Opting Out of Big Data Snooping: Harder Than It Looks

Lasrick (2629253) writes "Princeton sociologist Janet Vertesi writes about her attempt at hiding her pregnancy from 'the bots, trackers, cookies and other data sniffers online that feed the databases that companies use for targeted advertising.' Big data still found her, even though she steered clear of social media, avoided baby-related credit card purchases, and downloaded Tor to browse the Internet privately."

Comments

One way

[Ol Olsoc]

Has no one learned? If you are on the net, you are known. And you are tracked.

Want to be anonymous on the web? Unplug your computer and kill it with fire.

Re:One way

[Em Adespoton]

The data you put on the form has 0 value to them: it's what you purchase with the card, when, and where that they're after. They can probably figure out exactly who you are and where you live just from your purchase data.

This is why some companies will ONLY honour the actual card, and reject phone-generated codes, telling them your phone number, etc: they don't want your purchase data to get mixed up with someone else using the same tracking number.

Personally, I think they'd do better just to use a phone's MAC instead; that'd be more reliable for them than a shareable card, and the MAC would be the same across businesses for advanced data sharing opportunities.

Plus, I'd be able to randomly generate a new one whenever I wanted :)

Re:One way

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why I usually get a new card every time I visit a store. I've probably got 300+ CVS cards; and a giant stack of Safeway Club Cards at home.

Re:One way

[mysidia]

they don't want your purchase data to get mixed up

How about we start a new fun website then.... Discount card exchange

The idea is, you signup with the site, and every few weeks, you swap your discount cards with complete strangers.

You get 50 people to stick their discount cards in a big lotto ball style shuffling contraption. And you each pull one out, so nobody is likely to wind up with the same card they put in.

Then in fact... the stores are guaranteed to get the purchase histories mixed up.

Re:One way

[dugancent]

First off, almost all of those places will give you the discount if you ask, even without the card.

That said, I always use Jenny's Number (867-5309) in whatever area code I'm in. It's never failed to work.

Big data found her?

[dougisfunny]

It doesn't say big data still found her anywhere in the article. She made no mention of evidence that they had, despite the Uncle sending a congratulations message on Facebook.

Was there more to story than just the article on Time where she said her measures weren't able to keep the information private?

Re:Big data found her?

[Dutch Gun]

It doesn't say big data still found her anywhere in the article. She made no mention of evidence that they had, despite the Uncle sending a congratulations message on Facebook.

Was there more to story than just the article on Time where she said her measures weren't able to keep the information private?

Yeah, I saw nothing that said big data found her at all. Instead, I gleaned that she ended up acting pretty damn rude to her relatives who inadvertently broke her self-imposed techology exile, although I noted she didn't close down her Facebook account.

She concludes by complaining about the data-collection agencies, essentially blaming them after she behaved rudely to her family and friends, and launches into a weird conspiratorial rant about how her husband spotted a sign behind a checkout counter stating the company "“reserves the right to limit the daily amount of prepaid card purchases and has an obligation to report excessive transactions to the authorities", and then goes on to talk about how this (plus using Tor) made them feel like criminals. Huh? She then exclaims that Obama's report on data collection practices can't come soon enough, because... uh, what will that report do exactly?

While I'm not exactly on the side of these advertisement companies, the author clearly performed this experiment and wrote the article with a definite agenda in mind, and drew some somewhat odd and conspiratorial-sounding conclusions about the ordeal. It feels like she obfuscated the fact (not helped by the Slashdot summary) that her efforts did indeed pay off, and that apparently no commercial companies found out she was pregnant.

That being said... in most cases (there are exceptions, as the article points out), do women care if an advertisement agency finds out she's pregnant? As soon as I bought a home, I got a lot of homeowner-related advertisement. That was fine with me, as the ads were more relevant to my interests, and it's not something I had intended to be a secret. I understand the principle of the thing, but every technology we gain has its tradeoffs. The web is largely funded by advertisement. We pay with a lack of anonymity and privacy, which seem to be what most people prefer, as evidenced by the success of Facebook. Overall, I still think we benefit a lot more than we lose from the connectivity and persistence of our online world.

Re:Big data found her?

[khasim]

Yeah, I saw nothing that said big data found her at all.

Seconded. There should have been SOMETHING like "after which I was inundated with baby-related advertisements".

And trying to hide it while buying baby stuff on AMAZON?!?
?!?
one more time
?!?

I lied. One more time.
?!?

Amazon knows what you bought.
Amazon knows who you are.
Amazon knows where you had it shipped.

Re:Big data found her?

[ColdWetDog]

I think you're right an all, but I can't get over just how bad these guys are at things. Buy a car, hundreds of ads about buying a car (hint, I already bought one, you see). Have a friend that's pregnant? Get hundreds of ads about 'your pregnancy'. Sorry guys, if you haven't figured out I'm a middle aged male, you're in more trouble than you realize.

It has to work at some level, else they wouldn't do it. But for fun, on a slow week, hit up Amazon for anything transgendered or gay. Better yet, use the login on the guy at work that you don't like much.

Re:Big data found her?

[Dutch Gun]

Could you at least read the article first before posting a kneejerk reaction?

From the article: "For example, seven months in, my uncle sent me a Facebook message, congratulating me on my pregnancy. My response was downright rude: I deleted the thread and unfriended him immediately."

She admits herself how rude she behaved to family and friends in the article several times. As it turned out, they were unaware that private messages or postings on Facebook were not really "private". From her own account, those were simple misunderstandings. My real beef was that, if you bothered to read the article, that she seemed to assign the blame for her rude behavior on the data-minding companies, like she was somehow "forced" to be rude in order to protect her privacy.

Again, I quote: "Attempting to opt out forced me into increasingly awkward interactions with my family and friends."

Uh, no, the awkward interaction came because the author *chose to remain on Facebook*, yet placed the burden on her family and friends to keep her pregnancy a secret. Christ, the whole point about Facebook is that you talk with friends about things going on in your life. And when her friends and family inevitably let it slip, she overreacted rather dramatically. It really felt like she was intentionally setting herself up for failure in order to create a more dramatic scenario. Oddly enough, despite the slip-ups and idiocy of ordering baby supplies from Amazon (facepalm), the ad companies still apparently didn't get wind of her pregnancy (it's never mentioned in the article), something the summary misleadingly implies happened.

Damnit, I don't like being in the position of looking like I'm defending the ad companies here, but her "experiment" and accompanying article just seemed really over-the-top. Nothing more than that.

Re:Big data found her?

[epyT-R]

talk about literally having big brother's nose up your ass..

Re:Big data found her?

[mujadaddy]

The web is largely funded by advertisement.

And that fact is largely to blame for most of the problems I have with the internet.

The internet used to be a labor of love: if you loved something, you had a site. It wasn't about making a buck off of people. Call me whatever name you like, but I'd rather 300 baud of people who love what they're hosting than 1Gbps of adware.

Re:others about you

[pigiron]

Who cares? Block all tracking javascripts and use ad and pop-up/animated gif blockers and you will never see their advertisements when you browse.

It's easy enough to throw all junk mail away without even reading it when it comes to snail mail in your mailbox.

Re:others about you

[Teun]

Indeed, what others write.

For obvious reasons I don't have a Facebook or Twitter account yet Facebook mailed me with the positive message I should join them so I could communicate with good friends like *name1*, *name2* and *name3*.

Meaning my daft sister and a somewhat remote cousin/journalist had stupidly and carelessly dumped their adress books on Facebook who dutyfully analised their input for links and found me as a common point.
I have cursed both and written Facebook I was not impressed by their spying.

Strange enough they did supply a link where I could free myself from receiving further mails from them.
But for eternety I'll be watched by them and those they deal with, see my sig.

yep

[Charliemopps]

I've worked with this software in the past. You can't hide from it, period. I even saw one that considered TOR browser as a data point to help identify you. Even staying off the net wont help. They have deals with your grocery store, walmart, your car dealership, everything... They get all your data all the time. Our only saving grace right now is its so much detailed information they don't even know what to do with it all. They can send you adds that might better appeal to you, but other than that they're not really sure what else to do. I suspect that at some point, someone will figure out how to do horrible things with this kind of information, and then this will suck.

EFF testing new Privacy Badger tool

[Freshly Exhumed]

EFF is launching a new extension for Firefox and Chrome called Privacy Badger. Privacy Badger automatically detects and blocks spying ads around the Web, and the invisible trackers that feed information to them.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...

Re:EFF testing new Privacy Badger tool

[The New Guy 2.0]

Already tried and failed... it ends up with your IP address being tracked instead of your cookie... no way out from that one, and some news sites might stop serving you news for that one.

Totalitarian

[alexo]

From TFA:

a warning sign behind the cashier informed him that the store “reserves the right to limit the daily amount of prepaid card purchases and has an obligation to report excessive transactions to the authorities.”

If that is not a sign of a totalitarian state, I don't know what is.

Re:Totalitarian

[TubeSteak]

If that is not a sign of a totalitarian state, I don't know what is.

It's a byproduct of anti-money laundering laws and it's nothing new.
It's the same reason the IRS has a rule about deposits over $10,000 and another rule about "structuring" your deposits to intentionally avoid the rules.

They could get rid of it, but criminals would just start buying gift cards en masse to wash their dirty money.

Re:others about you

[Em Adespoton]

"But social interactions online are not just about what you say, but what others say about you."

Thats one of the reasons why I have no facebook or any other social network. If I can't control what happens with my data when they are in the internet (which others like the MPAA and Erdogan don't realize), and I can't control whether my data come online, I have no other option than to minimize my online presence.

Having no social media accounts just means that your social media profile hasn't been confirmed and associated with a credit report, not that it doesn't exist. For it to not exist, you need to ensure that everyone else who uses social media doesn't know you exist.

Re:Please explain this to me...

[kruach aum]

Very, because your name is completely irrelevant. Imagine you want to know everything about penguins. You look at what they do all day, where they eat, where they hunt, which other penguins they hang out with, where they shit, whether they have eggs, who looks after the egg at what time, what kind of fish they're eating, what color their shit is, on and on and on. At that point, what extra information would a name give you? It would tell you absolutely nothing. You can assign the name yourself, just to ease the process of telling penguins apart. That the name didn't come from the penguins directly doesn't matter in the slightest.

Names are not how Big Data tracks you. They simply look at what connections are made from where to where at what time, and assign labels to the points where information flows from, and where information flows to. One of those points refers to you, and if they're any good, to your smart-phone, laptop, toaster, and all other internet-enabled devices you use as well.

Big data existed before the internet

[wiredlogic]

Acxiom has been doing this for decades before the web existed. If you spend money electronically they have a record of when, where, and what you purchased. With a sufficient enough sample of data they can determine interesting things about people like when they're likely to be pregnant or menstruating or any number of other characteristics marketers can use to improve their chances of a sale. For instance, if women are more likely to buy certain products at certain parts of their cycle then a marketer can synchronize their junk mailing to coincide with the the optimum time for them to be most receptive to spend their money on something. Yes, this really happens.

You have to disconnect from the internet AND spend cash only AND never use loyalty cards AND hope no one you do business with still sells your information to a data broker to be able to hide from them. Tor alone won't cut it.

Re:Big data existed before the internet

[VortexCortex]

Meh, I just refuse to be a fanboi. Don't by anything you actually like. Problem solved.

So stay offline

[HockeyPuck]

So for 9months:

Pay for your prenatal supplies with cash.
Don't surf the web for anything related to pregnancy or children.
Surf the web for chainsaws and snowblowers.
Read books.
Read Newspapers made from paper.
Read Magazines made from paper.
Buy them at the local store in cash.
Don't give them your "Frequent Shopper Card"
Stay offline.

Not so tough.

hard, but not impossible

[Geoffrey.landis]

I'm puzzled. The summary says " Big data still found her...", but the actual article doesn't support that statement-- she just says how hard it is to keep a secret, and that multiple big transactions makes her look criminal.

She does say that despite telling her friends not to, two people messaged her privately on Facebook... but doesn't say that the info got picked up.

rudeness butts into common sense

[epine]

essentially blaming them after she behaved rudely to her family and friends

Apparently one person's "rude" is another person's common sense. (Invocation of "blame" is another red flag that common sense has left the building.) 100% of the rudeness here derives from unbalanced technology, because Facebook wants it that way.

Entire countries filter the internet. Yet as an individual, it's not practical for me to contract a public identity management agency which allows me to enact controls over what personal information I'm willing to see splattered into the public space on malign service hosts.

Nothing should go onto your social media pages that doesn't first go through your own appointed screening filter, if you choose to have one.

Had such an option been available, her personally appointed screening filter would have simply bouncing back a message to her uncle to the effect that "Janet doesn't wish to see her reproductive status conveyed on cloud services".

It's not rude. It's common sense.

Re:rudeness butts into common sense

[Dutch Gun]

I'm guessing you didn't read the article.

"For example, seven months in, my uncle sent me a Facebook message, congratulating me on my pregnancy. My response was downright rude: I deleted the thread and unfriended him immediately. When I emailed to ask why he did it, he explained, “I didn’t put it on your wall.” Another family member who reached out on Facebook chat a few weeks later exclaimed, “I didn’t know that a private message wasn’t private!”"

And again:

"But avoiding the big data dragnet meant that I not only looked like a rude family member or an inconsiderate friend, I also looked like a bad citizen."

I'm not the one claiming she acted rudely. She states it herself twice in the article.

Note I'm not defending the behavior of the ad companies here. However, if she was really serious about wanting privacy about that sort of thing, I would think the common-sense course of action would be to stay off Facebook completely. Everyone knows that whatever you do there is mined mercilessly for data, but there's absolutely no reason one has to be on there, other than they *enjoy the features of the service* (this author apparently included). Likewise, there's zero reason you HAVE to shop online or pay for items with a credit card if you don't want to. You also don't have to give your real name or phone number for getting a "discount card" at most shops - that's entirely optional, in my experience (and I don't).

The article just sounded like much ado about nothing to me, that's all. It was her nine-month sociology experiment, and she wrote up the results to be as dramatic as possible - a very first world problem, in other words.

Misinformation.

[__Paul__]

Clearly, the best path for people to take is to start feeding misinformation into the system. Periodically do searches for things you're not remotely interested in. Make them think you're a completely different age, sex, race, and socio-economic group. A database full of incorrect marketing information is worthless to anyone.

Ignoring the obvious reason....

[0b1knob]

Her insurance company probably sold the information once she was diagnosed, All insurance companies sell mailing list type information. When I was diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease several years ago I was suddenly deluged with emails and snail mail spam for prepaid funeral services. I eventually found that my friendly HMO had sold me out. I don't want to mention any names but the initial are KP.

She needs to learn about host file blocks

[sandbagger]

Here are some to get her started.

0.0.0.0 www.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 facebook.com
0.0.0.0 www.static.ak.fbcdn.net
0.0.0.0 static.ak.fbcdn.net
0.0.0.0 www.login.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 login.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 www.fbcdn.net
0.0.0.0 fbcdn.net
0.0.0.0 www.fbcdn.com
0.0.0.0 fbcdn.com
0.0.0.0 www.static.ak.connect.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 static.ak.connect.facebook.com

Apart from that, though. If she signs into Amazon to buy something, OF COURSE they'll know it's her.

Bad idea

[jma05]

> Periodically do searches for things you're not remotely interested in

Any attempt to fight an inexpensive algorithm, with expensive cognitive activity, especially when you have no feedback on how you are effecting the system, is a losing proposition. Fight automation with automation, or just don't bother.

> Clearly, the best path for people to take is to start feeding misinformation into the system.

These systems are probabilistic, not deterministic. So, they are pretty much built with the assumption that they won't be getting perfect data. Your occasional misdirections won't mean a thing. They will just go below the threshold of significance.

Seriously, with an active Facebook account?

[Boltronics]

In TFA, Janet admits to actively using a facebook account during the entire experiment. What the heck did she expect?

And how much is a stroller anyway? Many appear to be under US$100, so that's just 2x $50 cards. Would it really have fit in a locker? How much other stuff from Amazon was she buying? Couldn't an Entropay card have worked? Why Amazon in the first place?

The article concludes with When it comes to our personal data, we need better choices than either “leave if you don’t like it”. It seems like Janet was trying to do more than is usual online, specifically using sites known to track user buying habits, so IMO this is not a real world test.