Equifax and how little privacy you still have

DMS General
#1

https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/2017/0915.html#1

Key points from article

  • In case you didn’t notice, you’re not Equifax’s customer. You’re its product.

  • It collects information about all of us, analyzes it all, and then sells those insights.

  • You’re secretly tracked on pretty much every commercial website you visit.

  • Facebook is the largest surveillance organization mankind has created; collecting data on you is its business model. I don’t have a Facebook account, but Facebook still keeps a surprisingly complete dossier on me and my associations – just in case I ever decide to join.

  • I also don’t have a Gmail account, because I don’t want Google storing my e-mail. But my guess is that it has about half of my e-mail anyway, because so many people I correspond with have accounts.

  • And again, many companies that track us do so in secret, without our knowledge and consent.

5 Likes
#2

Sounds like you’re not being “private” enough with your “private” email address. :wink:

#3

You can opt out of various tracking. Mashable has a great list here:

Next, install an ad blocker in your browser then install Privacy Badger from the EFF.

This will help you. :slight_smile:

Oh, and if you’re concerned about getting pwn3d by a malicious web element, install a Flash blocker add-on in your browser too.

#4

No, no you can’t. At best you can request that these companies not blatantly use the information they gather about you in attempts to sell you things. But they are always able to gather the information you transmit from your computers, phones, and tablets. Not to mention the proliferating IOT devices. And like Equifax, you are a product, not a customer.

If your willing to go completely black these organizations still have access to all of the information the gubmint collects on you. Which is quite substantial.

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#5

Google’s corporate philosophy changed from “Don’t Be Evil” to “Do the right thing” under Alphabet. But that really reads “Do the right thing” for our customers. And you know that you are the product not the customer, right?

2 Likes
#6

Actually it is do the right thing for our profits. Google lost any semblance to ethics or morality when they cow-towed to the Chinese government. It was public evidence that any ‘principals’ they espoused stopped when it might affect their bottom line.

3 Likes
#7

Well the only way to have a truly private email address is to simply never use email. If you send out email to anyone, your email address is recorded in a number of locations. At the very least the servers that transport that email. And nothing prevents those servers from releasing that information.

With email, the best you can do is encrypt the contents, which just raises the bar as to the level of effort needed to view those contents.

1 Like