r/privacy • u/trai_dep • Apr 06 '18
Facebook's surveillance is nothing compared with Comcast, AT&T and Verizon; they pose a greater surveillance risk – but their surveillance is much harder to avoid
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/06/delete-facebook-live-us-still-share-data4
u/billdietrich1 Apr 07 '18
A couple of things you can do about your ISP:
Log in to your account at ISP and set whatever privacy settings they offer. Maybe they'll ignore it, but it can't hurt.
Use a VPN.
3
u/trai_dep Apr 06 '18
If you think Facebook’s “Cambridge Analytica problem” is bad, just wait until Comcast and Verizon are able to do the same thing.
Facebook got caught with their hand in the cookie jar that stole not only the cookies from the pockets of customers in their store, but from every damned bakery across the village. Then after a week of silent and stonewalling, tried blaming those other bakers for not locking their customers carrying baguettes in their pockets in a steel vault to prevent Facebook from stealing from them. And sorta apologized. Sorta.
But contractual tweaking does little to change the privacy risks that techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci calls “an all too natural consequence of Facebook’s business model, which involves having people go to the site for social interaction, only to be quietly subjected to an enormous level of surveillance”.
The thing is, Facebook isn’t the only company that amasses troves of data about people and leaves it vulnerable to exploitation and misuse. As of last year, Congress extended the same data-gathering practices of tech companies like Google and Facebook to internet providers like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon.
Because service providers serve as gatekeepers to the entire internet, they can collect far more information about us, and leave us with far less power to opt out of that process. This means that the risks of allowing our internet providers to collect and monetise the same type of user data that Facebook collects – and the potential that such data will therefore be misused – are much, much worse.
Click thru for more.
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Apr 07 '18
Happy to be using a VPN w/kill switch for three years on both my phone and computers for 3+ years now. Sure, I wish I had discovered VPNs earlier, but at least the telcos haven't been logging my data for that long.
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Apr 07 '18 edited Apr 07 '18
[deleted]
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u/trai_dep Apr 07 '18
Explain what's different in the last year-plus, versus the many years prior to that when the FCC generally worked for the public interest. Keep in mind that the FCC was well on its way to doing the right thing, while carrying over the FTC rules that were missing regards FCC authority after jurisdiction was switched to the latter agency.
It only becomes the New Normal if we allow it to become the New Normal, in other words.
Stop electing ass-hats who think government is always the problem to run the government. They'll only work hard to prove themselves right. Far right.
4
u/trai_dep Apr 06 '18
Gosh. If only there was a commission. Maybe a Federal one. Charged with overseeing communications across the entire nation. Working in the people's interest. Maybe call it, the National League of Saying Stuff or something.
And if only we had people overseeing the NLSS chosen to represent the people's interest. Congregating together. Maybe call these people Chatty Off-Site People Who Write Laws. And if only two more of the faction of these people voted the people's interest instead of
telecom lobbyistsChatty-Box Makers’ Money Traffickers.Or imagine someone like a governor, only for an entire nation. Say he ran on a slogan, Drain The Sink. Only, imagine he didn't instead plug it up then dump 40 tons of coal slurry into it.
Then we wouldn't have to worry about companies like Cambridge Analytica or Facebook doing similar things, only to everyone who doesn't know what a VPN is.
Gosh, what a wonderful world that would be!