You all laughed at my privacy concerns

[TwoTankAmin]

I have always posted about privacy and my unwillinglness to behave digitally and online the way most folks in the USA do. I offer this

Tech companies may surrender abortion-related data
https://www.axios.com/2022/06/28/tech-companies-surrender-abortion-related-data

And so it begins.........

[Moonchild]

Not sure why you didn't post this in off-topic. Not like you're new to how we categorize things around here

[Night Wing]

It will not affect me one bit. I'm a man, male with the XY chromosome which means I cannot get pregnant. Although there are some on the far, far left fringe who think a man, male can get pregnant and which I call those people.........lunatics.

I'm do not have any registered accounts on any social media platforms. No Facebook account, no Twitter account, no Instagram account, no LinkedIn account, etc, etc, etc. You name the social media company and you won't find me on there.

Since I do not own a smartphone, I have no apps of any kind. I do have an old fashioned flip/clam style cell phone. This cell phone of mine is not connected to the Internet although I do get prompts to do so from it and which I ignore. And there are no apps on this phone either. I do not have a voice mail account for this phone so there is no way a scammer can leave me any voicemails. If my friends want to get in touch with me, they "all" know to call my land line house phone number and if I'm not around, the phone answering machine will pick up and they can leave me a message. I will call them back when I get back home.

My cell phone is always turned "off" so I can't be tracked. The only time I turn on my cell phone on is when I want to make an outgoing call. After the outgoing call has concluded, I turn the cell phone off again.

As for companies. I have credit cards but I do not have an internet account with any of my credit card companies. Everything is handled over a land line phone (balance, payments by phone, etc). The same thing happens with my banks since I do not have online accounts with them. Most of everything I locally purchase is with a personal check or in "cold hard cash" and where I come from, cash is still "king".

All of my physicians are irked at me because I refuse to put my medical information on their "patient portals". A patient portal is nothing more than someone else's computer which can be hacked. Again, I do not keep any medical information on any of my five computers either. I still enjoy a "paper empire" if you get my drift.

As for my online purchases, I don't raise any red flags because I'm an outdoors person. Many of my online purchases deal with the outdoors such as standup paddleboards, prone surfing longboards, fins for both standup paddleboards and surfing longboards, accessory items like life jacket, paddle leash, paddles, booties for footwear, etc.

I've bought a lot of archery gear during my lifetime, bought a lot of fishing gear during my lifetime, sailing equipment during my lifetime, boating equipment (I once owned a 18' center console fishing boat) during my lifetime and all the things that go along with owning a boat.

But the one thing the Left or far Left leaning in our government now which might cause alarm for them is that I've bought many firearms during my lifetime. Both handguns and long guns. These items were all purchased legally and that can be seen on the federal government Form 4473 document I had to fill out at the time of purchase.

One does not need to fill out a 4473 to purchase ammo, but just show a valid and up to date (home address) photo ID and be at least 18 years old and I always used my personal state Texas driver license to do so. And not too long ago, I also had a concealed carry license which was issued to me for at least 20 years which there is a record of.

As for my Hotmail and Gmail email accounts, I do use the Calendars for those two accounts, but anything that I put on those online calendars, it is in code which only I know. So if Microsoft and Google are reading what I place on my online calendars, these two tech companies are seeing nothing but gibberish.

And my 2001 Chevy Silverado truck does not have a GPS system in it either. I can't be tracked when I'm driving.

In closing.

In this day and age of tech companies (and the government), one just needs to use some common sense when dealing with tech companies knowing they are going to collect your personal data to sell or give to the federal government through legal means.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

I'm do not have any registered accounts on any social media platforms. [...]
Since I do not own a smartphone, I have no apps of any kind. I do have an old fashioned flip/clam style cell phone. This cell phone of mine is not connected to the Internet.

The same for me.

Hotmail and Gmail email accounts, I do use the Calendars for those two accounts

I am "forced" to use a Gsuite account for institutional purposes. but I do not use their calendar service. And my e-mail does not stay there for more than one day. I use fetchmail to move it all on my work machine (if needed I could run an IMAP server there).

My cell phone is always turned "off" so I can't be tracked. The only time I turn on my cell phone on is when I want to make an outgoing call.

I tend(ed) to do the same, specially when I was at work. Except if I'm waiting an urgent call (I dropped "fixed" phone line long ago).

As for companies. I have credit cards but I do not have an internet account with any of my credit card companies. The same thing happens with my banks since I do not have online accounts with them.

Well in my country credit cards are usually linked to bank accounts. And I do use (and find very comfortable with) online banking (which I do in a private window). I tend not to disclose my real credit card number (only the Swiss railways I was forced to), but one-shot virtual credit cards (an online service offered by my and many banks).

All of my physicians are irked at me because I refuse to put my medical information on their "patient portals".

I actually do use a lot our Regional Health Service portal, to retrieve examination results, prescriptions, make bookings ... I wish it would work better in a more uniform and sensisble way. but I'm not at all concerned my data is stored there. And I'm also happy with online tax declarations and salary/pension slips.

And my 2001 Chevy Silverado truck does not have a GPS system in it either. I can't be tracked when I'm driving.

I do not own a car, use public transport. However when they replaced paper season cards with electronic ones I filed a complaint with our national Privacy Authority. Apparently transport companies keep the data only for 24 hours before anonymizing them.

I've bought many firearms during my lifetime.

In this I differ totally. I live in a different continent. If I weren'y exempted from military service (still existed when I was 18) I would have been a conscientious objector.

[doofy]

The only reason I laugh at your privacy concerns is because you are so poor at implementing them.

You annoyed me a few years back about "privacy", and inside an hour or so I had your full name, age, hobbies, banks, vague employment history, email, and home address to within a couple of hundred yards or so.

You are hardly what I would call "private" on the internet.

[nero355]

I do have an old fashioned flip/clam style cell phone.

My cell phone is always turned "off" so I can't be tracked.

It's possible to track and turn on the microphone of mobile phones that are turned off since about 30 years now!

So when you turn off your phone then don't forget to remove the battery too!

Source : Someone I know who has used this cracking/hacking technology in the army a very long time ago...

[Night Wing]

It's possible to track and turn on the microphone of mobile phones that are turned off since about 30 years now!

If the government turns my old fashioned flip style phone from off to on to access the microphone, the phone sings a "loud" tune. My hearing is not impaired, which means I'm not hard of hearing nor deaf.

But if the government did do that and I found out about it; then I would go outside, lay the phone on the top of the cement driveway, raise my right foot and start stomping on the phone until the phone is broken into many small pieces. I'm sure if I did that, that microphone wouldn't work and neither would anything else work on the destroyed phone.

After all, I'm one of those people who really doesn't "need" a mobile phone. I only carry one because my wife insists I have one just in case of an emergency and need to get in touch with someone which is what I use it for.

If my wife passes away before I do, my mobile phone would also "pass away" because I would no longer need a mobile phone. That would still leave me with my land line phone which is what I use in our home along with the phone answering machine when I'm away from home.

[mtosev]

I may be different from most people but I actually don't care about having privacy on the internet. My main OS is Win 10/11, Google products that I have been using for ages Gmail (since early 2005), Google search, YouTube, Android, sometimes Chrome but only on mobile devices, my main web browser is Firefox (since FF was still in the beta stage probably version 0.9 or something), I have eBay, PayPal, Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, HBO Max, Facebook, Twitter, Revolut, Steam, Epic games, GOG, Telegram, Skype, Discord, Dropbox, MS etc accounts... And I have to say that I really don't care about that big corporations basically knowing everything about me. I know that they are making money from my data and that I get personalized ads based on my activity online. At least with me ads and stuff like that actually don't work. They can show me an ad a thousand times and I still won't buy stuff that I'm not interested in or I basically don't need. If I'm interested in something I will just Google it and/or read reviews about it and then decide if the item is good or not. I bought my current laptop and tablet based on a review that I read online.

[Blacklab]

I may be different from most people but I actually don't care about having privacy on the internet.

Nope... I think you're pretty much in with the great herd of humanity who frankly can't be bothered about their privacy online and can't be bothered to expend any effort to control their privacy or understand why giving up on individual privacy is so dangerous.

There will be some who have no choice about their privacy being compromised due to how they can access the internet where they live or the government regime they live under. There will be others who are too naive or stupid to understand the magnitude of the threat posed by the loss of individual privacy.

The insidious effects of surveillance capitalism are now pretty obvious to anyone who cares to read even a little on the subject... and for many living in less 'free' countries or the unlucky millions living under full-fat authoritarian regimes the surveillance carried out by their governments and/or their government's access to commercial surveillance is a direct threat to both liberty and life.

I'm probably 'out-of-my-time'... but the simple Cold War mantra for the distribution of all military secret information was the very pithy phrase 'Need to Know'... and if you didn't 'Need to Know' you weren't told. End of subject.

Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, the other mega-corp FAANGs, and anyone else in the data-mining business, has no 'Need to Know' anything about me. Any personal data I choose or need give them should be my choice and remain under my control. My data should not be stolen, compiled, profiled, or auctioned-off to unknown bidders for unknown purposes.

Remember, none of these 'data hoarders' is your friend... and advertising is only the tip of the data-mining iceberg, a mere annoyance in the panoply of surveillance and data misuse. It is the other uses your data is being put to that are the really serious threats... in short, living in a surveillance society, with no individual privacy, is no longer living in a free society.

PS. What I don't grasp is that if you're happy to be under constant surveillance by unknown third-parties... then why not use the Chrome browser, get a Google Android phone, get a smart speaker or several, buy a Chromebook, etc... then you can be utterly sure Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, and friends will have you nailed to the wall every second of your existence?

[Mæstro]

I get personalized ads based on my activity online. At least with me ads and stuff like that actually don't work. They can show me an ad a thousand times and I still won't buy stuff that I'm not interested in or I basically don't need.

Imagine seeing adverts.

Advertising is fraudulent in itself. Its explicit purpose, whether it succeeds or not, is to convince someone to think he wants things he truly does not, that he will give up money. Like spam, enough fall for it, even if most do not, that it pays for itself. Profiting off foolishness is evil.

[Moonchild]

Advertising is fraudulent in itself. Its explicit purpose, whether it succeeds or not, is to convince someone to think he wants things he truly does not, that he will give up money.

This is simply not true.
Its explicit purpose is to offer to the viewer ways to obtain the things they want. Advertising by design is to expose vendors to consumers so the latter may choose the former for their purposes.
Now, advertising may try to convince someone they want something they do not, on some occasions (think infomercials) but ultimately that isn't its explicit purpose - it's just misuse of advertising and a vast minority of it. If you see an advert for a new car, do you suddenly want to buy a car while you didn't before hand? Or might it just convince you to go for a specific type/model/brand of car?

They can show me an ad a thousand times and I still won't buy stuff that I'm not interested in or I basically don't need.

This is a common sentiment. This is also why ad personalisation is a thing (and so effective at increasing conversion) because what that does is match the ads to guessed/estimated fields of interest for the viewer, making the ads more likely to be things people are interested in or do need.
This is also not new - but previously it was simpler: you would be advertising in e.g. magazines with topics that align with your business. That way you know that readers of the ads would have the matching field of interest. It would just be wasted money to advertise in a magazine with a completely unrelated topic of interest.
With the decoupling of advertising from media, this has become more complex, as ads are now globally applied to sites. If the personalisation is no longer linked to the sites they are on, they have to be personalised to the visitors themselves, and that is where this whole privacy issue comes from now.

[mtosev]

I may be different from most people but I actually don't care about having privacy on the internet.

PS. What I don't grasp is that if you're happy to be under constant surveillance by unknown third-parties... then why not use the Chrome browser, get a Google Android phone, get a smart speaker or several, buy a Chromebook, etc... then you can be utterly sure Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, and friends will have you nailed to the wall every second of your existence?

The reason is really simple actually. I actually like Firefox and this is the browser that I'm most familiar with since I have been using it for ages. (I've even donated to Mozilla a couple of times as a thanks.) I have tried other browsers like Chrome, MS Edge, Palemoon and I always ended back on FF. The reason why I started using Firefox in the first place was Microsoft's atrocious IE 6 at that time. IE's only challenger at that time was Firefox, Opera wasn't free. Well the free version had ads in the main toolbar in the browser and I considered that annoying as fuck.
I never got a Google phone because of a very simple reason that the base models cost more than I'm willing to pay for. I mean I can afford a Google phone or an iPhone but I'm just not willing to pay more than about 200 EUR for a phone and most of my phones were under 200 EUR for a long time. I know that iPhone and other phones are nice and stuff but I just don't need an expensive phone. I'm on a Chinese brand called Blackview, my previous one was a Xiaomi.
Chromebooks are quite limited devices from what I have seen. If I'm buying a laptop I'm going to get one running Windows or normal Linux and not limited oses like Android or other such mobile oses.

Smart speakers? Have absolutely no need for them.

The being under control or monitored thing I just basically don't care. I mean I'm not a terrorist nor do anything illegal online so I'm not worried about that stuff in anyway.

[Blacklab]

The being under control or monitored thing I just basically don't care. I mean I'm not a terrorist nor do anything illegal online so I'm not worried about that stuff in anyway.

The above statement is known as the 'Nothing to hide argument'... and IMO this is a dangerous fallacy.

None of us know what the future holds, where life may take you, what situations you might end up in, what a change of government or regime in your own country might entail, or what changes to existing law might occur (as with OP's initial post relating to last week's reversal of the Roe vs Wade Supreme Court decision). You might find what you had previously thought legal suddenly isn't.

Thus saying "... I'm not a terrorist nor do anything illegal online so I'm not worried..." is a decidedly risky and overly optimistic bet on the future staying the same as the present. At a simple level who knows what might become criminalised in the future?

Information has always been directly associated with power. In the modern age this means both states and corporations are hell bent on acquiring massive quantities of data and manipulating it for their own benefit, not necessarily with good intentions.

Individual privacy is one bulwark against the creeping authoritarianism of the powerful. Take care out there, protect your privacy.

[mtosev]

The being under control or monitored thing I just basically don't care. I mean I'm not a terrorist nor do anything illegal online so I'm not worried about that stuff in anyway.

The above statement is known as the 'Nothing to hide argument'... and IMO this is a dangerous fallacy.

None of us know what the future holds, where life may take you, what situations you might end up in, what a change of government or regime in your own country might entail, or what changes to existing law might occur (as with OP's initial post relating to last week's reversal of the Roe vs Wade Supreme Court decision). You might find what you had previously thought legal suddenly isn't.

Thus saying "... I'm not a terrorist nor do anything illegal online so I'm not worried..." is a decidedly risky and overly optimistic bet on the future staying the same as the present. At a simple level who knows what might become criminalised in the future?

I have thought about that in the past and came to the following conclusion. I do not live in an authoritarian country or society. I do recognize the fact that if I lived in countries like China, Russia, Belarus, Cuba, Venezuela etc my way of thinking on the matter would be completely wrong and that I would face punishment for simply stating my opinion online. Some or most European countries are ranked very high in terms of freedom of speech and other civil liberties.
Of course no one knows what will happen in the future but for now I really don't see this as an issue at least in the EU / Europe. Sure other places may be vastly different like the US where most people are very vary of the government and trust in public institutions is quite low compared to other western countries.
So this is how I see this matter from my own perspective.

[Kerebron]

Firefox (...) is the browser that I'm most familiar with since I have been using it for ages.

Well, I had been using Firefox since the beginning as well, but today's Firefox has absolutely nothing to do with that old one. I switched completely to Pale Moon after Australis hit the fan. IMO Pale Moon is now what Firefox should/could be, if it didn't go south then and after all subsequent disasters that followed, with honourable mention of Web Extentions massacre.

[Mæstro]

This is simply not true. Its explicit purpose is to offer to the viewer ways to obtain the things they want. Advertising by design is to expose vendors to consumers so the latter may choose the former for their purposes.

I disagree. Merely informing how one could get something is the work of a business directory. A listing can be neutral, stating locations and prices for certain goods without urging to buy them. Search engine results, with the adverts removed, are like this. Catalogues prepared by a seller, meant to list his offers and prices, are likewise in order.

As your later explanation hints, neither of us have this in mind when we speak of advertising, even if the word is sometimes used in that sense. Instead, it seems that we both mean something like the definition here (emphasis mine):

a means of stimulating demand for a product and establishing strong brand loyalty . . . used both to inform prospective buyers of a brand's particular attributes and to persuade them that the brand is superior to competitors’ offerings.

I infer that we share this understanding from:

If you see an advert for a new car, do you suddenly want to buy a car while you didn't before hand? Or might it just convince you to go for a specific type/model/brand of car?

But we ought to confirm this is what we both mean to ensure we are on firm semantic ground.

This is still convincing someone to buy something he does not want: that he prefers to give Brand X peculiarly money, when he would otherwise be neutral between models of car and form preferences on his own. The neutral process would be deciding that one wants a car independently, seeking manufacturers or resellers in directories, comparing efficiency and appearance and cost and so on by one’s own values and choosing from that. (If one is less rigorous, one will just buy whatever one happens to find first at random. Without someone steering what comes up first, this is benign.) The buyer is the active agent. He neither needs be swayed one way, nor must he be distracted from what he was already reading or doing, on the chance that he might be interested in buying something.

[TwoTankAmin]

The only reason I laugh at your privacy concerns is because you are so poor at implementing them.

You annoyed me a few years back about "privacy", and inside an hour or so I had your full name, age, hobbies, banks, vague employment history, email, and home address to within a couple of hundred yards or so.

You are hardly what I would call "private" on the internet.

All of that information could easily be obtained before the internet existed. So what you think you found is not even worth discussing. I own a home, public info, I have a drivers license also public info. Much of the other info you think you found is incorrect. I have seen it myself. Go to one of those sites that sell information on individuals and they have me living in states I have never been in let alone lived. Most of the email addys you might see are dead.

As for my hobbies, I have only two. I keep and breed tropical fish. You can tell me the other. Any fool can find the first info because I post on tropical fish forums. What you cannot find or see are my private conversations with folks. You cannot see what really matters. My real name is no secret, my address is no secret, my hobbies are no secret. If you you have any useful information about me that is not public, I would be amazed.

While I am not rich, I am worth enough to make me a reasonable target for scams and digital theft. Yet in the last 22 years I had only one issue, A CC charge that was an error. It was fixed pretty fast.

If you want to claim real info. tell me any of the following:

Who did I vote for in any election since 1970? Or more easy to answer which elections did I not vote in since then?
What is my current doctors name?
How much money did I earn in 2020?
What was my father's birth name?
Are there any ongoing criminal actions regarding me?
Where did I work before I became a registered investment broker in 1980 and subsequently a registered investment advisor? (This is all public knowldge.)
Post a picture of me that you found online.
Tell me my email password to access my email provider and all of my emails?

What you found was all public information about me which was almost as easy to get before the net existed. You must be very young not to know what a phone books was. You could find the address and phone number of pretty much anybody who had a land line. They even had reverse directories in those days. Today that is not so easy. My phone provider will allow an account to have multiple phone numbers, However, they will all be listed under the single name for the account.

The one thing none of us can exercise any control over in terms of tracking is being caught on video or photographed anywhere we might go in public. This is a product of the digital age.

I used to be a sysop in the old Microsoft gaming zone. I was able to see digital information about any user in the zone. I was then able to use sites to get real info about that user's internet connection. Big deal. I have not done that in decades now.

Most of the information one can suck off the net about me is meaningless in terms of privacy. If you can use the wayback machine you find many things on the net I willing put there. I have been on some fish forums for almost 20 years. If you know the site name or URL you can even read some of my posts going back to 2000 or so. But almost all of these involve fish related sites.

BTW- I opened my first account with Citibank in the late 1970s. So I have been involved with them for about 45 years. My family used them for many years prior to that.

Privacy ia does not mean there is no information out there about you. It is that theree is nothing incriminating out there that can be used against you. Returning to the original topic of this thread I would offer this from Bloomberg News:

Facebook User’s Messages Bring Abortion Charges in Nebraska
By Kurt Wagner and Dina Bass
August 9, 2022 at 6:28 PM EDT Updated on August 9, 2022 at 8:36 PM EDT

- Social network complied with a warrant seeking personal data
- Case underlines concerns about prosecutions in post-Roe era

A Nebraska woman was charged with two felonies related to an illegal abortion after authorities discovered information about the pregnancy through private messages on Facebook Messenger, according to court documents. The case renewed debate about how law enforcement may use social media accounts in cases involving reproductive choices.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-09/facebook-user-s-messages-lead-to-abortion-charges-in-nebraska

[Blacklab]

Fancy that! Who'd a thought it?
Meta injecting code into websites to track its users, research says...
Owner of Facebook and Instagram is using code to follow those who click links in its apps, according to an ex-Google engineer
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... earch-says