Report: Internet Users Feel Powerless To Protect Their Privacy From Corporations

Mark Wilson writes: A paper produced by a team at the University of Pennsylvania confirms something many people have probably thought true for some time: the notion that internet users are unhappy with the way their privacy is undermined by advertisers and online companies, yet feel there is nothing they can do about it. While marketing companies like to present an image of customers who are happy to hand over personal information in return for certain benefits, the truth is rather different. Rather than dedicating time and energy to trying to stop personal data from being exploited, people are instead taking it on the chin and accepting it as part and parcel of modern, online life. It's just the way things are.

Comments

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Willingly? Hardly. But it gets increasingly hard to avoid these things.

By now you have companies that check your FB account. And if you don't have one and they can't find anything about you, they won't even consider you. Because, hey, if you don't have FB, you probably have to hide something, and we don't want you!

So glad I don't live in your country. I don't have FB - because I cannot be bothered. I have other uses for my time! Still, a company googling my name will find lots of information, as I don't live anonymously on the Internet. I usually use my full name, no nicknames/handles. And if they don't find what they want - they can ask during the interview.

I honestly cannot understand why a facebook account could be important during hiring. (Other than NOT having something really dubious there.) If "no facebook" means you're hiding something, how about a largely unused facebook account with a 5 year old picture and no comments after the first week - because the owner didn't bother using the account? Surely, there are quite a few accounts like that. People too busy living their life, and no interest in commenting on each others dinners on facebook.

Re:DON'T PUT PICTURES OF YOUR COCK ONLINE!

[Z00L00K]

That's probably the least of your or my problem. It just shows that you are a narcissist, but if you want to make a fool out of yourself you are welcome.

A much larger problem is the ability for corporations without my consent track my patterns on the internet and can therefore be able to connect me to political opinions, sexual preferences and which bank(s) I use and possibly also my bank account number and credit card numbers.

Disabling of third-party cookies do help to some extent, enforcing session-based cookies as well, but not completely. AdBlock can also help a bit. At least it blurs the image of me on the net a bit for the information gatherers.

All those sites like "doubleclick", "tradedoubler" and similar - they don't provide me as a user with any benefits at all. And there are a massive amount of such sites and very few are in the default blocklist of AdBlock.