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Seems Nobody Gives A Damn About Privacy
sulli writes "Remember how everyone got all up in arms about Yahoo's plans to spam and coldcall all of its members? Well, even if slashdot readers were pissed and angrily deleted their accounts, the vast majority of users did nothing. (New York Times, blah blah) So much for the big popular revolt, I guess. Market away, Yahoo!" Sigh.
Remember how everyone got all up in arms about Yahoo's plans to spam and coldcall all of its members?
A few thousand pasty geeks are not "everyone".
Fortunately, I'm pretty content with the fact that most people gleefully piss away their privacy and personal information. Means those of us who take even the most rudimentary steps toward avoiding giving it up are better shielded by easy targets.
--saint
. . . on /. wasn't able to find another service provider that would give them free email, free webspace, and customized content for free and that would also promise to hold any information about them sacrosanct. Imagine that.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
you have to give up private information to view a story on how people don't care about privacy.
"It's even worse if you're locked into a proprietary operating system." -http://www.wehavethewayout.com/scale.asp?rew=0
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Despite what melted web servers around the world say, not everyone reads Slashdot.
After the original story was posted, I made it a point to tell everyone I worked with about it. Several of my co-workers made sure they opted out of things they didn't want. But I'm sure only a small portion of the Yahoo userbase were made aware of the changes in this context. I believe there was e-mail sent out by Yahoo explaining, in a very passive way, the changes made to their privacy policy. Most people probably just skimmed it (if at all), didn't see anything glaringly bad, and then just went along, business as usual.
In this case, I'd say it matters how you learned of this change. Obviously, Yahoo isn't going to paint themselves to look like bad guys in e-mails to their own users.
If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
Privacy is one of those things that geeks pay attention to because they're so acutely aware of how easy it is to lose it and how annoying the ramifications can be. The vast majority of people out there don't care about their privacy because:
a) They're mostly ignorant about what they're giving up, and
b) They're too busy trying to feed and house themselves given all the other shit they have to deal with.
Geeks, on the other hand, are intelligent and have enough free time to sit around and discuss about how they're getting royally fucked over...which, of course, they are. This is why it is our job to inform people whenever possible, and most importantly, supply the tools necessary to protect personal privacy (Ad-Aware, anyone?), and make those tools easy to use for the poor schmucks out there who don't have time to worry about it.
Remember how everyone got all up in arms about Slashdot's plans to implement Big Fucking Ads? Well, even if slashdot readers were pissed and angrily boycotted slashdot for a week, the vast majority of users did nothing. So much for the big popular revolt, I guess. Market away, Slashdot! Sigh.
The problem is that the vast majority of users don't know anything happened. A free market relies on an informed base of consumers. If you were to call up each Yahoo customer (which, of course, would be ironic since this story is about the evils of telemarketing) and tell them what was going on, i'm willing to bet at least 95% of them would want to opt-out.
But by doing this quietly, nobody will notice. They'll just get another piece of spam, another piece of junk mail, and another phone call during dinner, and curse about all the scum-sucking direct markers out there. They won't realize that Yahoo was the one who stabbed them in the back.
There are consumer laws that force McDonald's to clean their kitchen, even though most customers wouldn't notice. There are laws that regulate how many bugs can be present in your peanut butter, even though they could grind up a few more and you wouldn't notice. There are laws that keep your doctor from sharing your personal information with your nosy neighbor, even if you would never know one way or the other.
There should be laws that prohibit Yahoo from doing this.
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
OH!!! ME!!! ME ME ME!!!
I want to be the first to get a chance to buy car insurance from Yahoo's highest advertising bidder.
Any revolution is lead by a few who are willing to sacrifice anything for what is right. How many of the "privacy" advocates are willing to give up their job, risk harassment, and alienate friends in the quest to do what is "right?"
Of course I'm cynical -- I've studied history, and I've worked the frontlines of various causes. Complaining that other people won't "fight the good fight" is a waste of effort. If the fight is worth fighting, then you must be willing to take the responsibility on your back to "do the right thing."
All about me
Here's what's wrong with it: It turns out that Yahoo was able to discover both my work and home emails - without me ever knowingly signing up with yahoo. The first two spams I got: from Yahoo, "Hey we're gonna start spamming you! follow this link to unsubscribe!"
I follow the links. It insists I tell yahoo my birthday and my zip code to unsubscribe - BUT I NEVER GAVE THAT INFO TO YAHOO IN THE FIRST PLACE!
I had signed up with some list services ("ThisIsTrue" for one) that (unknown to me) were hosted by Yahoo groups, and that's how yahoo misappropriated my email. I had to send nasty grams to Yahoo to get them to unsubscribe me, cuz the online auto system won't tell me what it thinks my Bday and zip code are.
By the way, the writer/moderator of ThisIsTrue was equally pissed that Yahoo took HIS mailing list and made it THEIRs without his permission.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Bzzzt! Wrong. Yahoo! sent out an email to every customer, telling them exactly what had happened, and giving explicit instructions on how to view and change the settings.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
I started a thread on MacNN about the fact that any cocoa application can read a new Macintosh's unique serial number. I even wrote a sample program that accesses and displays it.
I thought that others might be as concerned as I was. Instead, someone confirmed that, yes-- the Mac's GUID is globally accessible, yes-- it's on the motherboard... but no need to worry because "As much as you feel that the serial number can be abused it won't. No vendor has shown any indication that they will use unique IDs in their programs and all we can do is hope that they won't."
Uh yeah right. Except for Windows 98, RealNetworks, Word for Mac, etc.
Why is that Intel's GUID problems were such a big deal and this barely gets a shrug?
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
It sounds like you're pissed because too many see the trade, realize it, recognize its effects, and just don't care.
My whole point is that people do care. However, it becomes a full-time job and requires the skills of a lawyer and a computer scientist to keep up with all the scum out there. Most people can't handle this. They do care, though -- they fume about all the spam, junk mail, and telemarketer phone calls they get.
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
You're right, of course. This is exactly how the free market is supposed to work. And it may be the best general solution to this sort of problem. But it probably isn't ideal.
:-) )
It's one of the underlying assumptions of capitalism that we are all rational agents. In particular, we have the quality to make a rational decision about every system that we take part in, and more importantly every dollar that we spend.
I am human. I am not a rational agent. While some of my decisions are irrational, more often I don't even realize I'm making a decision. Because the world is not transparent (and it would be impossible to make it so) I can't make the rational decision to support the shoe company that creates the best working conditions, and the fast food company that has the most efficient packaging (through the entire process, mind you, not just what I get handed.), and the beef company that treats its animals best, or the government that has the least corruption.
Now, it's important to note that on any particular issue (environment, corruption, labour standards, animal treatment, etc.) you can probably do enough digging to make the decision. However, there is not (yet?) a system that "lubricates" the effective decision making capacity of the citizens of a capitalist democracy.
Thus, while this is indeed working exactly as it is "supposed" to, it is still not optimal.
(It's no wonder I have a hard time placing myself on a political spectrum. They're *both* wrong.
-Rob Ewaschuk
And none of them read it, because it looked like every other piece of spam and crap they get from companies like Yahoo every day. I certainly don't remember getting a message from Yahoo, because it was lost in all the other crap i get in my mailbox.
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Like I said in my post - I did email a real person there. The thing that's wrong with it this:
Humans now have a dual existence: In meatspace and in cyberspace. I own my own meat - I can clothe it the way I want, I can move it around the way I want, and by damn, if I want it hid in a closet, that's where I'll put it. My cyberself should be just as much my property as my meatself: I am that data that yahoo was misusing, my meat is attached to it and I should be allowed full consensual control over both my meatself and my cyberself.
Nobody decided for, or gave me the chance to vote, over whether or not corporate bigmoney should be allowed to enslave my cyberself.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
In fact sometimes some of the spam from Yahoo gets filtered into the Bulk Mail by their own filters! Talk about shooting yourselves in the foot!
Video Game cheats, hints a
They didn't opt-out. They didn't read the email Yahoo sent them (since they are usually not worth reading) And they are not conscious of why they are getting more and more junk mail and *very annoying unsolicited phone calls* during their family dinner. They think it's just a sign of the times, when in fact it's because Yahoo sold their phone number, mailing address and other personal information without their consent.
Even worse, the reason Yahoo has all this information like phone numbers and mailing addresses in the first place is because they require it when processing credit card transactions for Yahoo Wallet (ie. Yahoo is screwing over its own paying customers).
What Yahoo did is criminal. And if people understood that, there would be a class action suit, just like there were criminal procedings against DoubleClick and Alexis for similar violations of privacy. I'm all for free market, but what Yahoo did is fraudulent, and I have never heard of a free market that protects fraud.
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For what it's worth, I ended my relationship with Yahoo. I learnt ages ago that an email address with no POP3 access is of no use to me. Add to that the fact that I used to receive 30-odd peices of spam to my Yahoo account each day and there was no value left in the service. I now use sneakemail, spamcop and my private ISP account that never gets posted anywhere. I've had one spam come through on the alias I used for "GoogleGroups" since I posted something about 3 weeks ago. That alias is currently queuing messages at the sneakemail server...
I've used Yahoo! since day one. I use a lot of their services now (mail, auctions, shopping, bill pay, weather, etc...) and find it to be convenient. I was angry when they pulled the old "presto-chango" routine by setting all my preferences back to "YES".
I went in and switched them all back to "NO" and then wrote a couple of angry messages to Yahoo! and bitched them out for messing with my account settings. I was annoyed with them for changing the settings. But, it wasn't enough to over-ride the convenience of the services that I had access to. In the end I decided not to cancel my account.
If you read the email that Yahoo! sent out they told people that they were doing it and they gave you 60 days to change your preferences. If you were too lazy to go in an change them -- then you get spammed. Of course, this being Slashdot, everyone went into *rant* mode. What Yahoo! did was bad. But, at least they told you they did it and then they gave you a chance to decide.
If only other companies would be so nice! I get barrels of spam all the time from people who "opted me in" but, forgot to tell me about it.
Anyhow -- that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
What are you talking about? Everyone i know -- even, say, my parents or non-techinal friends, complains about spam. I bet if i asked them to name one complaint about the Internet, it would be spam.
no one really does anything about it
What would you suggest they do? Should i tell my mom to use procmail? Should i tell her to try to opt out when spam offers the opportunity? (Hell no -- spammers use that to verify the address, which means you'll get a lot -more- spam)
No one does anything about it because they have no idea how. All they know is that they and their ten-year-old are inundated with ads for porn sites, and they can't make them stop.
You can be damn sure that they would notice if it was gone.
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Congress is already trying to make it a criminal act to lie to Network Solutions, punishible by up to 5 years in prison. How much longer before they try to do the same for lying to Yahoo?
Thought police don't need to resort to such primitive tactics. The reason that police states have always broken down is because there are too many cracks. There are too many places to hide, to slowly spred sedition, to slowly build a resistance to the oppressors. It's a simple matter of resources; you cannot track all the people all the time. Or can you?
With the vast increases in computing power, suddenly the ability to manage the raw data created by people on a daily basis is within reach. Suddenly using all of the cameras spread through the cities to track people's movements is completey possible. Suddenly an agent can go through credit receipts of millions of people and use a profiling system to weed out the people that are potentially unsavory for the government.
No need to take them out in the night and torture them. That's clumsy and builds hatred by the masses. Label the person an extremist, a terrorist, a pedophile. Talk abut all the terrible things the person's done. Some of it may be true, some not, but with all that data floating around out there, you can probably find a few juicy tidbits to destroy political opponents.
A police state is now, more than ever, a viable possibility. With all of this information out there and, more importantly, the increasing ability to do something useful with that data, it becomes very easy to track the unsavories. It may even be made easier because the unsavories cover their tracks leaving obvious information voids in their wake.
Maybe this is a tad paranoid, but tell me that this isn't technically possible...
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OK, so you part with a hot dog and your patron parts with five $. We have a clear change of ownership here. So what the fuck has that to do with my data, which I own in the first place, which is infinitely copyable (including all errors introduced) and which will be used against me, be it by annoying telemarketers or by spammers?
I believe that the EU has a far better grasp of the problem and far better instruments to protect the individual, while the US approach is to protect the "right" of businesses to make money, with something they don't own.
In essence:
I own my data
You may only collect and store data, which is pertinent to the transaction(s)
You may not sell or provide access to my data to third parties without my explicit agreement. And no! some lawyerese on page 49 of the EULA is not considered explicit agreement
I have a right to see what you stored about me and I have a right to get it corrected
Special protection applies for medical and (partially) financial data.
You are liable for criminal and civil penalties if you don't obey the data protection directives. This goes for business as well for government entities.
If you believe, that personal data is a tradable commodity we can stop right here. If we can agree that I'm the owner of my personal data (same as I'm the owner of the hot dog, for which I just payed 5$), then there's no way in the world, why the eu guidelines don't make sense.
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