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From Social Networking To Commercial Surveillance & Beyond

Yithian

Parish Watch
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I've just watched an interesting video by a commentator I half follow. It starts off fairly tamely with speculation about how much interested parties might be able to determine about you through your use of social media and how this information is/might be exploited for commercial advantage.

The parts that interested me particularly, however, are those that confirmed (in Germany at least) the use of high-frequency broadcasts on commerical premises that allow location tracking quite apart from the signal infornation your phone network may retain.

He then gets into the idea that phone calls themselves (the audio content) are now capable of being scanned for key terms in order to target and tailor your exposure and suceptibility to marketing. I forget the name of the Amazon product that already utilises such technology, but suffice to say I am not surprised by wider and more covert usage.

Finally (and most vaguely), he mentions the existence of technology that may be capable of identifying the device/individual that produced an image based on the pixel-footprint of a smudged lens. From this, it is claimed, you can deduce who is sending and receiving photographs from whom and have circumstantial evidence that two individuals are connected--even when no faces appear. This last technique sounds very much like the kind of trick that has long been supposed to have been in use by intelligence agencies conducting terrorism investigations.

Have a watch:


(The creator is not a known 'conspiracy theorist')
 
in use by intelligence agencies conducting terrorism investigations.
Thin edge of the wedge towards Orwellian hells?

Any tendencies I ever had towards damaging the damned bureaucracy has been beaten out of me by my kids. I now fear no agency. Have at me, you spooks. I have a four year old, and I'm not afraid to use it.
 
Patrick Strudwick‏Verified account@PatrickStrud May 24
More
Just been at a hate crime event with the Met police + they told me something really useful. If you’re on a bus + you witness a hate crime, if you give the police the number on the back of your Oyster/debit card, they can trace the bus + every passenger on it to find the culprit.

https://twitter.com/PatrickStrud

maximus otter

I doubt if this information is just made available to the police. £££££ for the transport companies.
 
I am actually doing consultancy for a book which talks about how you can prevent social media and associated aps from tracking you, its not that hard to secure yourself.
happily FT doesnt appear to connect to known tracking networks . by using firefox as your browser and using the disconnect add-on you can see which networks are making requests to follow your browsing and block them.
Although i can see FT does get requests from youtube and twitter
 
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In February the FBI started offering a new fitness app that “takes you to the next level.”

The FBI advertised their app as an informative and interactive way to track your fitness routine:

dump_1.gif


What they didn’t tell you is that the new FBI app will spy on your location and download your stored information:

fbi-spy-app-fitness.jpg


https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/20...cation-and-downloads-your-stored-information/

maximus otter
 
Just been at a hate crime event with the Met police + they told me something really useful. If you’re on a bus + you witness a hate crime, if you give the police the number on the back of your Oyster/debit card, they can trace the bus + every passenger on it to find the culprit.
I doubt it, I didn't use any ID to buy an oyster card last time.
 
Patrick Strudwick‏Verified account@PatrickStrud May 24
More
Just been at a hate crime event with the Met police + they told me something really useful. If you’re on a bus + you witness a hate crime, if you give the police the number on the back of your Oyster/debit card, they can trace the bus + every passenger on it to find the culprit.

https://twitter.com/PatrickStrud

maximus otter
except people still in the 20th century using paper travel cards......

Wm.
 
I've just watched an interesting video by a commentator I half follow. It starts off fairly tamely with speculation about how much interested parties might be able to determine about you through your use of social media and how this information is/might be exploited for commercial advantage.

The parts that interested me particularly, however, are those that confirmed (in Germany at least) the use of high-frequency broadcasts on commerical premises that allow location tracking quite apart from the signal infornation your phone network may retain.

He then gets into the idea that phone calls themselves (the audio content) are now capable of being scanned for key terms in order to target and tailor your exposure and suceptibility to marketing. I forget the name of the Amazon product that already utilises such technology, but suffice to say I am not surprised by wider and more covert usage.

Finally (and most vaguely), he mentions the existence of technology that may be capable of identifying the device/individual that produced an image based on the pixel-footprint of a smudged lens. From this, it is claimed, you can deduce who is sending and receiving photographs from whom and have circumstantial evidence that two individuals are connected--even when no faces appear. This last technique sounds very much like the kind of trick that has long been supposed to have been in use by intelligence agencies conducting terrorism investigations.

Have a watch:


(The creator is not a known 'conspiracy theorist')


Only just seen this. I was at a conference in Germany about a decade ago, in Munich funnily enough, where this (the high frequency part) was discussed. It's commercially driven, partly with the idea of tracking movements within the store, where people pause but maybe don't buy, etc. But it immediately occurred to me how it could be appropriated and abused for other purposes.

edit: - The reasons it was seen as a good idea was that 1) it didn't rely on GPS aware mobile phones, and 2) that the business, whatever it was, would have its own data instead of having to go to mobile phone companies. Back then the saturation coverage of smart phones was not expected to have happened so fast. But reason 2 still applies.
 
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What they didn’t tell you is that the new FBI app will spy on your location and download your stored information:

Why, they're as bad as Twitter/Facebook/Amazon/Netflix/Instagram/your mobile phone service/your smart TV/et bloody cetera!
 
Para 4 most interesting.

Your recordings probably aren’t being listened to by an actual human being (though if there’s any truth to this Reddit thread, they might be). But companies are certainly applying algorithms to look for patterns and determine potentially useful things about your behaviors and interests.
Audio data could reveal all sorts of things. The ambient noise could determine whether you’re in the living room or the bathtub. Background voices could reveal who you’re with. Using the microphone to measure noise levels can even reveal when you’re asleep.
“Even if you think you’re not saying anything very interesting or worthwhile, the data gets married and mingled with lots of other kinds of data that can create a very detailed picture of you,” explains De Mooy. “Most of these technologies aren’t in a vacuum, they’re not siloed, they really are interacting with every other type of technology that we have.”
Last year the CDT alerted the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to a technology called SilverPush. It uses audio beacons to track your activities across devices: Your TV emits a tone during a commercial break, a tone that’s inaudible to you, but your phone is listening for it. Now they can link the TV and phone as belonging to the same person.
Advertisers have developed lots of techniques for device-matching, because the more accurately they can track your activities, the easier it is for them to advertise to you. But it’s not difficult to imagine other applications for this technology. Any government interested in who you are meeting with could play a tone through the TV and effectively ping all the phones in the room, identifying the whole group.

Full Article (worth a read):
https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/is-your-smartphone-listening-to-your-conversations/
 
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