This doesn't just happen on Android but in loads of things that are even less regulated.
Check out this reddit story: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comment...opular_chrome/
It's just a chrome extension but that guy was being quoted over '6 figures a month' for the data he'd collected without any intention of selling it!
"The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss."
- Douglas Adams.
I'll generally take precautions to keep my various online activities seperate, maintaining several email addresses to do so. I tend to vary my usernames and identities to help keep the average person from gaining too much of the overall picture. I tend to operate on the assumption that any website I use will be hacked at some point in it's lifetime, and want to limit the damage that could cause. Case in point, a website was compromised, and my backup email provider was then hacked by brute force, leading to an attempt on my main email address, in the end, nothing was gained by the attacker as they were after an online account but it did lead me to spread things out more.
Wherever possible, I refuse marketing communications, and block third party cookies.
In the real world, I do own a Tesco Clubcard, knowing that it's linked with my debit card activity due to ordering online. The rewards seem worth the marketing data, but am aware that at any time
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This is bunny and friends. He is fed up waiting for everyone to help him out, and decided to help himself instead!
In England the gov't are selling peoples NHS details to companies now, or at least trying to.
Online privacy is the least of folks issues imo.
My name is X. I have fake passport in the name of Y, my bank account name is also of Y, and so are my direct debits and everything. In the system, I as X don't exist.
I feel that Microsoft are the kings of having people just click "next" or "accept" on license and privacy terms & conditions, purely because all of their legal stuff is designed around you not reading it and being unaware of your rights.
Personally, I've been on a bit of a crusade lately taking back control of a lot of my data and personal information. I think my biggest problem lies with the fact that the big companies excel at harvesting information and especially images.
I find myself in the situation where the likes of Paypal, eBay and Google are essential to both my work and academic life. I'd love to abandon many of their services in favour of others, but it's simply a chore trying to encourage others to get up and running on other services.
I've always been quite security conscious (I've been a Linux user for over 12 years now) already, but I think over the past year, I've taken it to new and scary sorts of levels.
proof?Originally Posted by smithy1158
Got any evidence of that?
SOME data, under very controlled cirumstances, has long gone to private organisations for medical purposes, such as analysis of health trends. But, as I understand it, it's 'anonymised'. Examples would be like DrWatson.
There are currently plans, just delayed, to provide GP records to a central NHS database, and part of that was that, again, anonymised versions might go to private companies, again, supposedly for medical research.
The concern, of course, is that once any such private company get that data, it is very hard to control what happens to it. And, the concern is that if ANYTHING allows such data to be de-anonymised, then the breach of personal privacy is huge. And as, apparently, postcode data will be included, about 95%+ of the de-anonymising has been done, by virtue of excluding the vast bulk of the population.
Postcode analysis of health data might well provide researchers with valuable insights, but it does so at the very real risk of utterly compromising medical confidentiality. Personally, I will not, now or ever, agree to this and I absolutely don't care what the medical benefits may be. My medical data is private, between me and my doctor(s) (inc, where necessary support staff) and NOBODY else. Not government bureaucracy, not centralised NHS staff, and absolutely not, under any circumstances I can prevent, private companies. I will not, now or ever, agree to such a transfer. If that results in slower medical progress, so be it. My personal stance on my medical privacy is not up for debate, discussion, transfer, sale or gift by government, under any conditions, no matter what the supposed benefit, to me or anyone else, ever. It's between me and my doctor(s), and at a push, the wife, and NOBODY else. End of.
But even I haven't seen any plans from government to "sell" personal medical data.
I don't take a lot of precautions. It's hard to not have online presence even without being online. My thesis is online, I'm tagged by others in photos taken of me in conferences, etc. Even if I shared nothing myself, there's enough information about me from other places. I don't care enough to make hiding my details a priority.
On the other hand, I don't regularly share private information. I don't post to Facebook (except for commenting on pages etc.) or such. I never post personal photos (although as mentioned there are photos of me online). I do participate at a social level at some forums (for example the "all dads sign in" thread on this forum), so it's possible to learn personal stuff about me.
Agreed, but it somewhat depends what you mean my "online presence".
I don't have Facebook, etc. I don't, personally, need it or want it, and for me, see no point in it. I do understand others might either have a need (like career), or just want to join in (which is fair enough).
As for what 'personal' information I volunteer online, it's minimal. I'm sure there are those on here that have put together a partial mental picture of my 'data' from what I say about myself here, but there is a lot I don't say at all, and a lot that people think they 'know' but would be wrong. Some, however, would be right. Put it this way, a lot of what I say aboyt myself is carefully phrased to be true, but vague or ambiguous. People likely don't know as much as they think. And that's even if they can connect the online me, with the real me. And I say almost nothing online about me other than here.
Photos? Not that I'm aware of. My brother put a couple of photos including me online and I asked him to take them down. I would not agree to be in conference group photos, and if participation was required for the conference, would not take part in the conference. In fact, I'm not likely to attend, let alone take part in conferences anyway.
If photos are up there, well, so be it. But I certainly don't encourage it, though I agree, in a variety of ways, it's almost impossible (short of living in a cave) to keep absolute privacy. So if a photo is out there, I'm not bothered especially. I just keep everything I realistically can off the online world. Some stuff, though, is a matter of public record and there's nothing I could, even if I wanted to, do about it. But a LOT isn't, and I take a holistic approach. Anything I can keep private, I do, unless I, personally, decide I'm willing to put it out there.
I try to limit personal information about my family and me, whether it is online or "offline" (the socalled real world). My address is protected as is my phone number. Social media is an absolute non-starter for me. I do purchase some things online, as well as perform certain recurring payments online as well. When it comes to regular shopping it's cash only, though. Generally speaking I try to leave as small a digital footprint as I can, but there is one and I'm aware of it.
Swype isn't a new thing, it's been pretty much a finished development since Eclair. Ever since, they've held back releasing it in any shape or form, apart from their private betas and bundled with some phones (again private deals with phone manufacturers for $$$).
They held back because they were trying to find a way to mass monetize the thing. Only now is it available in the Android Market and even that was probably due to pressure from Google (who have since brought out their own Swype keyboard, releasing it for free, without needing access to half the things that Swype does.
Go and compare the access perms for Google Keyboard against Swype's. They are essentially, exactly the same thing.
also read this reddit post: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comment...opular_chrome/
"The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss."
- Douglas Adams.
Not something I have really ever thought about. I have learned not to share private info on social media and I stopped FB 2 years ago because of it. Twitter for keeping up with feeds I like.
I don't purposely share info however I am not a cautious as Saracen.
In a digital age, I think it's very hard to be off the grid unless you do not use technology at all.
I can't care aslong as my account isn't used by other people and my credit card details are secure they can see what crap I search up for all I care.
skip
Last edited by RFV; 02-03-2014 at 07:48 AM. Reason: edit
Optic Nerve: millions of Yahoo webcam images intercepted by GCHQ ... at 1:12:18 into this video http://bit.ly/OP2Err
Last edited by RFV; 02-03-2014 at 08:15 AM.
Not sure about Swype, (because I don't use it), but I assume SwiftKey is similar. There, the text message access is used to "kickstart" their internal database, this being the one used to tailor predictions to you. Which - I'll politely suggest - is a genuine use case.
And "ads are dead! - sorry, if you've been on the internet for more than about five minutes then you'll know the fallacy of that statement! Heck, one look at the Hexus page that this is the comment for should have show that. The money to be made is in profiling you so you can be "served" (their description not mine) with targeted ads, the hope being that they're more likely to get you to bite.
From Hospital records of all NHS patients sold to insurers. I'm not saying this is gospel, but if it was seriously wrong then I'm sure they'd be taken to task.The medical records of every NHS hospital patient in the country have been sold for insurance purposes, The Telegraph can reveal.
I don't trust the UK government further than I could throw the Houses of Parliment not to sell NHS data to anyone who can afford it. Oh, and I've no reason to suspect that NHS Scotland isn't also looking at this "valuable resource".
Yes, it's anonymised, but I'm cynical enough to think that such anonymisation isn't fool proof and there'll be some way to link that "anonymous" data back to a real person with a good degree of confidence.
Forgot to mention - webcams and microphones. In my case only connected when I need to use them, with the exception of laptops where they're taped over.
Career status: still enjoying my new career in DevOps, but it's keeping me busy...
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