Re: Linkedin - Out

[Louigi Verona <louigi.verona@xxxxxxxxx>]

I've read the links carefully. Some of it was known to me, a lot of it was not, but also some of it I am aware very well about and know as a fact that this has nothing to do with "spying", but can see how such calls to what is being called as "3rd party websites" can appear nefarious to people outside of the ad tech industry (yes, most of the 3rd party calls have to do with advertising, of course).

I can say several things so far on the matter.

1. I think that some (though, not all) of the work that EFF and FSF do is important. They are not the only ones doing it, of course, but these organizations are mostly relevant to this community.

2. This work has already provided a lot of results and one today can do a lot to give the minimum of information to any 3rd parties. Is it perfect? No. But is it definitely better? Sure.

3. So the important conclusion is that there is control being leveraged at corporations big and small and there are a lot of gains in this territory. Therefore, messages on problems with privacy online should be more nuanced if they are to reflect reality.

4. There is a big difference between government surveillance and between a company gathering your data anonymously to show you ads. Google or Microsoft should be tightly controlled by the public, however this control, in my view, should not take the form of ideological hatred.

5. Ideological hatred and even a level of intellectual superstition that was demonstrated in this thread ("I will delete my account immediately from LinkedIn, because Microsoft announced they are buying the company" sort of stuff) certainly does not help us make this world better. What it does is change the tone of conversation from evidence-based rational discourse to emotionally charged hate speech, that paints large groups of ordinary decent people as "evil".

6. Additionally, such position does not allow for correction of information. And when someone who works in the industry, the deeds of which are of concern, provides information that could actually calm some of the anxiety, he is just labeled as an unreliable source, which only further propagates alarmist messages with little bearing on reality. And that lack of connection with reality is by definition, really, as such ideology is preserved by blocking any new evidence. Therefor, it stops being dependent on the state of the real world.

So, my initial decision to reply to Will's message was not in black and white opposition to his views, but in an opposition to such rampant ideological outbursts, which, if we take them on board, will make each one us less rational and less equipped to deal with the situation as it really is.

And definitely Will is not alone in his views. Yours truly had held exactly same views in the past. But, provided new evidence, I have since revised them considerably.

On Fri, Jun 17, 2016 at 7:37 AM, Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Fri, 17 Jun 2016 09:21:23 +1200, worik wrote:
>Facebook do not now ... where I live

You fake your IP before you visit facebook? However, you are using
facebook with faked data only? You are writing with other people about
something, that has nothing to do with your interests? If so, then your
interest is to fake a life and facebook knows what life you fake. As an
employee I take a look what superiors are doing. Some already were
pissed off, imputed that I hacked their accounts, but actually I'm
even not subscribed to facebook and things like this and I never
hacked anything. Many people are simply to stupid to know what they made
public for everybody.

A list of servers in mail headers + a service such as
https://www.denic.de/en/service/whois-service/ could provide useful
data.

Even if you are using tor, you aren't safe. You e.g. visit facebook by
tor and at the same time Ardour phones home, this doesn't help
facebook, but anybody else watching you. This and other pitfalls are
explained on the tor website and as Fons already pointed out, Schneier
is one of the most important sources.

Sometimes spying isn't done by complex algorithms and hacking accounts,
it's just reading public data and calculating that 1 + 1 is 2.

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--

Louigi Verona
http://www.louigiverona.com/

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