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Thread: It's Not Only Facebook!

  1. #1

    It's Not Only Facebook!

    Sent my SIL an email last week. In email, mentioned a specific brand of self rising flour. Very next day start getting banner ads from Amazon for exact same brand of SR flour. Makes me think, who is reading my emails?

  2. #2
    Join Date
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    Did you view that brand of flour on line before you sent the SIL the email? That is likely where they got your interest in that product. Happens to me here on SMC. I looked at a a web site for a installer of garage door openers and the next thing I knew there is an ad on SMC for that business.
    George

    Making sawdust regularly, occasionally a project is completed.

  3. #3
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    Was a g-mail account involved or another so-called free service? I would suspect privacy has a cost for service. In George's case, the browser could be free but mines data for it's advertisers.
    Last edited by Roger Nair; 03-20-2018 at 8:10 AM.

  4. #4
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    Google, when they were first going public, had a simple phylosophy, 'Don't be evil'. That change years ago to basically, 'Do whatever it takes to make money'. They announced recently that they would no longer mine personal emails for advertising info. I don't believe them, but I also wear a tin hat.

    I have reached the point where I little surprises me about tech and making money. No, I don't think the Tardis is real, but I do believe there is an extreme level of greed in the world today, greed that has many doing things their mother's would be ashamed of.

    Sorry for ranting. Will put my tin hat back on now.
    I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love.... It seems to me that Montana is a great splash of grandeur....the mountains are the kind I would create if mountains were ever put on my agenda. Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans. Montana has a spell on me. It is grandeur and warmth. Of all the states it is my favorite and my love.

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  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by Roger Nair View Post
    Was a g-mail account involved or another so-called free service? I would suspect privacy has a cost for service. In George's case, the browser could be free but mines data for it's advertisers.
    Exactly. We pay for services one way or another. One way is obvious ($), the other way is less so (privacy, personal information). Very few things are free with no strings attached.

  6. #6
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    Surely, you don't think email is private. There is a very good reason it is not a good idea to send credit card numbers through email. You have no idea of how many or which servers the email passes through on the way to its destination and how many eyes (both human and computer) have the opportunity to read it.

  7. #7
    Ever notice that some email providers ask you if you want to stay logged on for 2 weeks (ATT for instance)?

    I SUSPECT but have not verified that there are words in their TOS that say "user agrees that we can mine your email whenever you are logged on."

  8. #8
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    Bruce, after reading the news today, perhaps your data was also used to influence elections via Cambridge Analytica.

    I'm glad I don't have a Facebook account.........Rod.

  9. #9
    If you have an email account that is yours - by that I mean if you have a domain name (like www.mikes-woodwork.com) - I don't believe anyone is reading your mail. If you use gmail, I would not be so sure.

    It was very obvious from the beginning that Facebook's model was to learn as much as they could about you so that they could use that data to sell targeted advertising. I do not use Facebook for that reason. I do have a facebook page because every now and then, you have to go through Facebook, but I don't have anything on it.

    I contrast Facebook to SMC. The things we post on SMC could be mined to learn more about us, but SMC's financial model is not to collect data about us and sell it.

    Mike
    Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Frederick Skelly View Post
    Ever notice that some email providers ask you if you want to stay logged on for 2 weeks (ATT for instance)?

    I SUSPECT but have not verified that there are words in their TOS that say "user agrees that we can mine your email whenever you are logged on."
    What difference does it make? You need to log in to read it*, and I guarantee their mining software can snarf it up while you're doing that.

    *Even in my case, where my local copy of Outlook logs in, sucks the messages into my computer, deletes them, and then logs out. The amount of time that takes is tens of milliseconds to me, but a century in "server years".
    Yoga class makes me feel like a total stud, mostly because I'm about as flexible as a 2x4.
    "Design"? Possibly. "Intelligent"? Sure doesn't look like it from this angle.
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  11. #11
    Surely, you don't think email is private. There is a very good reason it is not a good idea to send credit card numbers through email.
    None of that is true. Source: Have been a network, voice, and security engineer for 30+ years.

    If you use a free mail service, the system is indeed using keywords in it to catalog the things you are interested in. They aren't "reading" it really, but just looking for things you're talking about that they can advertise to you. Whatever you think of this, the fact is that it poses no security risk. There are no humans reading it and nobody is actually storing the data in a way that's easily related to you outside the system.

    It is very safe to send card info via most e-mail services. Certainly safer than fax or voice calls, which are easily intercepted. In comparison, e-mails are encrypted in flight. I can easily capture and view/listen to fax and data calls on any network I manage, but not e-mails. Even if I have access to the data, it's encrypted and worthless. If you want some slightly sensitive info from me, you will get it via e-mail. If you want highly sensitive info, then it will need to be separately encrypted. Voice and fax are for things that don't matter. Also while Apple iMessage is secure, regular SMS is not, nor are most of the other messaging apps. So I'd send sensitive info via iMessage too.

    but SMC's financial model is not to collect data about us and sell it.
    They run ads which do that on their behalf. So no different.

  12. #12
    Join Date
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    A month ago I took a friend along to Industrial Plywood in Lewistown. He merely rode along, no personal information was given to anyone. On the way home he got an ad on his phone about plywood (from Lowe's). Obviously we are being tracked by many entities. His location could have been known by his phone GPS, but the rest of the chain of information is, at best, discomforting!

  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by Carlos Alvarez View Post
    None of that is true. Source: Have been a network, voice, and security engineer for 30+ years.

    If you use a free mail service, the system is indeed using keywords in it to catalog the things you are interested in. They aren't "reading" it really, but just looking for things you're talking about that they can advertise to you. Whatever you think of this, the fact is that it poses no security risk. There are no humans reading it and nobody is actually storing the data in a way that's easily related to you outside the system.

    It is very safe to send card info via most e-mail services. Certainly safer than fax or voice calls, which are easily intercepted. In comparison, e-mails are encrypted in flight. I can easily capture and view/listen to fax and data calls on any network I manage, but not e-mails. Even if I have access to the data, it's encrypted and worthless. If you want some slightly sensitive info from me, you will get it via e-mail. If you want highly sensitive info, then it will need to be separately encrypted. Voice and fax are for things that don't matter. Also while Apple iMessage is secure, regular SMS is not, nor are most of the other messaging apps. So I'd send sensitive info via iMessage too.



    They run ads which do that on their behalf. So no different.
    I didn't know this about fax and voice. You mean voice over internet, right? What about calling someone on my cell phone to their cell phone?

    Haha, this makes me happy to know that fax is so easy to breach when almost every federal gov't form needs to be faxed. : )

  14. #14
    VoIP calls are mostly in the clear and could be intercepted, just like regular analog phone calls. Cell to cell calls have many variables. The connection from your phone to the tower is lightly encrypted. It's not trivial to decode, but could be (and progress was made to prevent this, but I don't know the current status as it's not my job, it could be fixed now). If the call is going to another cell on the same network, 99% likely that the carrier will keep it on-net. But probably not encrypted, and even if it is encrypted, they hold the keys, not you. So their people could decrypt it. If it leaves the cell carrier network for the regular phone network, it's not encrypted and is very easy to intercept there. Meaning that a person with access to the network could, but getting access to the network is very limited. To people like me. I've never intercepted any data I was not allowed to, but I'm always 30 seconds away from being able to. I've had to do intercepts and captures for law enforcement and other lawful reasons.

    Fax is the most awful way to send anything. It's totally not secure. It's totally easy to fake and manipulate. It's not easy to fake or manipulate an e-mail, and it's not easy to intercept an e-mail. I realize most people have been told a big lie about fax being secure.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Lee DeRaud View Post
    What difference does it make? You need to log in to read it*, and I guarantee their mining software can snarf it up while you're doing that.

    *Even in my case, where my local copy of Outlook logs in, sucks the messages into my computer, deletes them, and then logs out. The amount of time that takes is tens of milliseconds to me, but a century in "server years".
    It's very frustrating to have worked your entire life in tech and see people post things they simply either made up or repeated from someone else who made them up, with zero bearing on reality. You should stop doing that.

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