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Personal Data On The Internet

Are you on Twitter or Facebook?

  • Yes, both

    Votes: 11 20.4%

  • Twitter only

    Votes: 6 11.1%

  • Facebook only

    Votes: 15 27.8%

  • Neither

    Votes: 20 37.0%

  • Neither, but some other 'social networking' site(s)

    Votes: 2 3.7%
  • Total voters
    54
OMG! There's a chat show in Northern Ireland on the 'personal data' theme. I only recognised the host, not the three people on the sofa (but that's just me :rolleyes:). Seems to me the internet side could have been exploited more, but there are still some funny moments.

But I wouldn't have mentioned this at all if it didn't drift into Fortean territory, eg, an interesting encounter at Area 51, and a demonstration of Asparomancy!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0773m7c/delete-delete-delete-episode-4#group=p02q32p1

Comedy chat show in which Patrick Kielty invites special guests to hand over their laptops so he can rummage around their internet history. He is joined by Sally Lindsay, Roisin Conaty and Andrew Maxwell, who reveal a chart-topping past, being mistaken for Adele and an adventure with aliens.
 
This story about censorship by abuse of Digital Millenium Copyright Act takedowns is long overdue... worth a read:


Revealed: How copyright law is being misused to remove material from the internet

I've seen this first hand a couple of years back, fetlife.com are prolific abusers of DMCA and use it to take down screencaps showing abusive behaviour by their members. Cracking stuff if you're into silencing people.
 
ramonmercado said:
The Interview: Author Jon Ronson on digital shaming
Jon Ronson on the uses and abuses of digital shaming, the personal wreckage, and the fear you might be the next target
Hail Ronson --he does dangerous journalism and he writes witty.
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GNC said:
I really hope nobody on here is with Yahoo:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-37447016
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I use Yahoo, so naturally I've changed my password AGAIN. I forget what the problem was last time, though I don't think that it was anything on this scale.

I don't directly give away a lot of personal information in my emails, although I suppose a dedicated hacker could find out quite a bit about me if they were prepared to do the legwork. A lot of effort for little reward, though, I think.

If, as Yahoo claim, this hack looked like the work of a state-sponsored team, they were probably more interested in pissing off a lot of people and causing them low-level hassle than actually sifting through their emails. I'll keep telling myself that, in any case...
 
I only use Yahoo as I need a Yahoo address for flickr, any hackers will be sorely disappointed with the originals of photos such as the current avatar, it's hardly the Pippa Middleton archive...
 
I think I last used Yahoo for email about 20 years ago.
 
Customers 'bewildered and fearful' about use of their data
By Simon Gompertz Personal finance correspondent, BBC News
27 September 2016

Nine in 10 people have no idea what companies do with the personal information the firms hold about them, a survey suggests.
The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) survey of 2,500 people also found 57% did not trust the companies to handle their data responsibly.
And 51% complained that they had been contacted by organisations that had misused their data.

The CIM says personal data policies on websites should be clearer and simpler.
It says businesses have failed to persuade people to read their online terms and conditions to understand what they do with personal details.
Instead, according to its research, people are in the dark about data and scared of being spammed or scammed.

The CIM questioned more than 2,500 consumers and marketing professionals, to help businesses looking for new ways to sell to us over the internet.

But rather than discovering an army of well-informed consumers who were happy to share their data, the research unearthed a wall of public bewilderment and mistrust.
Some 92% of respondents did not fully understand how information that companies gleaned about them was being used, and they were highly sceptical about marketing practices.

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37476335

I'm glad I don't have a smartphone, or use Social Media.
 
Interesting article on the BBC about parents publishing photographs of their children on the internet with abandon - the children aren't always happy about it but don't get a say.

In the UK, the average parent with a social media account has posted 1,498 photos of their child online by their fifth birthday, according to a survey by domain name company, Nominet.

Jings, crivvens and help ma actual Boab. :eek:
 
min_bannister said:
Interesting article on the BBC about parents publishing photographs of their children on the internet with abandon - the children aren't always happy about it but don't get a say.

In the UK, the average parent with a social media account has posted 1,498 photos of their child online by their fifth birthday, according to a survey by domain name company, Nominet.

Jings, crivvens and help ma actual Boab. :eek:
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Strange isn't it. I think there are probably around half a dozen photos of under five me in existence. Parents of young kids now seem to take dozens every day and post a fair proportion to FB, Instagram etc.
 
Quake42 said:
Strange isn't it. I think there are probably around half a dozen photos of under five me in existence. Parents of young kids now seem to take dozens every day and post a fair proportion to FB, Instagram etc.
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Yes, I am sure there are only a handful of me as well. And - I'm not the maternal type so I may have different views on this - how many people are actually interested in seeing 1498 photos of someone else child? Especially when multiplied by all the people they know with children. Mind boggling.
 
Whenever my mother took a photo of me she usually insisted I point at things. There are photos of me pointing at horses, pointing at various vehicles, and just pointing aimlessly into the distance. I used to hate doing it and I hated the photos. Glad they're not in cyberspace for perpetuity.
 
graylien said:
Whenever my mother took a photo of me she usually insisted I point at things. There are photos of me pointing at horses, pointing at various vehicles, and just pointing aimlessly into the distance. I used to hate doing it and I hated the photos. Glad they're not in cyberspace for perpetuity.
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Have you thought of retouching them in photoshop adding odd birds like budgies perching on your finger?

Just a thought.
 
Facebook bans Admiral from using profile data for insurance quotes, hours after it was launched
Facebook said that Admiral's app had been taken down to ensure the 'privacy of the people on Facebook'


Facebook has banned an insurance company from using people’s profiles to price their insurance.

Just hours after Admiral announced that it would launch a new app that scoured Facebook profiles and tried to work out their personalities, the site has said that the plan breaks its terms and so will be banned.

Admiral had hoped that by using Facebook information it could build up a picture of people, and hopefully work out whether they were more or less likely to crash. Customers could be given up to a 15 per cent discount if they signed up to the app.

...

Admiral had said that an algorithm would be used to analyse Facebook profiles to determine whether prospective customers would be careful drivers.

On its website, the company said: "New drivers are often quoted much higher insurance premiums as they have little driving history, zero no claims bonus and are viewed as 'high risk'.

"But we want to help make sure safe drivers aren't penalised and get the best price possible. To do this, we'll look at your Facebook profile to help us get a better understanding of the type of driver you are.

"There's a proven link between personality and how people drive, and our clever technology allows us to predict who is likely to be a safe driver."

Only a "snapshot" of the customer's social media page would have been considered while the quote is calculated, Admiral said.

Writing style and the use of calendars or accounting apps would be considered in the analysis, The Times reported.

Renate Samson, the chief executive of Big Brother Watch, told the newspaper: "It's terrifying. Kids are going to be handing over information with no real knowledge about how it is going to be used.

"How can you really tell if someone is a good or bad driver based on your Facebook page?"

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...ecurity-safety-what-do-they-use-a7393326.html

Years ago on the subject of the surveillance society, I predicted the mission creep of personal data, store card purchases, health records etc being used in a sinister sort of way by insurance companies trying to squeeze more out of customers.

Of course I was told this would never happen.
 
min_bannister said:
Yes, I am sure there are only a handful of me as well. And - I'm not the maternal type so I may have different views on this - how many people are actually interested in seeing 1498 photos of someone else child? Especially when multiplied by all the people they know with children. Mind boggling.
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I'm not in the slightest bit interested in someone else's baby or toddler pictures, and frankly I'd be concerned at somebody who spent their free time looking at thousands of them.
 
rynner2 said:
Did you ask their permission first? :p
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They both signed a model release...

Untitled.jpg
 
My brother and I were photographed quite a lot on holiday - smile, damn you! - next to new cars - don't pull a silly face! - and in religious processions. Oh - and at Christmas parties! When one of my silly faces - probably nerves - got into the local paper (along with 100 other kids) it was early-to-bed for a week!

I still freeze when anyone points a camera at me. It's that pause between me noticing the lens and hearing the shutter go!

The main baby-photography ritual of the day was Polyphoto. I think they kept a studio in one of the large department stores. Your studio session would produce dozens of shots which were printed as thumbnails for parents to select the bearable ones for Christmas distribution to doting relatives. The not-so-doting ones could have one of the passport-sized rejects! :eek:
 
Sounds like something you have to apologise for doing to a mate's toilet the morning after a stag night.
 
So 2.5million got snaffled from people's accounts, but no personal data was compromised? Sounds a bit fishy to me.

Tesco Bank says it has refunded £2.5m to 9,000 customers who had money taken in an attack on their accounts.

The number given for the current account customers hit by the fraud is fewer than half of the 20,000 initially reported to have been affected.

Personal data "was not compromised" in the attack, and all accounts affected had been refunded, the bank said.

Tesco Bank has said it was hit by "a systematic, sophisticated attack" at the weekend.

"We've now refunded all customer accounts affected by fraud and lifted the suspension of online debit transactions so that customers can use their accounts as normal," said chief executive Benny Higgins.

Current account customers had been blocked from making online payments using their debit card since Sunday, an action the bank said it had taken "to prevent criminal activity".
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BBC
 
From a longer article about Facebook...

But what Facebook’s challenges over fake news reveal, I think, is that we’re in completely uncharted territory.
Never has any private company had such immediate power over the way we act, feel, think, date, buy, fight - whatever.

And it’s impossible, if you plan on living in the modern world, to avoid Facebook or Google.
Even if you never create a Facebook account, your browsing habits will be logged when you visit pages that contain the Facebook ‘like’ button. Google’s near-$500bn value is made up almost entirely from selling advertising, which is why they’re absolutely everywhere on the internet. It’s the scale that makes the money.

How the internal cogs of these sites work is a complete mystery. My colleague Rory Cellan-Jones’ recent radio documentary into Google summarised that its algorithm was so complex that no single person could possibly grasp how it worked.

This situation, this imbalance, will surely not be able to last much longer. While technology bosses, Zuckerberg in particular, talk about their “mission” to “connect the world”, we do know that under their watch unacceptable things do take place.

Thanks to whistleblowers and investigative journalists, for instance, we know that Google at one time scooped up private wi-fi data from homes as it carried out its Street View trips. We know that Facebook knowingly manipulated News Feeds in an attempt to alter users’ emotions.

You can see how both of those examples could have seemed harmless -  or at least fascinating - to the engineers involved.
But what they demonstrate is that what may seem a bright idea for the tech sites may be directly at odds for what is good for the users themselves.

One person in agreement with this is Zuckerberg, in 2009 at least. That was when Facebook was at around 200m users, and he posted a video message (in a shirt and tie!) saying how he wanted users to have a bigger say in how the site is governed.
A special section -  FB Site Governance - was set up. Check on it today and you’ll see there have been no significant updates since 2012 - other than to tell people about privacy policy changes.

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38036730

Be afraid, be very afraid! :evil:
 
OneWingedBird said:
So 2.5million got snaffled from people's accounts, but no personal data was compromised? Sounds a bit fishy to me.
Click to expand...
Well, someone recently managed to set up a fraudulent direct debit on my account, and apparently, they didn't need any of my online passwords or user PINs. Santander told me that all the fraudsters needed was my account number and sort code, which isn't the sort of thing I'd normally be terrified about giving away. So maybe, in this case, there wasn't a mass stealing of passwords. Sounds a bit fishy, all the same - "my" fraudster got just over £200 (now refunded to me), but I think a fraud on Tesco's scale would require a bit more "proper" hacking.
 
Peripart said:
Well, someone recently managed to set up a fraudulent direct debit on my account, and apparently, they didn't need any of my online passwords or user PINs. Santander told me that all the fraudsters needed was my account number and sort code, which isn't the sort of thing I'd normally be terrified about giving away. So maybe, in this case, there wasn't a mass stealing of passwords. Sounds a bit fishy, all the same - "my" fraudster got just over £200 (now refunded to me), but I think a fraud on Tesco's scale would require a bit more "proper" hacking.
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That is very worrying.
Now more than ever, I want to move all my money into gold and silver.
 
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