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wasoxygen  ·  1546 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Online Privacy Should Be Modeled on Real-World Privacy

Everybody has stories like this:

Today I was doing some bottom-feeding and saw a mention of a Gilbert Gottfried video in which he reads the dirty lyrics to the song "WAP." Once you start bottom-feeding, you might as well go all the way ... but my kid uses devices that are logged in to my Google account, and I didn't want to have the view associated with my YouTube account. So I switched to the Brave browser where I am not logged in to Google, watched the disappointing video, and then the original version to compare, for science.

About an hour later I turned on Amazon Music on the television* for some atmosphere, absently selecting Massive Attack "Mezzanine" as a starting point. Nineteen predictable genre songs followed, then "JU$T" by Run The Jewels came on, but I had added a Killer Mike playlist recently so this was excusable. Then, four songs later, it was Cardi B and her WAP again.

I think Mr. Gruber makes a number of unwarranted assumptions, starting with "We wouldn’t tolerate it." Two percent of air travelers opt out of facial recognition checkin. Not that it matters; your face is already in the system whether you opt in or not. Where did the airlines get all those face photos?

Hubski hated this article so much it eviscerated a bunch of arguments the author didn't make:

Most people by now must realize that web sites track users and sell targeted ads. I think they reasonably consider that an acceptable cost of getting access to a huge variety of amazing tools and information for free.

You can request a copy of your Amazon data. I got the whole load and was unable to find anything more interesting than Kindle page turn events. Of course my entire order history was in there. I would prefer to think that Amazon does not provide my name and order history to anyone willing to pay (not sure if they do), but it sure was helpful to be able to immediately re-order the exact same car headlight bulb or obscure battery without doing a new search.

* Smart TVs Are Cheaper Than Ever, and It's Because They're Selling Your Data I saw Cardi B on a 43" 4K Samsung I had delivered for $250 plus tax. Somebody has to know what I'm watching, but it doesn't have to be Samsung. I use a Chromecast or Fire dongle and never enter a wifi password into a television. If you care about privacy, you can take steps that mitigate a lot of the harm, and you can always choose not to use services that collect data.