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The Death of Privacy
Debra D'Agostino writes, "Why don't companies care about privacy? Because there's not enough money to be made from securing sensitive customer information, says Jeff Rothfeder in an article posted recently at CIO Insight. Furthermore, there's not enough money to be lost in privacy breaches for companies to care. 'Most companies claim that privacy is a priority — chiefly because they believe consumers are more willing to do repeat business with them if personal information is carefully handled,' he writes. 'But in reality, many companies are woefully inept at protecting privacy.'"
Do You own a GMail account?
yes, but it has barely any real personal info. the extent of the real stuff is the province i live in. they try looking up any of the other stuff, and they'll be chasing a spectre.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
That's why we have laws and penalties. What we need is stiffer penalties for privacy violations by companies.
Are they really violations? It sounds like this one company just didn't think their cunning plan all the way through. Don't most of them now have a clause that allows them to modify the privacy policy at will without informing the customers, and that continued use of the service is a de facto acceptance of the new terms?
Unfortunately the only way to keep something private is not disclose the information and that isn't practical because it's required for certain things (bank accounts and medical treatment). The only way to deal with the sale of your personal information is to completely devalue it by making it all public. That's the nail in the coffin for the so-called information economy and a major setback to a facist new world order. No, I'm not telling you where I buy my tinfoil.
The author needs to realize that it is not the companies responsibility to protect you from being harmed by an identity theft.
The company only protects information from the consumer that protects their assets.
If the author really wants privacy then he will have to pay a lot more than what he is currently paying for certain services. A lot of service companies sell certain types of information to other companies for profit so that way their consumer won't have to pay a higher fee.
If people keep wanting to buy things cheaper, have cheaper internet acces, etc. then in order for that company to do that they might sell information about you, like your buying and surfing habits online, etc. to market research teams. THat is how they make up for it all so that you can get a service cheaper than before.
If he wants to protect his privacy then don't sign up for internet service, nor a cellphone. Just get a land-line phone, use snail-mail, shred credit card applications and basically live like a una-bomber. But if he wants cheaper services then he will have to give something up for it.
Previewing comments are for sissies!
GMail isn't any more of a privacy mess than any other webmail, they're just a little more obvious about it. Anytime you have your mail saved on someone else's server, they can do anything they want to it, and you just won't know. So GMail has some bots looking for keywords for ads. You know that. Do you know if Hotmail or Yahoo have bots looking at your emails? Or if their security is tight enough that random employees aren't reading random emails?
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
With the Data Protection Act here in the UK and similar laws throughout the EU, companies are legally obliged to keep personally identifiable information confidential and if they do not they can be prosecuted. Implement that in the US, there's your answer.
We apparently live in an "information" age, and as such information is power and/or profit depending on your aims.
This article states the obvious, if you pass your data on to a company for the purpose of say making a transaction they are going to try and hold on to that data, because it has additional value.
The fact is that information about people, is worth a lot of money, not so much names, postal and email addresses (although it has some in a certain context) but data that includes demographic information or any other information that can be used to deduce trends or intentions, (like age, sex, income, health information, credit and spending history, even complaints).
Without a rigorous and enforceable framework to regulate the use and transfer of this information it is going to be used in whatever manner ensures maximum profit for the company, be that keeping the data secret and using it in house to "add value" and so that you continue to trade with them or spreading it far and wide to generate some cash quickly.
What is needed are real penalties for intentional and accidental information disclosures, after all if data has a value and its yours then surely you are entitled to be reimbursed if it is compromised, but that will probably never happen, especially given the complexity of identifying the leaks.
In addition the line FTA: "...offering these records to the highest bidder, despite an online privacy policy that explicitly stated the company would never share customer data with any third party" proves the point that regardless of what an online or other privacy policy might state it is just that, a policy, usually subject to change, and more over not a guarantee to the customer (unless it is described as such and you don't see that all that often)
As an example, I recently started getting a huge amount of junk mail (the old kind that comes through the letter box) mainly offering credit cards and other credit facilities, it was badly targeted (offering products aimed at people with bad debt, corporate entities, people with good credit, and people over 60).
I managed to speak to 4 of the more prominent companies (international banks) and a smaller number of the smaller firms to ascertain the original source of the data, it turns out that the finance companies making these offers where inter sharing data massively, leading to a web of sources. My search lasted just over two months of calling and writing (asking people to remove the data as I went along) that ultimately ended with a major credit reference agency (one of the 2 Major UK agencies), who I have never dealt with directly, but who were used for a credit check when I recently purchased a mobile phone through a very large and reputable telecoms provider.
It turns out that the credit reference agency ticked the little box on their computer system that said that I consented to the sharing of my data (something that I make a point of not doing and doubly so as I hadn't dealt with them directly...). They have offered to stop sharing my data, but that is all, and of course the "damage" is already done. All a bit late really as once your data is out there its out there forever, or until you move or your details change enough to make it useless.
So there really is no real way of protecting your data any more, and one mistake by you or someone else and you are stuffed. The only thing I can suggest is changing your name, address, phone number, email address and possibly your gender about every 12 months....
I guess it depends on what you're sending in e-mail.
In a lot of my e-mail threads, it is sometimes eerie to see the targeted ads which are coming up. Some of them are just way off the mark, and it's not clear why there are there. But many of them seem to cut through the chaff and actually figure out what the e-mail conversation is about.
That can be a little un-nerving, but on balance I still use my gmail accounts for quite a few things.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
they shouldn't, people should care, and by extension so should their governments. but when a country buys information from private companies in order to contravene its own laws concerning the privacy of its citizens, then you can't really expect the people to care, can you? the battle over control of personal information is already over; the consumer lost. frankly, the consumer never new there was a battle, never cared, and at any point in the conflict when they could have made a difference, were far more likely to open the door and let the invaders in than they were to barricade it.
take frequent customer supermarket discounts. is your purchasing info really worth 15$/wk? mine isn't. i've recently had a building management company ask me for the transactional history of my chekcing account because i don't have a credit rating. thats right, 'don't have a credit rating.' i've lived outside of the US, where its illegal for companies to transfer personal information across borders. i don't have a credit card because i don't need one. why should i have to pay interest to spend my own money. a car rental company asked me for a second credit card because i was from out of state; why should i need a second one? because i owe that much money, and i'm therefore paying twice as much in interest payments just to buy things.
the future? forget the future, the present. the present is the matrix, as in the movie. except that instead of electricity you're providing goos and services. you're not batteries, but you are drones. and many of you continue to function in this role despite the fact that you know you're drones. you think that you're with the overseers of the drones. you're not. you're think you're better than all the poor people that buy used cars and use all the coupons they can. you're not.
when you can't speak your mind or they fire you, take away your credit cards and get you evicted, so that you can't rent another apartment, or a car, or anything else that requires that you possess a credit card in order to be considered a citizen, will you still be free, if in fact you ever were?
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
Maybe the problem is that most governments are crap at running things. :-)
Most monopolies will tend to be crap at running things
They're often good at generating revenue though.
sigs are hazardous to your health
Hey, I thought only criminals would want privacy. It's not like the founding fathers decided to make a right to privacy worth putting in the constitution ..right? I mean if you have nothing to hide why do you need privacy? The founding fathers didnt see any need for privacy whatsoever. If they did, they would have included it as part of the Bill of Rights. And, it's not like the founders expressed the belief that certain rights are more important than perceived interests of advancing the state, if they did .. when they declared independence they would have stated that God has given all humans UNALIENABLE rights and that "Governments are instituted to secure these rights".
.. i rather have a moral existence than gain benefit and being a contribuitor to the oppression of even one innocent person. Because to me that's just a sin, and i have true and real faith in God that it's never worth it within the grand scheme of things.
Everyone should lead boring lives, then there wouldnt be a need for privacy.
Yes, I am being sarcastic. I don't care what "advantages" destroying the right to privacy has supposedly brought
By the way, why is that woman from HP able to spy on the board of directors? I wonder if she has hired third parties to spy on competitors and tap their phone lines? How do we know a person of low despicable moral character wouldnt do that? If I was Steve Jobs, I would be worried about being spied on.
It seems very obvious to me that if HP comes out with anything before its competitors do, it's probably because they are willing to spy on their competitors and steal their ideas. I know for sure if I had tapped anyone's phone lines I would be sitting in jail right now. I guess there may be something to what people say when they remark there is one law for corporations and another for people.
The benefits outwigh the costs only in some cases. To take your comments about process optimization and basic infrastructure you have to consider the costs of privatized infrastructure. Here in the U.S. private companies (varying from state to state) control more or less of the infrastructure. In California almost all of the power infrastructure is in private hands. Those hands recently determined that it was more cost-effective to shut down power stations rather than run them. This was effective because the resulting scarcity of power caused the price of all other killowat hours to go up.
The practical upshot of this was that companies such as Enron were able to stop spending money on some power plants and reap a much higher profit off of the others. For the consumers this meant that even as they faced surging utility bills (as much as 300% increases) they also were forced to deal with "rolling blackouts". The Government of California meanwhile felt its hands were tied and could do nothing to ensure that power was available to its citizens and thus that the essential infrastructure of the economy was running.
Incidentally all of this occurred just before a nasty recall election that booted the governor and brought the Gubernator into office, in part on the grounds that he would do better on the economy.
Just to forestall the obvious comments out the free market consider the cost of competition. If we are to presume that such excesses as I have described above will be checked by the action of the free market we face two problems.
Firstly the cost of getting into competition is extreme. Nuclear power plants don't grow on trees and neither do millions of miles of electrical lines. Infrastructural utilities are, in many ways, immune to competition because of the immense cost of investement and the infeasability of running multiple parallel infrastructure. Picture having multiple distinct road systems, power lines, sewers, or water systems. Picture the difficulty of switching from one system to another. Simple physical space and cost limitations make that infeasible.
Secondly, it was the free market that made that gouging possible. By having a free market on KwH pricing and opening up all aspects to competition and thus making the little intentional blackout scheme profitable.
To put it another way, do you want to pay the "market rate" for garbage removal?
Or, What security do you have when your elected officials can't guarantee the flow of water?
at a local retailer, the policy is that there is a reduced price for people who pony up all the personal info. usually it's about 2% or less. and the staff are pushy about it!
my response is to pull a $1.25 (or whatever the discount they're offering me is) and ask the cashier if s/he will give me their home phone number and address for the money in my hand. when they reply 'no' i say 'well then, i'm sure you can appreciate why i'm refusing your discount'.
another retailer in my area wants you to fill out a form at every purchase. grossly inconvenient as well as invasive. in the phone number box i always put '911-9934' on the off chance that their automated phone spam machine just might get them into a wee bit of trouble when the ambulances and fire trucks show up at the call centre for a false alarm.
2 1337 4 u!
Money to be made from securing sensitive customer information? A Perl script that gets the results from these Google queries and emails TSA seems like a good idea:
+ not+distribute%22+site%3A.gov+ not+distribute%22+site%3A.mil
http://www.google.com/search?q=confidential+%22do
http://www.google.com/search?q=confidential+%22do
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
In America, the rich are now glorified and the poor are demonized. This is absolutely positively a direct contradiction to America's much vaunted "Judeo Christian" values.
If the poor were glorified, the rich would then be respectable? Just asking...
God: When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
Corporations have all the rights of an individual, except that they're completely immune from prosecution (the company can continue to exist and do business; only its officers can be criminally charged.. but not civilly, as the corporation shields them from those).
A little History of corporations would be beneficial.
Probably the best quote from the whole summary:
This is what corporations became in the years following the 1886 ruling in Santa Clara County vs. the Southern Pacific Railroad.
And we have so delightfully inherited that tradition.
Corporations were government constructs, once. Now they're independent entities that can do anything they wish, until they get caught.
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.