2011, contracting for a web marketing agency I came across a tool they used that aggregated data from Market, Salesforce and data brokers.
You could put someone’s email in, and it would tell you every bit of info they ever filled out on a form for a sale or a freebie.
Name and address were often there, sometimes DoB, sometimes other PID, then there was shopping habits and history etc.
It was creepy as fuck. I dropped Facebook and twitter at the time. And I never filled a form or answered any questions at a till again. Then I started blocking trackers.
Back in the covid lock downs, I went down a rabbit hole with alternative operating systems. I found TheHatedOnes video on GrapheneOS, got the cheapest pixel from a pawn shop, and started experimenting on the mobile side of things
As for my PC, I’m not sure if this video exists, or it did and its gone, or I was just dreaming, but I’m sure there was a SomeOrdinary Gamer video about how windows 10 wanted a 1080p webcam.
That was the final straw for me, and I started duel booting to get used to Linux. I knew back then I would never go to windows 11, so I knew the sooner I start switching, the more comfortable I would be when windows 10 reaches EOL.
Secret services mass surveillance programs in 1980s and 1990s.
Group read on “Surveillance Capitalism” but in truth…
- tinkered with Linux as a kid
- contributed to Mozilla
- loved the ideal of free software relatively early on
… so it was rather coherent with related yet orthogonal efforts.
I’ve always been concerned about it but never got around to making big changes until recently. Deleted my Facebook ten years ago but held on to IG so that says a lot about my priorities at the time. Tried a Linux dual boot but went back to Windows because Linux gaming support was almost non-existent (granted I did routinely run the Shut Up 10 tool at least).
Ten years later, I buckled down and changed everything I could. I haven’t cut everything out (i.e. still on Google Fi because of costs and coverage, still on discord because no one wants to go anywhere else). But now I’ve been running GrapheneOS for a year, run CachyOS on both my desktop and steam deck, moved from gmail to tuta, set up an entire home server to get away from google services and media streaming platforms, etc etc. This whole year has been the bulk of it for sure.
Honestly the biggest inspiration for finally getting it done was seeing all the tech oligarchs at the nazi inauguration last year, and knowing sooner or later they’re gonna start coming for communists too. Is all this gonna be enough to save my ass if they do? Probably not, but better now than never.
Entirely accidentally. My clinical colleague had an “odd looking” laptop screen. It was Ubuntu. He’s a genius level clever lad, and after some questions, he helped me to set up dual boot on my windows machine. Within 5-months, that was an Ubuntu only machine. Now on Debian, still can’t do anything much more than basic with the terminal, but the roads led here very naturally.
Data stealing? I thought people are just giving it away.
Although I remember when the fb app was discovered to be spying on other stuff outside of usage within the app, whenever that was.
There’s a mom joke here somewhere, which of us is brave enough to retort as such to the OP?
People can’t be blame for not paying attention to that. All are not really techie, just following current trend, and for sure big tech doesn’t make the task easier.
They are to blame later when risks are explained and people from their surroundings are willing to give help.
I like knowing what my computer is doing and that was noticeably less and less the case as I went from Windows 98 to 10 and all the major versions in between. Before learning about Linux, simply going through the options in debloat scripts made me realize how invasive Microsoft was behind the scenes.
I know that he’s not necessarily the best resource, but Rob Braxman’s videos were first to bring mobile privacy concerns to my attention. Also, while his promotion of his custom phone didn’t lead to me buying one of them, it did lead to me learning about custom Android ROMs and eventually buying a Pixel for GrapheneOS.
I was wondering if my VPN works basically, from a young age. This led me to reading about Cold War intrigue and assassinations quite a bit, everyone was recommending NATO’s Secret Armies in 2016 for some reason, which is a solid Gladio book. You come to the conclusion that any intelligence agency tied to the US or unable to defend against it makes any server, manufacturer, person etc in that country potentially compromised pretty easily
If you’re only worried about the privacy concerns of a commercial IT guy you’re just not seeing the big picture
I was always raised not to share personal information with complete strangers on the web. I overlooked that rule for a time, but between that and the revelations by Snowden and then Cambridge Analytica I’ve gradually taken increasing steps towards a more privacy-oriented internet experience. I do take some pride in my tech knowledge but when I have to resolve an issue with a family members’ device I have to mentally switch gears because they are set up for a completely different kind of experience.
The revelations that came out from the Edward Snowden ordeal.
Check each app for a libre software license text file, do we control the app or not? Easiest way to purge 99% of scams and abuse. Then, check for an libre app to replace each online service.
By working as a data engineer in ad-tech companies and seeing how big is actually an amount of information collected about you.
Oh, I never seen anyone say they worked as a data manager. Never even heard about this job.
How’s it? What do you do?
*data engineer
I’m also one but I don’t work for advertising. Most data engineers work for consulting companies that work for banks. We program automatic data processing pipelines. For example, bank transactions are stored somewhere, all the historic data, that needs processing to then be graphed out for exec number 3, or for whatever.
Other companies might send you files that need to be automatically processed, cleaned, and put correctly where then other tools can pull that data correctly.
We basically do all the background work concerning data manipulation. File processing, databases… all that stuff. And by databases it can be normal ones like posture to distributed ones like hdfs/hive/athena/whatever.
Ad world is basically the same but with tracking info instead of transactions.
If you are interested in day to day work, it’s a mix of coding SQL processes, then porting them to spark/pyspark for distributed massive processing. There are new shiny tools for those that don’t know much of the technical side to manage, sorta.
There are petabytes of collected data (even in a relatively small ad-tech companies I had a chance to work on; on a facebook/google scale it is much more). Someone should write all the cleaning, processing, de-duplication and matching (aka fingerprinting) steps as well as make this data usable by AI / Machine Learning guys, who will make models that predicts what ad to show to each user based on the available data. I’m working on processing, cleaning, matching and preparing of these data.
oooh
I know that I’m working on a “dark side”… But ad-tech are offering really interesting tasks about building very complex infrastructure besides they are paying well.
Another sem 👽
started debloating my windows install and installing custom roms since i had a shit pc and phone, then got to know linux and naturally got privacy conscious
because of this sexy boi
Who’s that?
