You can find my thread almost 10 years years where I questioned the way Facebook accessed my yahoo contacts.
That is in fact their secret weapon as to how they grew so fast. They would download all your yahoo contact info claiming it was just to see if they are on FB already or to send them an invitation (I guess they used the same harvesting script as one of the first pop web apps the birthday calendar reminder and Hi5 app ) .
Pretty much everybody thought I was weird for caring about this.
Stealing your data and your friends data was baked into Facebook from Day 1
Thatâs what other social networks do, like for example LinkedIn. Indeed, the problem with the latter is that the UI is confusing to the point that people would unknowingly accept to send invitations to their contacts, and there has been some suspicions that LinkedIn did it for you without asking⌠there was a suit about this and LinkedIn lost.
HeadhonchoII talks to us from the past with a lot of wisdom :).
Apart from FB sending an invitation or not they were building a database of all the contacts list details who were not on FB, they were retaining that information .
Almost nobody noticed or cared.
When you signed up to Facebook they probably already had your address and telephone number in many cases and knew who you were connected with already. Just because they donât list your telephone number or address on the homepage doesnât mean they donât have that info already in their database (the main reason to buy WhatsApp was the telephone numbers Im pretty sure , Instagram is probably to analyse all your photos using facial recognition and object recognition ).
Another company that is getting way too much of a few pass is Google. Google is as bad or worse, tracking your movement, trying to get you to confirm where is home and where is work, going through your emails to analyse you and sell you stuff.
Then you get idiots (sorry) who buy smart speakers from companies that are actually recording everything you , your family.and your visitors are saying all day.
Thereâs nothing wrong with using an intelligent assistant but why does it have to act as a spy to do this?
I have noticed this in the past year or so that Google knew when I was heading to work and when I normally left work. Thus, prompting me how long my commute home was. They also know when Iâm walking, taking bus, taking MRT, on my scooter and even when I ride my bike. It is a bit scary.
Google has known location information for almost as long as been using Google maps. In the beginning they kept that info, then they starting giving options to see it, now they are pushing it back out to users to make it useful.
Lots of apps have the information.
Pretty useful these days. This all happens without me asking.
Google maps will know when Iâm leaving the house, give me traffic and public transportation information without asking, tell me when Iâm passing my favorite restaurant, and remind me to buy whats on my shopping list when Iâm close to a certain store that has those types of items, while automatically noting and telling me where I parked my car. I can look back and see exactly where I was at any moment in the last couple years as it tracks to the minute.
It knows when I walk into an MRT station and gives me exact times of upcoming trains on lines it thinks I usually use.
It knows my travel information lets me know schedules and timings to go to airport.
I first got Facebook when I was in high school, right after they opened it to high school students in late 2005 or early 2006. For the first year or so, it had been college only. After they opened it to HS students, my entire HS was on it within like a week.
FB has always been controversial. When they first introduced the News Feed product, in maybe 2007 or 2008, it was very controversial. People thought it was creepy, because you could see what other people posted even if you didnât specifically go to their page.
Itâs amazing how fast stuff like News Feed got normalized, where today no one thinks twice about that kind of thing. Itâs table stakes for any social network.
As the company got bigger, so did the scale of the controversies and the audacity of the data collection operation, culminating in what they are going through today.
Even if you donât it doesnât mean they donât do itâŚ
Personally I hate when I take a picture somehwere and google asks me to upload it âHey Lord Jesus, youâve been to Naughty Shephard sexshop, be the first posting a picture on google maps!â
Thing about it is that in facebook you can delete stuff, but in forumosa it is there forever. I am with Jesus on the temped by request. I want all my posts to be temped! ha ha Seriously
Usually these days, DB = Discobot. Although depending upon the age of the post, and whether or not the thread is about cooking, it could be Dragonbones.
(I have a feeling thereâs a âWhooshâ sound of something going over my head, but so be it.)
The only true way is to stop using the internet. And then those street cameras will still track your movements in the near future, and possibly switch an interactive billboard at the train station you use to show you the ad. Just for you. Future is already here. And it doesnât like you.
Yeah, well, or if you still want to use internet but donât want to make things easy to big corporations that track your data and steps for making profit out of it and sell and share your data with other companies and governments, you can take a few easy actions, some of them detailed in my OP.
