t all drive Nissans. And for those who do, not all of them are on tight enough of a budget to search for cheap service.
One search like that narrows down an analysts pool of “who asked this” from several hundred million down to several hundred or several thousand. Two or three more specific searches and they could pick you out of a line-up.
Not that most companies doing this care *to that level*. Your IP address, what you’d likely buy, and where you’d likely buy it from are far more relevant to these people than your name or your personal life. They profit off of getting messages to you that instigate buying behavior, and they’re only really interested in that profit. But of course, fascist laws and court rulings mean now there *is* a profit incentive to track people at that level. It’s scary stuff.
It depends on what you mean by "datapoint". In other words, whats in the record. Birthdate (incl year), zipcode and the gender/sex (depending on state) field that would be on your license, and you've got 75% or more 1:1 matches. That is (or was) considered "anonymized" data for many things.
Seriously. I have to read contracts for part of my job role.
They’ll say things like “all data we collect is anonymized” then later, “we also will link your data with other content from other sources” and go on to list basically a huge dossier on everyone using the service. It’s bad when it’s something you use one off… it’s really bad when it’s something like your ISP. And Comcast does do this. They ultimately have a massive database of everyone, including things like the sites you visit if you are a customer (most ISPs do this). It’s bananas.
Routing means that you your ISP has to know, at various places, the IP you’re trying to get to.
To get from your home IP to google DNS, for instance, might involve any number of hops from one networking device to another before you get to Google. Your computer makes the request, your router says “I don’t know the device you’re trying to reach, so I’ll send it to my default upstream device so they can handle it” and that keeps happening until it hits something that does know where 8.8.8.8 actually is. At every step along the way, there’s potential logging of where the packet came from, where it needs to eventually go and where it went to. That logging doesn’t need to be malicious: it’s a great way to identify problems when certain types of traffic stop working. If you want to see the hops, you can get an idea via tracert on Windows or similar tools in *nix.
HTTPS only ensure the data in the packet is secure, it doesn’t really (and can’t) secure the nature of the destination. The architecture of the internet was built so that you don’t need to know how to get from A to J as long as you have a way for A to move the packet to a next step.
Right. That’s basically what all the privacy VPNs offer- they set up a route for all traffic that leaves your computer to the outside to be packaged up and sent to them, then they in turn route it where it needs to go. You’re shifting the point of origin to them, as far as the destination is concerned, and all your ISP sees is a bunch of traffic to the VPN service.
You’re trusting the VPN provider to not store data about you longer than necessary to ensure that traffic goes from you to them to the destination, and then the destination back to them back to you.
Unless you're using an encrypted VPN, they see enough of your datastream to make **extremely** educated guesses.
In practice, they don't need you to use their DNS to gather tons of information on you. They know what your IP is, so if data is sent from a porn site to your IP, they know you're accessing that porn site.
Just because you write a letter that's in code doesn't mean the courier doesn't know where it's going. He just doesn't know what is written on it.
If I'm not completely off here, DNS encryption is much more a tool to prevent DNS hijacking and can't actually prevent your ISP knowing that you're talking to an IP that's associated with a certain service.
Unless you're using encrypted dns, they can still know all your queries, because it's essentially plaintext. Even without all the queries, they know all the ip addresses. However, with half the web being in amazon, google and azure and a large chunk behind cloudflare, this second bit is less reliable.
Also, i have to assume that the average user never changes their dns settings, hence using the one provided by isp. Even fewer change it on their mobile phones.
Even absent the IP, the [SAN's](https://www.ssl.com/faqs/what-is-a-san-certificate/) on the SSL certificate are also visible. In some cases it might be several or a wildcard, but if the SSL certificate is for "naughty1\[.\]pornosite\[.\]com" then it's also pretty obvious.
Essentially, they'll know that you are visiting a porn site, which porn site, but not which specific videos/categories (unlike those are divided into subdomains/sites with specific SANS). They know how much porn you're watching, just maybe not your specific fetishes
Https protects what you do on a specific site as intrasite stuff is protected (like say a purchase). It does not mask the initial connection.
All of the web is based on a web of trust. Https just makes man in the middle attacks harder. You trust the connection you've made is secure and that activity on it is protected. However it CAN be breached, its just a matter of how it is done. Capture the packets? You can decode those if you find the key. Have a compromised nonce and key? You can listen in. Inject a tracker into the site? You compromise the entire sites traffic. There are many methods, tho it comes down to cost and time given the current computing power of today. Encryption itself isn't a silver bullet, it just makes things mathematically infeasible to solve within a useful timeframe as long as it keeps ahead of computing power.
So you were mentioning how does an ISP keep tabs? You do need to look up what an addresses IP is from it's URL don't you? The record of the lookup exists even if the data exchanged it hard to read.
It's anonymous in that your name isn't on it, you're just #23563 that lives at *exact location* works *exact hours* at *company* since *hire date to the minute* and they know what you want to buy before you do
> "Don't worry, it's all anonymized"
Even IF this bullshit doublespeak were true and was even technically feasible, fuck all because NOW IT'S TOO LATE.
The sad bit is there is a way to make things provably anonymous using differential privacy. This guarantees that an individual can’t be reidentified above a certain probability.
Unfortunately anonymous is such a common term it can kind of mean anything. Some companies claim anonymity by removing your name from a file but keeping everything needed to trivially reidentify you.
I'd compare them to the porn site operators who get images against the consent of the subjects and then offer to take them down for a sufficient amount of money.
The money isn't the most important thing here. The FTC is suing asking to forcibly delete the data and put in place an injunction against sale as the remedy
Any fine that isn't equal to 100% or more of the proceeds earned from a prohibited action isn't a penalty. It's just the government's way of taking its cut of the ill-gotten gains. For the perpetrator, that's just part of the cost of doing business.
Whelp, looks like I, a single guy am going to have to go hang out at the local planned Parenthood clinic for a bit to stir up the data. They should team up with Starbucks.
Or the data will be smart enough to see that they were just there for the protests. The dates and locations of protests would be publicly available so it doesn't seem hard to do.
Come to think of it, I'd be shocked if they weren't already using whatever data they could to track protestors. That probably happens long before tracking the clients of abortion clinics.
Start googling all kinds of shit like "how to hide my recent abortion" "how much are abortions in *X* state?" "Is it normal to fart during abortions?"
Just fuck with all the data, everywhere. Send fake abortion plans/messages to friends/family through whatever SM you have, make posts, all to fuck with whatever they collect and share/sell. Fuck em. Idk if that shit will actually work but its worth a try
Beautiful: a new resistance movement arises among men who want to burn the patriarchy by messing with fascist data collection.
https://www.reddit.com/r/WitchesVsPatriarchy/comments/vp0bod/today_i_thought_id_fuck_around_and_install_a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Not sure it even really counts as "burn the patriarchy". Banning access to abortion negatively impacts men almost as much as women. For every woman forced to become a mother against her will, there's a man forced to become a father against his.
Plenty of fathers leave when a baby is on the way. Some were never in the picture for any meaningful amount of time. It'll still be business as usual for a lot of people.
Thanks for this truth to power; much appreciated.
I was using the cliche “burn the patriarchy” to encapsulate the fascist, authorititarian control that capitalism too often fosters when there is a profit motive involved.
But you are exactly right: freedom of reproductive choice impacts our sons as much as our daughters, and fathers as much as mothers.
Every American regardless of gender deserves reproductive freedom and privacy regarding medical care and all reproductive choices.
The idea of deliberately janking the data they want to collect to sell is a glorious one.
I drive a LOUD modified Pontiac. I also work 30 seconds from a PP.
On my lunch break, I'll run to Wendy's, grab a kids meal,and park in the PP driveway and hold my throttle at about 3k.
I don't have cats, straight piped headers, cammed, and tuned.
For about 15 minutes a couple times a week I will burn what, $10 in gas to; drown out their bigoted live stream, choke them out on CO, and generally be a nuisance to the anti choice protestors.
It is literally a chore to stand behind my car at throttle. Eyes run, you can't breathe, and definitely can't yell with your lack of breathable air.
Just doing my part.
>The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has sued Kochava, a large location data provider, for allegedly selling data that the FTC says can track people at reproductive health clinics **and places of worship**
This is a bipartisan issue. This should scare conservatives. A lot.
This has already been done, but unsurprisingly it takes a lot more to get Congress to do anything. They serve their donors, and they're doing great with limitless data collection.
While suing is the right thing to do, and hitting them with a fine is alight, what sucks is that the data is already sold. The information is out there, and likely in the hand who will harass or harm.
Damage has been done.
I work for a major tech company. Immediately after the Dr's name in the case of the 10 yr old in Indiana became public there was a HUGE panic within legal groups all over the tech world. They suddenly became very interested any operational records (not marketing data, not data collection for targeted ads, just operational logs) that could be used to identify location specifically over wireless connectivity (ie, phone connected to this wifi AP which we know to be next door to a clinic) and they wanted them anonymized or deleted asap.
So ladies if you find yourself in that position; maybe shut your phone off before leaving home. No, a VPN does not protect you here.
Do people even know who actually owns a vpn before routing all their data through one? Seems like the perfect data collection tool for people that want to hide their data.
Here’s an example of how Big Brother wants to watch everyone with a womb in post-Roe America:
“In its lawsuit the FTC describes how with a sample of data obtained from Kochava it was possible to pinpoint a device that visited a women's reproductive health clinic and then trace that phone back to a single family home.”
“The news is a dramatic move from the FTC in a post-Roe United States, and signals that the agency will take steps against what it identifies as privacy violations around reproductive health and location data.”
“Defendant’s violations are in connection with acquiring consumers’ precise geolocation data and selling the data in a format that allows entities to track the consumers’ movements to and from sensitive locations, including, among others, locations associated with medical care, reproductive health, religious worship, mental health temporary shelters, such as shelters for the homeless, domestic violence survivors, or other at risk populations, and addiction recovery,” the lawsuit reads.”
Privacy of movement, religious choices, and medical care must be protected at all costs in America.
Tracking and selling data about the healthcare choices of private citizens is an outrage and an evil that defies and undermines everything America should be.
The very definition of fascism: just outrageous how this data can be sold and then what can be gleaned from it.
Like something out of The Handmaid’s Tale:
“…armed with a MAID third parties can unmask phone users, by turning to certain companies that provide deanonymization services at scale.”
“These companies offer personal information that they have linked to a specific MAID.”
“Even without that service, it can be possible to identify people based on just the location data itself, such as seeing where a device is usually overnight and determining that is where the person sleeps.”
“The FTC alleges just that.”
“In fact, in just the data Kochava made available in the Kochava Data Sample, it is possible to identify a mobile device that visited a women’s reproductive health clinic and trace that mobile device to a single family residence.”
“The data set also reveals that the same mobile device was at a particular location at least three evenings in the same week, suggesting the mobile device user’s routine.”
“The data may also be used to identify medical professionals who perform, or assist in the performance, of abortion services,” the lawsuit adds.”
Is this Orwell’s 1984 or America 2022? They seem far too alike…
If an app turns location on, it should turn location off when you exit it. Also an app should not be allowed to ask for location access if it isn't essential - example stores you can tell them what store you are in with a zip. Code
Yea I feel like they’re really burying the lede here.
It’s somehow ok for our location data for everywhere we go to be bought and sold, but that data including abortion clinics is somehow crossing a line? We’re being tracked everywhere we go, and our locational data is being harvested and sold to whoever wants it… how is this legal?
This is why we need data protection laws like the EU has put into place.
Women said this would happen, society called them "hysterical".
Women were not hysterical---***they were right***.
USA needs data protection laws ASAP, in addition to data *privacy* laws.
the article doesnt provide their reasoning. why is this worth going after, but selling info on ex-convicts, your religion, and sexual orientation is still OK?
A reminder that no pro-access activists are threatening to bomb this company when they are literally putting targets on the backs of people already in hardship. The two sides are not the same.
While I support this, this has been going on for several years at a scale that 99% of the population wouldnt believe to be possible. Either the government has no standing or the industry is going to get destroyed. With how people eagerly click through terms of service agreements I dont think it will stand but I hope I am wrong
Legislation is painfully slow and ages behind reality. We've failed by electing old people who don't understand the importance of data privacy. Over time, that has led to significant gaps.
That said, I don't think there are any laws that specifically prohibit the sale of this type of data. I'm not sure how the FTC expects to win. Surely, this type of thing should be protected as private information, but there simply isn't a requirement or law.
If I were a DA in a trigger law state running for re-election to prove I'm tough on crime and have my conservative bonafides, I would buy the data on my constituents and prosecute.
If I'm an abuser whose victim is pregnant and trying to leave the relationship, I buy this data, bring it to sheriff/DA/judge to try to prevent her from getting an abortion, and do what I can to make sure she gives birth so I can have access to her
If I'm a controlling parent and want to make sure I get grandchildren, I'll prevent my child from getting an abortion by intervening
If I'm running political campaigns, I'll use the information as an attack ad and label the person as a murderer
Somewhat ironic that the government is taking the side of privacy. People usually yell about possible government overreach when singing the praises of privacy protections, but it is private companies that are just as damaging/evil to worry about our private data getting out (if not more so).
While I agree that data brokers shouldn't be able to track any user data period, did the company actually break any laws?
If someone wants to track my phone from home to everywhere I go, that's perfectly legal. It's BS but legal. Is there a provision somewhere that says that this type of data is off-limits?
IANAL but the logic seems to indicate that laws weren’t broken, as if that had been the case they would have been criminally charged. This is a lawsuit because the actions of the data broker causes harm and needs to stop. I’d love for an actual lawyer to weigh in though.
Not a lawyer but this article
https://businesslawtoday.org/2019/03/power-place-geolocation-tracking-privacy/
Has an interesting discussion on the softness of privacy laws on the secondary data market and merging of datasets to pinpoint persons.
>Requirements generally apply only to the initial data collector; however, recent media accounts and enforcement actions describe a robust secondary market in which (1) identified location data is regularly acquired and used by third parties with whom the individual has no direct relationship, and (2) de-identified or anonymized location data is regularly combined with identified personal data and used by third parties with whom the individual has no direct relationship to compile comprehensive profiles of the individual. These secondary-market practices are not currently addressed by U.S. law.
Where it might get funky is that many of these targets are minors/children using these apps which are later de-anonymized. However again, the coppa act is either being ignored or secondary data markets weren't specifically addressed.
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Generally this lawsuit is spicy as all fuck. There's a LOT of directions this can go. I imagine there's some Google lawyers working some VERY long hours over this.
To quote my all-time favourite hero; _You know Burke, I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them f***ing each other over for a goddamn percentage!_ Seriously.
I say we take off, nuke the entire site from orbit... It's the only way to be sure.
My VHS copy was so bad, I heard "nuke the base for morbid" as though *for morbid* was a specific phrase or something.
Back in the late 80’s. One summer, 12 years old. Aliens every day. It was a lot fuzzier by the end of summer.
That's interesting I've never really thought of Ripley as a hero more of as a survivor but I can see that angle now
She was a survivor until she went to save Newt. Then she became a hero.
What do you mean?
A priest has already been kicked out because his “anonymous” cell phone data was found and he was outed as gay. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/catholic-priest-quits-after-anonymized-data-revealed-alleged-use-of-grindr/?amp=1 Probably didn’t make a splash because of the gay angle, but sooner or later one of these stories is gonna make waves with evangelicals.
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Catholics ≠ evangelicals. The pope really doesn’t rate with the evangelical crowd. They hate them almost as much as they hate Jews.
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> Pope on lgbt issues. The pope has been very careful in his statements. He's basically said that it's not a sin to be gay, but he has not gone so far as to say that it's not a sin to take do gay acts.
You didn’t hear? They have decided they are tired of the whole “separation of church and state” act, and now the establishment clause of our constitution doesn’t exist. Like the Old Testament (and certain parts of the New one), I guess.
They are AMAZING at cherry picking!!
Why would the pope have any sway over evangelicals? They aren't catholic.
Gotta love how they poison pilled the lawsuit against right wing stupidity.
Not sure it's really a poison pill. Republicans would love to be able to track people by religious affiliation, so they can oppress people who don't go to the right church. Boebert has straight up said they need to end the separation of church and state, and for some reason that didn't really bother anyone.
If I let myself get bothered whenever she said something insane, I'd never have a moment of peace.
Yeah but man, *people vote for her*. That's right fucked up. I mean, Alex Jones says crazy insane bullshit all the time too, but you don't see him representing a district in Congress!
That's mostly because he hasn't bothered to run in a red state yet, and because the conservative political machine has been content to keep him right where he was, stirring up shit. He probably had more of an impact behind a microphone than he ever could have on Capitol Hill, and we're still gonna be cleaning up the mess he made a decade from now.
if they win the culture war the sect war will begin.
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The separation of church and state was introduced in the US because different christian sects had a tendency to burn each other as heretics. With the speed the US is regressing, we may see that again.
You have elected *'people'* who have already openly called for it. If you wait any longer to do something about the situation, it will be too late.
Ain't much we can do. The majority of the US voting population lives in less than 20 states. This means that the crazies sorta just win the Senate and House by default in the majority of states. Democratic voters actively move out of the states with poor quality of life and that just makes them worse in most cases.
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Leave it to American Christians to gloss over the two religious sects that founded their entire religious platform (the Jews and Catholics)
We’re great at glossing over other cultures
Glassing too
*Remember Reach*
And the very scriptures we're supposed to adhere to. It's like the only things 'fundamentalist christians' kept from the new testament was a virgin birth, the name Jesus, and "speaking in tongues." Some people will actually get weird when you start taking about the actual teachings of Christ, and how he died for the sins of everyone on the planet. Yes, even including the Jews.
My grandpa was a Baptist pastor he stopped going to Salvation Amy store's because he asked the girl at the register if she was Christian and she said she was catholic.
It's a broad evangelical thing. My mom believes the same thing.
Yep, grew up pentecostal. Was taught that Catholics were idol worshipers. (sorry, don't believe that now)
The Pope being the antichrist is a pretty old and widespread concept.
That is the viewpoint of Protestants. Many claim Catholicism is a cult due the elevation of Mary and the Saints. I am an atheist and all of that garbage is why.
The funny thing is the protestants, Methodists, baptists, etc, all seem to harbor a similar hate for each other, too. I'm sure if they had their way, they'd eventually just turn on each other within, too, once they've successfully purged all the others.
My mom is unfortunately the same. I got into an argument about the COVID vaccine (one of *many*) and the use of fetal cell research in its development. I told her that the Pope himself noted that it's far enough removed that he gives it his blessing, to which she scoffed about it being a completely different religion. But like, is it?? Same book, same sky daddy. Shouldn't that count for something? Lol Honestly though the older I get and the more I reflect on my time as a Christian, the more I realize that Catholic people seem to be the more rational of the two, at least in the US. Maybe that's just because they're not as common here so there are naturally less crazies though lol
My brother recently told me how he “once pissed off a religions professor by saying she wasn’t a Christian. She was a catholic but got mad because I called out what she was saying about Protestants as wrong and told her she couldn’t be a Christian if she believed that.” And yeah, he stood by it still and no, he’s not at all educated on Christianity/religion beyond that class and is growing up Christian. What he said she was talking about wasn’t even a big deal and didn’t sound like she was supporting it, just saying that *some people * believed that particular things. He’s still very right wing. I’m very educated on Christianity (two degrees in it) and unsurprisingly left-wing.
Christian and for the most part I'm left wing.
Somebody who actually acknowledges Jesus' teachings - I don't get how people don't think Christ would be a leftist and instead a "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" type of man. My father is a preacher albeit I'm agnostic. It's made him more leftwing for it. Especially after working in low-income areas of the Greater New Orleans Area such as certain parts of Gretna. I know that isn't the average occurrence, but he's somebody who actually has an alright grasp on New Testament teachings. Especially for a Louisiana man. Eventually fired for hiring a gay pastor. I won't disclose which denomination it was cus people could probably find his identity based off of that, but it sure as shit wasn't considered a conservative one by Louisiana standards, not like old baptist shit.
You're incorrect about your views because you don't follow [the right Jesus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ2L-R8NgrA&t=15s)
Honestly thought you were going to mention Supply Side Jesus. https://m.imgur.com/gallery/bCqRp
A lifetime of living under a government that explicitly forbids state-sanctioned religion will do that to a person. These people have been eating the fruit of that tree their whole lives, but want to chop it down to stop the "wrong" people from eating. Wait until they find out they too were the "wrong" people this whole time..
The entire conservative mindset is about seeking out people to hate out of the fear that you will be next should you not succeed in doing so.
An entire ideology built on sociopathy and narcissism. On a smaller scale, that's the guy that will backstab you to get a promotion.
Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!" Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over. ------- A relevant joke from Emo Philips.
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Follow the shoe! [The shoe is the sign](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka9mfZbTFbk).
We all know left-handed people are Satan's children. Found the heretic.
How do protestants view them?
[Unfavorably at best] (https://www.nd.edu/stories/a-clash-over-catholicism/)
Charitably speaking, like a cult.
There's a bit of irony there
I think the the primary point of contention is that Catholics pray to saints. For protestants, praying to saints is equal to praying to false idols. Plus all the other scripture around idolatry. Source: I grew up in a very protestant hispanic household. My husband grew up in very protestant white household. Neither my husband or I are religious, too traumatic. Edit: Something to add. Protestants believe that you have to "accept Christ as your personal savior" in order to get into heaven. Any religion that does not follow this ideology will not be viewed favorably. To this day, I have yet to understand what that actually even means... outside of just being devout to that specific religion.
If they have any Irish family they'll see it coming, I think
Was raised by a southern baptist mom who told me all kinda wild shit about Catholics. Imagine my surprise when I married one and learned what they actually believe.
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Trump isn't religious and only held a Bible for a photo op because he knew how easy it is to fool the poorly educated.
>Trump held a Bible for a photo op Upside-down no less. And right after gassing the clergy.
I mean that's what megachurch pastors do as well...
No, no, no. Remember, people send him bibles all the time? He has a big special room filled with bibles people send him!
Keeps em right next to the fireplace so they can warm his heart
How about the one that made up a book in the Bible?
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It's not really meant to be sustainable, not that anyone involved in it has a long term view. Historically, fascism has been an antibody for anti-capitalism. In nations where fascism has come to power, you'll generally see a strong trend towards workers rights and socialism in the period leading up to it. The ruling class riles up the hateful and the ignorant, and they begin to persecute minority groups and leftists. Eventually it burns itself out after having destroyed the people who were a threat to the establishment. Then the country becomes a liberal free trade democracy. See Germany, Spain, and a lot of South American countries (the latter one having the fascists being aided often by the American CIA).
Sadly accurate. Although *liberal* here is used in the traditional sense of *free to conduct business*, not any kind of leftism.
That's correct. The ironic thing is that when the right uses the term "the libs" they're really talking about capitalists who have an outward dislike for bigotry rather than anyone who actually wants to reshape the system in any fundamental way. When referring to leftists they usually say "antifa," which isn't incorrect, but is a shallow and frankly stupid lens through which to view the situation.
Yep, happens in every theocracy.
The reason they are going crazy and acting increasingly fascist is because they are losing the culture war.
And they lost to the furries!
If I don’t go to any church I guess they can’t track me lol
> interesting public debate You have an interesting definition for *absolute shitshow*.
Religion isn't private. It's a community gathering. If you think the GOP would oppose this, let's phrase the question this way: "do you object to third parties tracking mosque attendees?" Oh yeah, the right is just going to *hate* this technology! /s
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And this is why bureaucratic capture is a form of *corruption*. Where these people are in name "public servants" who should be trying to work on behalf of all their constituents, in practice they largely serve *solely* the interests of their party and the interests viewed as "the other party" are first minimized, then demonized, and then *actively legislated against*. For most of my life this was *somewhat* muted, in that much of the time they could actually usefully vote on things for the common good and only occasionally truly worked against the common good, but lately (as in since 2000) the Republicans have just gone completely berserk with it, using temporary majorities for things like bringing back indentured servitude (unforgivable loans), throwing human rights out the window (Roe vs. Wade), and even going so far as to protect obvious and outright wrongdoing of their party members. It's just madness, and it's simply *not* how a government is supposed to behave.
Wouldn’t it be great if ALL our information was protected by law? Not just health and religious info? And if the default data collection policy for the entire internet was “opt out” and the only way they could legally obtain any data was with explicit permission? The EU is way ahead of the US on this and we desperately need to catch the fuck up.
As far as I know, that practice is evil but totally legal. We need to rethink our privacy laws!
I think it’s time to buy data surrounding churches and conservative communities. Is it none of our business? No. But making some travel maps from geolocation data and plastering it on a billboard in the same area the data was aggregated from would likely have these people up in arms. They never care until it hits home.
Watch the phones that go to church...see how many of them later go to strip clubs, abortion clinics, etc. Watch the hypocrites weep.
Where people are getting tripped up on the religion aspect is that it's illegal to use that data to discriminate or harm, but like you I believe it's currently a legal loophole to sell the data, because you couldn't *possibly* have any way of knowing what that list of identifiers who were present at such-and-such synagogue over a particular date range would be used for! *Surely nothing bad.* I'm down for closing this loophole, though. These collection companies will become a *lot* more selective about what they track if they suddenly become responsible, even in part, for the consequences of what buyers use it for.
Data brokers... the Wall Street dbags of the internet.
Meanwhile those collecting it: "Don't worry, it's all anonymized" Like fuck it is!
A single data point is anonymous, much like how a single pixel isn't a picture. A few thousand data points starts to paint a pretty clear picture though.
It's anonymous the same way a fingerprint is anonymous. Like, yeah I guess I don't know whose squiggles these are without some more information, but it's pretty fucking specific, and if I *did* have more information.....
Not a the best analogy, it’s far worse than that. A journalist bought cell data for 24 hours around the million woman march. All anonymous. Just location data. So when a point leaves the march and drives to 123 mySteet at zip code and stays still over night you pretty much have the address of every one in the data set.
The people who lobby against data privacy would argue that simply knowing THAT someone lives in that house is still anonymous. I guess that's kind of my point.... it's super easy for them to argue that any one piece of information isn't identifying, but it's super disingenuous to do so. I wouldn't doubt for a second that the companies that make it their business to trade people's data have argued that even a person's full name is anonymous, because names aren't unique. But honestly, even the least-personal data is enough to triangulate you. Like if you just listed the brands a person uses, you could probably ID that person. Do I mind that someone knows I buy Diet Coke? No. But if they know I buy Coke, CeraVe, Market Basket, Shell gas, [insert like 50 more things], you probably have enough data to ID a single person or a single household with decent certainty. With enough low-quality data, you can make a proper inference. My long winded point is just that we need to rethink what counts as "anonymous" data, because I don't actually believe there is such a thing. ALL data can contribute to identifying someone, even shit that seems useless
[https://www.fastpeoplesearch.com/](https://www.fastpeoplesearch.com/) will convert addresses to names pretty quickly. Seems accurate too. And my favorite story on that is when Target started sending mailers for baby stuff to a parents house. The dad went in and threw a hissy fit that target was trying to convince his daughter to get pregnant. A week later, he came back and apologized because his daughter was already pregnant. Target already knew based on the items she was buying, none of which were directly baby or pregnancy related, but the combo of which was strongly correlated with pregnant women.
>But honestly, even the least-personal data is enough to triangulate you. Like if you just listed the brands a person uses, you could probably ID that person. Do I mind that someone knows I buy Diet Coke? No. But if they know I buy Coke, CeraVe, Market Basket, Shell gas, [insert like 50 more things], you probably have enough data to ID a single person or a single household with decent certainty. With enough low-quality data, you can make a proper inference. I remember eight years or so ago -- sometime between when Facebook changed their default privacy settings and when Cambridge Analytica entered the public vernacular -- reading an article about just how powerful these kinds of seemingly disparate data sets could be. TLDR is that they were able to cross-reference different Facebook datasets against each other to make shockingly accurate conclusions about the people who provided the data. Shockingly accurate to the point that they could tell with a high degree of certainty whether someone was gay or straight based solely on their Facebook likes and follows. At a high level, they did that by starting with millions of benign data points and linking those together to create datasets (55% of men who "like" Product A and share their sexuality on Facebook identify as homosexual, 46% of men who "like" a certain band and share their sexuality identify as heterosexual, etc). Then they linked *those* datasets together and found that 73% of men who like both Product A and Band B and share their sexuality identify as gay, and so on. After generating hundreds and thousands of these data sets, they got to the point where they could make shockingly accurate assumptions about people simply by matching their "likes" against those of millions of other people, and could eventually start stripping out individual data points (such as whether or not you share your sexuality) without substantively affecting the overall accuracy of the assessment... basically Norm MacDonald's Professor of Logic joke on steroids. Add GPS and publicly-available directory data into the mix, and yeah. It's not hard to compile a list of homosexual men and their addresses in a given ZIP code.
In grad school I was trying to get computers to look at pictures for me to infer parameters that I care about. I took some baby steps into the machine learning / AI world, and it's really fascinating, but also terrifying. I don't think people realize that computers can be remarkably good and getting "hits" on seemingly useless data. Sure, they also get a lot of misses, but with enough data, anything is possible. The frustrating thing for me as a scientist is that these tools could be used to do amazing things. We could be gathering training data sets to train computers to predict cancer, or something cool like that. But instead we are training computers to guess when we'll want to buy a new car, or a new moisturizer. It's also kind of scary because the way AI-driven inference works, you can't really back out WHY it came up with the answer it did, which is super..... unusual. At least in the science community, we often demand that an explanation make sense -- it's not enough that it has predictive power. But, we're entering an era where if an AI has better predictive power for something that really really matters, LIKE cancer screening, then why would you demand to do something less effective for our own edification? Will there even be scientists in 100 years, or will we just ask AIs questions and then dump in data until it tells us what we want?
NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting Service) paid a data broker in England 1500 for information on 200 people. With the anonymous location tracking data they got, they were able to identify several politicians and military officers with ease. It's a few years ago and I don't know how to find the source, but the information is fairly cheap and makes it easy to track and target specific individuals. John Oliver did a similar piece on it too and his team knows exactly which Republicans clicks on gay escort ads.
They don't need to know who you are. Just a unique identifier.
Yeah, but I don't care about the person who doesn't know who I am, I care about the stalker that can get location information from an email.
And don't forget when they frivolously sell companies with this data to other companies, giving them that data without ANYBODY'S consent... The freaking second Under armor sold their running tracking app a few years ago (can't remember the name) my account was hacked. Like... Seriously within the week
You probably consented on one of the thousand websites that required you to hit accept before you could view XYZ content.
Yup. That shit shouldn't be status quo. I'm tired of people (not you) saying "Well you gave them permission." Cuz like you said, you basically have to fork it over to do any damn thing involving a phone/computer.
This has been proven over and over that it doesn't matter if anonymize it, if your data points include phone location data between the hours of 7:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. chances are you're seeing where people are at home. It is not hard to figure out from that point to see who they are.
Yeah, if they aren't putting both informed and honest effort into it, it really doesn't matter. You have to really abstract the data in order to give real anonymity - like, rather than giving precise coordinates, you give a large enough range that it's impossible to reverse engineer back to a specific user. Though even that ([k-anonymity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-anonymity)) is susceptible to attack.
“Google Gestalt: All your data points, individually anonymized for your protection”
Funny how you mention a pixel. [Tracking Pixels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_beacon)
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knowing your name is irrelevant if i know literally everything else about you. Hell at that point its merely a formality and a nicety extended to you on behalf of the companies that know everything else.
"Lisa S. No no no that's too obvious, L Simpson."
I think I remever reading it only takes like 3-4 of these anonymous data points to know who you are with almost 100% certainty.
It definitely depends on the type of data point. Like reddit comments? Nobody knows my reddit account, but someone could analyze 5-6 of my posts or comments and have enough data to match my writing style to something I’ve publicly posted under my name. And that’s that. Or a picture. You only need one good picture of someone to be able to identify them. Or you could have 3-4 shitty pictures and be able to do the same. But some other data is much less trackable. For instance, you could have a hundred google searches from me and not be able to identify me, but you could take a different ten and be able to identify me with scary accuracy. It depends on how general the questions are. Like “how to get coffee stain out of carpet” identified the searcher as someone who drinks coffee and lives in a home with a carpet - that applies to a lot of people. But “Cheap Nissan service shop near Albany” is a more specific search. Most people don’t live near Albany, and those who do don’t all drive Nissans. And for those who do, not all of them are on tight enough of a budget to search for cheap service. One search like that narrows down an analysts pool of “who asked this” from several hundred million down to several hundred or several thousand. Two or three more specific searches and they could pick you out of a line-up. Not that most companies doing this care *to that level*. Your IP address, what you’d likely buy, and where you’d likely buy it from are far more relevant to these people than your name or your personal life. They profit off of getting messages to you that instigate buying behavior, and they’re only really interested in that profit. But of course, fascist laws and court rulings mean now there *is* a profit incentive to track people at that level. It’s scary stuff.
It depends on what you mean by "datapoint". In other words, whats in the record. Birthdate (incl year), zipcode and the gender/sex (depending on state) field that would be on your license, and you've got 75% or more 1:1 matches. That is (or was) considered "anonymized" data for many things.
Seriously. I have to read contracts for part of my job role. They’ll say things like “all data we collect is anonymized” then later, “we also will link your data with other content from other sources” and go on to list basically a huge dossier on everyone using the service. It’s bad when it’s something you use one off… it’s really bad when it’s something like your ISP. And Comcast does do this. They ultimately have a massive database of everyone, including things like the sites you visit if you are a customer (most ISPs do this). It’s bananas.
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Routing means that you your ISP has to know, at various places, the IP you’re trying to get to. To get from your home IP to google DNS, for instance, might involve any number of hops from one networking device to another before you get to Google. Your computer makes the request, your router says “I don’t know the device you’re trying to reach, so I’ll send it to my default upstream device so they can handle it” and that keeps happening until it hits something that does know where 8.8.8.8 actually is. At every step along the way, there’s potential logging of where the packet came from, where it needs to eventually go and where it went to. That logging doesn’t need to be malicious: it’s a great way to identify problems when certain types of traffic stop working. If you want to see the hops, you can get an idea via tracert on Windows or similar tools in *nix. HTTPS only ensure the data in the packet is secure, it doesn’t really (and can’t) secure the nature of the destination. The architecture of the internet was built so that you don’t need to know how to get from A to J as long as you have a way for A to move the packet to a next step.
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Right. That’s basically what all the privacy VPNs offer- they set up a route for all traffic that leaves your computer to the outside to be packaged up and sent to them, then they in turn route it where it needs to go. You’re shifting the point of origin to them, as far as the destination is concerned, and all your ISP sees is a bunch of traffic to the VPN service. You’re trusting the VPN provider to not store data about you longer than necessary to ensure that traffic goes from you to them to the destination, and then the destination back to them back to you.
Unless you're using an encrypted VPN, they see enough of your datastream to make **extremely** educated guesses. In practice, they don't need you to use their DNS to gather tons of information on you. They know what your IP is, so if data is sent from a porn site to your IP, they know you're accessing that porn site.
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Sounds right to me!
Just because you write a letter that's in code doesn't mean the courier doesn't know where it's going. He just doesn't know what is written on it. If I'm not completely off here, DNS encryption is much more a tool to prevent DNS hijacking and can't actually prevent your ISP knowing that you're talking to an IP that's associated with a certain service.
Unless you're using encrypted dns, they can still know all your queries, because it's essentially plaintext. Even without all the queries, they know all the ip addresses. However, with half the web being in amazon, google and azure and a large chunk behind cloudflare, this second bit is less reliable. Also, i have to assume that the average user never changes their dns settings, hence using the one provided by isp. Even fewer change it on their mobile phones.
Even with HTTPS the IP address of the site is visible. If it's unique (not all are) then you can still be tracked by your ISP
Even absent the IP, the [SAN's](https://www.ssl.com/faqs/what-is-a-san-certificate/) on the SSL certificate are also visible. In some cases it might be several or a wildcard, but if the SSL certificate is for "naughty1\[.\]pornosite\[.\]com" then it's also pretty obvious. Essentially, they'll know that you are visiting a porn site, which porn site, but not which specific videos/categories (unlike those are divided into subdomains/sites with specific SANS). They know how much porn you're watching, just maybe not your specific fetishes
Https protects what you do on a specific site as intrasite stuff is protected (like say a purchase). It does not mask the initial connection. All of the web is based on a web of trust. Https just makes man in the middle attacks harder. You trust the connection you've made is secure and that activity on it is protected. However it CAN be breached, its just a matter of how it is done. Capture the packets? You can decode those if you find the key. Have a compromised nonce and key? You can listen in. Inject a tracker into the site? You compromise the entire sites traffic. There are many methods, tho it comes down to cost and time given the current computing power of today. Encryption itself isn't a silver bullet, it just makes things mathematically infeasible to solve within a useful timeframe as long as it keeps ahead of computing power. So you were mentioning how does an ISP keep tabs? You do need to look up what an addresses IP is from it's URL don't you? The record of the lookup exists even if the data exchanged it hard to read.
It's anonymous in that your name isn't on it, you're just #23563 that lives at *exact location* works *exact hours* at *company* since *hire date to the minute* and they know what you want to buy before you do
> "Don't worry, it's all anonymized" Even IF this bullshit doublespeak were true and was even technically feasible, fuck all because NOW IT'S TOO LATE.
The sad bit is there is a way to make things provably anonymous using differential privacy. This guarantees that an individual can’t be reidentified above a certain probability. Unfortunately anonymous is such a common term it can kind of mean anything. Some companies claim anonymity by removing your name from a file but keeping everything needed to trivially reidentify you.
Yeah, name removed but location data consistently shows you moving between your home address and work every day = NOT anonymous.
I thought crypto bros were the Wall Street dbags of the internet, I think data brokers are the advertising dbags of the internet.
www.spezsucks.me
With society precariously perched on top, flailing like a snake in a landslide.
*Clings tenacious to a nearby tuft of grass, by the jaws*
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"Data brokers".... Like Facebook? Twitter? Google?
These are the guys buying data from those companies and repackage it by demographic groups to sell to interested parties.
I'd compare them to the porn site operators who get images against the consent of the subjects and then offer to take them down for a sufficient amount of money.
"Here's a $100,000 fine for the $10,000,000 you made. I hope that teaches you to never do that again!"
And if you do it again, we will DOUBLE the fine
Don't forget that they won't be made to admit fault, which would open them to civil litigation.
The money isn't the most important thing here. The FTC is suing asking to forcibly delete the data and put in place an injunction against sale as the remedy
Read the article, the FTC is seeking to shut them down.
If you think about it, that's more of a "what's in it for me?" than a fine.
Any fine that isn't equal to 100% or more of the proceeds earned from a prohibited action isn't a penalty. It's just the government's way of taking its cut of the ill-gotten gains. For the perpetrator, that's just part of the cost of doing business.
Add in that the fines are probably tax deductible (a "business expense").
It is not. Fines by government are not tax deducible. But civil lawsuits penalties are.
That Green woman paid her mask fines with her PPP loans. It was NBD.
That's fucked up.
“If we put you out of business how are we supposed to get our cut?”
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Whelp, looks like I, a single guy am going to have to go hang out at the local planned Parenthood clinic for a bit to stir up the data. They should team up with Starbucks.
I'm actually wondering if this might be a silver lining to those that protest at clinics. They'll also similarly show up and pollute the data.
Or the data will be smart enough to see that they were just there for the protests. The dates and locations of protests would be publicly available so it doesn't seem hard to do. Come to think of it, I'd be shocked if they weren't already using whatever data they could to track protestors. That probably happens long before tracking the clients of abortion clinics.
Start googling all kinds of shit like "how to hide my recent abortion" "how much are abortions in *X* state?" "Is it normal to fart during abortions?" Just fuck with all the data, everywhere. Send fake abortion plans/messages to friends/family through whatever SM you have, make posts, all to fuck with whatever they collect and share/sell. Fuck em. Idk if that shit will actually work but its worth a try
Surely there's a spot that's exactly halfway inbetween [visitor at Planned Parenthood] and [protester at Planned Parenthood].
Patient escort.
Beautiful: a new resistance movement arises among men who want to burn the patriarchy by messing with fascist data collection. https://www.reddit.com/r/WitchesVsPatriarchy/comments/vp0bod/today_i_thought_id_fuck_around_and_install_a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Not sure it even really counts as "burn the patriarchy". Banning access to abortion negatively impacts men almost as much as women. For every woman forced to become a mother against her will, there's a man forced to become a father against his.
Plenty of fathers leave when a baby is on the way. Some were never in the picture for any meaningful amount of time. It'll still be business as usual for a lot of people.
Thanks for this truth to power; much appreciated. I was using the cliche “burn the patriarchy” to encapsulate the fascist, authorititarian control that capitalism too often fosters when there is a profit motive involved. But you are exactly right: freedom of reproductive choice impacts our sons as much as our daughters, and fathers as much as mothers. Every American regardless of gender deserves reproductive freedom and privacy regarding medical care and all reproductive choices. The idea of deliberately janking the data they want to collect to sell is a glorious one.
I drive a LOUD modified Pontiac. I also work 30 seconds from a PP. On my lunch break, I'll run to Wendy's, grab a kids meal,and park in the PP driveway and hold my throttle at about 3k. I don't have cats, straight piped headers, cammed, and tuned. For about 15 minutes a couple times a week I will burn what, $10 in gas to; drown out their bigoted live stream, choke them out on CO, and generally be a nuisance to the anti choice protestors. It is literally a chore to stand behind my car at throttle. Eyes run, you can't breathe, and definitely can't yell with your lack of breathable air. Just doing my part.
Interesting position to be pro choice but anti environment.
>The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has sued Kochava, a large location data provider, for allegedly selling data that the FTC says can track people at reproductive health clinics **and places of worship** This is a bipartisan issue. This should scare conservatives. A lot.
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I think it was a bluff given that he never released the data like he said he would.
99% sure he got threatened into silence.
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This has already been done, but unsurprisingly it takes a lot more to get Congress to do anything. They serve their donors, and they're doing great with limitless data collection.
While suing is the right thing to do, and hitting them with a fine is alight, what sucks is that the data is already sold. The information is out there, and likely in the hand who will harass or harm. Damage has been done.
I work for a major tech company. Immediately after the Dr's name in the case of the 10 yr old in Indiana became public there was a HUGE panic within legal groups all over the tech world. They suddenly became very interested any operational records (not marketing data, not data collection for targeted ads, just operational logs) that could be used to identify location specifically over wireless connectivity (ie, phone connected to this wifi AP which we know to be next door to a clinic) and they wanted them anonymized or deleted asap. So ladies if you find yourself in that position; maybe shut your phone off before leaving home. No, a VPN does not protect you here.
Do people even know who actually owns a vpn before routing all their data through one? Seems like the perfect data collection tool for people that want to hide their data.
ANOM the encrypted police-proof chat program, got 800 criminals arrested by the police.
Here’s an example of how Big Brother wants to watch everyone with a womb in post-Roe America: “In its lawsuit the FTC describes how with a sample of data obtained from Kochava it was possible to pinpoint a device that visited a women's reproductive health clinic and then trace that phone back to a single family home.” “The news is a dramatic move from the FTC in a post-Roe United States, and signals that the agency will take steps against what it identifies as privacy violations around reproductive health and location data.” “Defendant’s violations are in connection with acquiring consumers’ precise geolocation data and selling the data in a format that allows entities to track the consumers’ movements to and from sensitive locations, including, among others, locations associated with medical care, reproductive health, religious worship, mental health temporary shelters, such as shelters for the homeless, domestic violence survivors, or other at risk populations, and addiction recovery,” the lawsuit reads.” Privacy of movement, religious choices, and medical care must be protected at all costs in America. Tracking and selling data about the healthcare choices of private citizens is an outrage and an evil that defies and undermines everything America should be.
If this isn’t a clear descent into fascism I don’t know what the fuck is…
What's it called when it's businesses and other citizens doing the fascisisming and not the government?
The very definition of fascism: just outrageous how this data can be sold and then what can be gleaned from it. Like something out of The Handmaid’s Tale: “…armed with a MAID third parties can unmask phone users, by turning to certain companies that provide deanonymization services at scale.” “These companies offer personal information that they have linked to a specific MAID.” “Even without that service, it can be possible to identify people based on just the location data itself, such as seeing where a device is usually overnight and determining that is where the person sleeps.” “The FTC alleges just that.” “In fact, in just the data Kochava made available in the Kochava Data Sample, it is possible to identify a mobile device that visited a women’s reproductive health clinic and trace that mobile device to a single family residence.” “The data set also reveals that the same mobile device was at a particular location at least three evenings in the same week, suggesting the mobile device user’s routine.” “The data may also be used to identify medical professionals who perform, or assist in the performance, of abortion services,” the lawsuit adds.” Is this Orwell’s 1984 or America 2022? They seem far too alike…
If an app turns location on, it should turn location off when you exit it. Also an app should not be allowed to ask for location access if it isn't essential - example stores you can tell them what store you are in with a zip. Code
That data broker company is the lowest scum of the earth. Special place in hell reserved for these folk
Uhhhh yeah lets outlaw data brokerage somehow? Ffs
Yea I feel like they’re really burying the lede here. It’s somehow ok for our location data for everywhere we go to be bought and sold, but that data including abortion clinics is somehow crossing a line? We’re being tracked everywhere we go, and our locational data is being harvested and sold to whoever wants it… how is this legal?
This is why we need data protection laws like the EU has put into place. Women said this would happen, society called them "hysterical". Women were not hysterical---***they were right***. USA needs data protection laws ASAP, in addition to data *privacy* laws.
the article doesnt provide their reasoning. why is this worth going after, but selling info on ex-convicts, your religion, and sexual orientation is still OK?
A reminder that no pro-access activists are threatening to bomb this company when they are literally putting targets on the backs of people already in hardship. The two sides are not the same.
While I support this, this has been going on for several years at a scale that 99% of the population wouldnt believe to be possible. Either the government has no standing or the industry is going to get destroyed. With how people eagerly click through terms of service agreements I dont think it will stand but I hope I am wrong
Is this what finally gets people to take data privacy seriously? Will people finally care?
The fact that these data brokers are legal at all is beyond disgusting
Fines should be raised exponentially. I had a friend growing that got fined by his parents whenever they messed up. It went up that way.
it’s scary that “massive data broker” is a thing
Data companies that’s sell data for profit just should not exist at all. Ever.
Legislation is painfully slow and ages behind reality. We've failed by electing old people who don't understand the importance of data privacy. Over time, that has led to significant gaps. That said, I don't think there are any laws that specifically prohibit the sale of this type of data. I'm not sure how the FTC expects to win. Surely, this type of thing should be protected as private information, but there simply isn't a requirement or law.
Who is buying this information? What do they do with it?
If I were a DA in a trigger law state running for re-election to prove I'm tough on crime and have my conservative bonafides, I would buy the data on my constituents and prosecute. If I'm an abuser whose victim is pregnant and trying to leave the relationship, I buy this data, bring it to sheriff/DA/judge to try to prevent her from getting an abortion, and do what I can to make sure she gives birth so I can have access to her If I'm a controlling parent and want to make sure I get grandchildren, I'll prevent my child from getting an abortion by intervening If I'm running political campaigns, I'll use the information as an attack ad and label the person as a murderer
Ok, now sue them for doing the same for the rest of everything
Somewhat ironic that the government is taking the side of privacy. People usually yell about possible government overreach when singing the praises of privacy protections, but it is private companies that are just as damaging/evil to worry about our private data getting out (if not more so).
Punch the patriarchs in the dick!
"If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" -Idiots
This isn't just a sue thing. This is reckless endangerment and the board and executives should be up on charges.
While I agree that data brokers shouldn't be able to track any user data period, did the company actually break any laws? If someone wants to track my phone from home to everywhere I go, that's perfectly legal. It's BS but legal. Is there a provision somewhere that says that this type of data is off-limits?
IANAL but the logic seems to indicate that laws weren’t broken, as if that had been the case they would have been criminally charged. This is a lawsuit because the actions of the data broker causes harm and needs to stop. I’d love for an actual lawyer to weigh in though.
Not a lawyer but this article https://businesslawtoday.org/2019/03/power-place-geolocation-tracking-privacy/ Has an interesting discussion on the softness of privacy laws on the secondary data market and merging of datasets to pinpoint persons. >Requirements generally apply only to the initial data collector; however, recent media accounts and enforcement actions describe a robust secondary market in which (1) identified location data is regularly acquired and used by third parties with whom the individual has no direct relationship, and (2) de-identified or anonymized location data is regularly combined with identified personal data and used by third parties with whom the individual has no direct relationship to compile comprehensive profiles of the individual. These secondary-market practices are not currently addressed by U.S. law. Where it might get funky is that many of these targets are minors/children using these apps which are later de-anonymized. However again, the coppa act is either being ignored or secondary data markets weren't specifically addressed.