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

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?

[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

[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: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: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.

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.

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.