![]() It wasn't too long ago that the first virtual assistants became a reality (- first Siri, and then Alexa, Cortana - a wave of assistants whose bodies we have never seen but whose voices we have all come to know very well. While this conversation took place in the privacy of my home, and I had not yet begun searching the market for an upgraded vehicle, it soon occurred to me that the car advertisements I was seeing on my Facebook feed were no coincidence.īy now, I am going to assume that we have all had an experience like this - So, what's the deal? Is This True That My iPhone Is Listening To Me? Just last week I was talking about getting a new car. As other people can access this data in very easy ways, you should be mindful and prudent about what technology you use, and whether the benefits you get from it outweigh the loss of privacy.īecause unless you use a flip phone and a typewriter, your tech will want to track, analyze and sell to you for the foreseeable future.While it sounds like simple paranoia, is it possible that your device is actually listening to you? These signals can and will influence how advertisers can target you. Your phone and the apps within it are collecting signals based on many different data points. And for apps connected to Facebook, you can make sure to log in and remove their permissions. You can find more digital privacy tools here. You can turn off your phone's microphone and for private messaging you'd use apps like Dust or Signal to send encrypted texts. For your phone and devices you can use screen protectors and camera covers. You’d only want to use a search engine that respects your privacy like Duck Duck Go, StartPage, or searx, and use an encrypted email provider based in Switzerland like ProtonMail, or one based in Norway like Runbox. If you’re looking for anonymity, you’d use the Tor browser for any web browsing. One step you could take is to use some services based in countries with more strict privacy laws. So what can you do if most of your data is already available and there’s always a better way to track and capture the rest? Even if one of your friends authorized an app on their Facebook, that app still managed to harvest a lot of your data - and with enough data points you can scale this to impact elections and policy in entire countries, not to mention the consumer behavior of people in certain vulnerable demographics.ĭespite the fact that it might seem hopeless, you should still care about your privacy even if you have nothing to hide. The Netflix documentary “ The Great Hack” also suggests that the data being collected is just allowing ads to predict our behavior extremely accurately, rather than simply listening to our microphones. More disturbing than that is the possibility that “a platform like that could decide to turn out voters for one side or another,” Tufekci said, “and how would we even know about it?” Technosociologist Zeynep Tufekci explains it this way: machine learning has enabled algorithms to learn, adjust and improve advertising targeting to the point that no human would understand or know exactly how it is targeting users. This makes these ads much more influential than ads meant for a general public. Technology companies use algorithms to target ads more effectively, and the more data they have, the more precise the campaigns are. ![]() Unless the laws or online advertising ecosystem are changed, then these tactics will only become more refined.īig data, AI and algorithms deliver more than just ads And the results range from effective advertising boosting shareholder profits to swinging elections. The entire system of social media supported by ads is flawed since it’s all geared to benefit advertisers and not users. ![]() There’s little recourse considering none of what is happening is illegal. I don’t think we can stop it though.” His advice to anyone who cares about their privacy is to “figure out a way to get off Facebook." The problem is “leaving” any social platform doesn’t erase the data you or your network has shared - and it opens the door for a lot of other sacrifices, too. Steve Wozniak said about private data: “I’m worried about everything. ![]()
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