Amid NSA Outrage, Big Tech Companies Plan to Track You Even More Aggressively

[Indi Guy]

Source: Wired

Thanks to former NSA man Edward Snowden, we now know a fair amount about the NSA’s ability to collect data about what people do online, and it’s all rather disturbing.

But the future looks even more worrisome. Some of the biggest companies in tech are assembling new forms of online tracking that would follow users more aggressively than the open technologies used today. Just this week, word arrived that Microsoft is developing such a system, following, apparently, in the footsteps of Google.

The new data troves are to be used for advertising, not government surveillance, and only made available to authorized third parties. Yet the NSA has proven adept at co-opting large pools of data for its own ends.

“Users did not have much control in the cookie era,” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington. “But the problem is about to get much worse — tracking techniques will become more deeply embedded and a much smaller number of companies will control advertising data.”...



Read more: http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/private-tracking-arms-race/

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Kinda my point all along...

whilst the NSA and other spook operations tried to see every bit of data in the universe, they are eventually limited by budget and never really caused us any trouble individually.

Now, however, the scraps of data that Google, Amazon, Verizon and others get from us are more concise and not only direct advertising, but follow our habits in browsing, messaging, travelling, and in just about every thing we do.

And they use and sell that information to make themselves money, often from us, without us having any knowledge of it or recourse if we do know something.

[askeptic]

2. What advertising?

all ads are removed in my browser

[shanti]

6. Not on an iPad, unfortunately

I can avoid adverts on my mac pretty well, lots of crap sems to slip thru on my iPad, and it really pisses me off that I can do nothing about it

[nilram]

9. You can set up a VPN and have the other end of the VPN block them.

I haven't done it yet, just on my list of things to do. It would slow down browsing a bit because your network traffic would have to go through the VPN, but on the other hand, you wouldn't be downloading ads do maybe it would be a wash.

On the third hand, I've seen some ads for interesting products while using my iPad.

I wonder, though, I wouldn't doubt that one of the 'features' of this new tracking would be to disable a web page if the user is disabling ads. I keep waiting for that kind of technology to come around. Ugh.

[baldguy]

7. Just because you block the resultant ads doesn't mean they're not still tracking you.

[blkmusclmachine]

3. They even know the brand of underwear you wear.

[nilram]

10. nah, mine are too old

[24601]

4. I've not really cared about what NSA may know about me. I could give a rat's ass if they were to

incorporate it into an intelligence report. And for a reasonable fee covering my time, I'll cc NSA on my emails and attach my browsing history. Not so for businesses which will use it to try to manipulate every $ out of me that they think they can get.

[PSPS]

5. Just another #7

What these apologists always fail to mention is that "some of the biggest companies in tech" do not have the power of the government to arrest or otherwise deprive you of your freedom, or to interfere with your life.


Worshiper/Apologist Hit Parade:

1. This is nothing new
2. I have nothing to hide
3. What are you, a freeper?
4. But Obama is better than Christie/Romney/Bush/Hitler
5. Greenwald/Flaherty/Gillum/Apuzzo/Braun is a hack
6. We have red light cameras, so this is no big deal
7. Corporations have my data anyway
8. At least Obama is trying
9. This is just the media trying to take Obama down
10. It's a misunderstanding/you are confused
11. You're a racist
12. Nobody cares about this anyway / "unfounded fears"
13. I don't like Snowden, therefore we must disregard all of this
14. Other countries do it

[baldguy]

8. Tell this to Aaron Swartz, Kevin Mitnick, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde, etc. etc.

Corporations buy the power of govt. By ignoring these real issues that effect real people every day - as you do when you criticize a Democratic President in favor of promoting Republican talking points - you allow corporations to rule us, and allow true fascism to take root.