Don’t companies use personal data to target you in order to sell you something? Isn’t that the main fear people have - that a company will somehow find out so much about you that they can send virtually personally targeted advertising to you? If you use Facebook, for example, you might get ads that are specifically designed for you based on what sites you have visited, etc. But isn’t the ultimate responsibility our own for what we buy? Can we blame an advertiser for sending us a pertinent mailer in the U.S. mail? I must be missing something, because while I have no affection for the corporate world, I don’t begrudge them using their abilities to find out how to sell more widgets. I don’t have to buy their stuff. Now, I don’t use Facebook, so I am not subject to their actions there, but I see Facebook gets toasted for selling personal data to businesses. So what? No one is making you buy anything. Being on “social” media means that your business is everyone else’s. That’s your choice, isn’t it? Even the “invasion of privacy” argument seems lame. You put things on the internet and then you’re bummed that someone found it and employed it? Disingenuous. It’s not an invasion of privacy if you left your doors and windows open and all the lights on. I just don’t get the outrage that’s related to this whole issue. I’m hoping I don’t get flamed, but actually read some reasoned responses.
Yes, any data we put on the socials is our choice. Correct, no one is forcing you to buy anything.
Someone will come along and state this better than I can. Basically, we don’t know what data a company has, who they’re selling it to, and how much they’re selling. The more people, or companies, that have our data, the higher the chances that the data will be acquired by unscrupulous folks, and one can become a victim of identity theft.
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Personal data is just that. Personal. China is using AI software to judge good citizenship based on personal data.
So, a big YES on caring whether companies have access to my personal data. This is why Europe codified how that is treated and put the control of it in the hands of the people.
Different people have different concerns. It’s not just about targeted marketing. It’s also that once they have your personal data, you no longer control where it goes or what ***others ***may do with it. People are selling data right and left–those disclaimers that nobody reads give them permission to do that. The data itself has become a huge commodity.
Some of the greater concerns are that the insurance companies will use it to deny policies or hike up rates, or that the government will use it to violate 4th amendment rights. You might care about that, or you may not.
I do agree with you to some extent here. Twenty or twenty-five years ago, it should have been obvious to everyone that this was going to happen.
At this point, it’s nearly impossible to avoid one’s actual personal data getting out there. So many services that we take for granted essentially require it. Even before Facebook, etc., I tried to keep a wall between real personal data that matter and these services. For example, you know those “club card” things that all the supermarkets do? For everything, they have a higher “regular” price, and then the advertised or listed discount price always requires that you use a personal “membership,” which is tied to a telephone number. They want to track your purchasing patterns so they can promote things and get you in the store.
I saw this coming, and yeah–so what? Who cares? Who cares if they try to track my purchasing. Well, no big deal, but if I can avoid it going beyond that, I will. I figured out from the start that they don’t verify the phone number, so you can just make up a number, and as long as you use the same one all the time, it still will work.
Now, however, most other systems verify by sending a confirmation text to the physical phone, so they are going to get a real number that you actually use, (and they won’t accept Google Voice numbers). A lot of big data, including Facebook, can uniquely identify “a person” by a telephone number. So it depends on what you do with that number otherwise, and how you pay for that phone service.
It all comes down to actual identification of the person, and to what degree that can by leveraged in the big data marketplace. It’s possible to keep a “firewall” between your actual identity and some services (such as Facebook, by not giving a phone number, and using a “burner” email), but you should have done that from the start. Other things, such as financial services, make it impossible, because they’re trying to prevent fraud from the start, and demand a SS number.
Several decades ago I was horrified to learn that Safeway would copy down the license plates in its parking lot, and then pay the California DMV for information on those vehicles. This invasion of privacy was “taxpayer friendly” because it meant DMV could lower its fees. :smack: Since then my horror has passed through the seven stages of despair and I’m left only with mild bemusement.
I’ll guess that one’s feelings on this topic can be used to guess which generational cohort one belongs to. Everyone in the thread worried about loss of privacy is at least 40 years old. What do I win? 
some data is okay if it’s public. Some data is private.
When you buy chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla…no big deal if Walmart keeps track
When you buy other stuff, do you want it to be public knowledge? liquor, marijuana, pregnancy tests, condoms, medication for psychiatric problems,a book titled “How to file for divorce without a lawyer”, or “how to file bankruptcy”.
This is happening,and it is unstoppable.
It’s all there: in Walmart’s computers, in MasterCard’s computers,in your google history, your phone call history, your phone’s GPS locator history .When it all gets put into one single database, easily searchable–your entire life will be recorded.
Life will be very different for our grandchildren, who will be born into a world where privacy is an unknown concept.
But in the meantime, us old folks prefer the way things were about a decade ago.
And yes,septimus, you win…I’m way over 40 
That’s scary enough. But now consider that what you’re describing is 20 year old tech.
Modern data collection is just so much more extensive than that. It’s not just you, and everything you have ever done, said, purchased, or been, it’s also everyone you have ever associated with and everything they have ever done, been, said, etc. And that creates profiles, like “who is likely to become a criminal” or better yet “who is likely to disagree with me politically.”
And then this data starts getting used. You want car insurance? Republicans (or pick any group) get a +20% premium for “reasons.” You want health care? Well… your second cousin posted all about her bout with cancer on facebook, so we’re not allowing you to enroll since you’re higher risk. Sorry.
Then the police show up at your door with a warrant. Your profile is a perfect match for a communist agitator. You haven’t agitated, and aren’t even really a communist, but our algorithm says you are. And now you certainly never will be…
Orwell was an optimist.
I couldn’t find a single story online about this ever happening. Please post a link.
From someone that was in the data business…
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PII, Personally Identifying Information must be tightly controlled or one cannot control who uses that information to impersonate them. Such an impersonation might be innocent, annoying, or criminal. It does not matter.
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Demographic info. If you have kids, own a chevy, subscribe to Field&Stream, own a home, and/or are 25-49, etc. if anonymized, this is valuable data for businesses and is probably ok once the demographic info has been abstracted from the PII. It creeps me out, personally, however to know that my former company knows all of this about me, by name.
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Political info. This is where it gets sticky. Do I own guns? Do I support Trump/Biden? If you look at history this info has been used by rulers to suppress opposition. It is not paranoid to make the assumption it will happen.
When my grandfather walked into Larry’s Hardware and bought manure and kerosene no one thought anything about it. Now, some genius at the NSA thinks he is doing something about terrorism. So, every purchase, and the every thing else about you is captured and indexed and memorialized.
It is what the gun people are afraid of.
I hate to play the H card, but there is a reason that European privacy laws are much tighter than the US’s laws. They have experienced totalitarianism where affiliations were used to persecute.
I do not have sufficient faith to believe that it will never happen again.
…and we haven’t even talked about Alexa, Siri, etc all.
If you find a good way to Google for stories that happened when Google’s founders were still toddlers, please let us all know. 
Here is one of many hits you’ll find Googling for abuse of privacy by DMV.
In the case I’m thinking of, the DMV was probably providing info that it was legally allowed or required to provide, but automated the process of reply, making it easier and less expensive for a business to use the information.
Can we at least agree it’s not the consumers responsibility to help companies target them? No I don’t want your saver card, no I won’t give you my email address, no I don’t want your credit card to save 10% today, no I won’t tell you my phone number, no you can’t have my zip code.
Oh, there’s a phone number on the back of the receipt to tell central how you did today? Yeah, I’d call to bitch but to even speak to a person that isn’t in charge and can’t change a thing I would have to provide the above information.
First point - Yes, it’s mostly so they can advertise to you. And advertising may seem innocuous enough. OK, they captured that I was buying Kleenex online, so I get ads for allergy medicines. Big whoop. But, advertising works, or else they wouldn’t do so much of it. Well, as we have seen, advertising doesn’t have to tell the truth. Political advertising is specifically legally allowed to lie. There is some degree of support to the idea that a contributing factor to our current president being elected is due to effective use of online targeted political advertising. And here we are. So, it’s not just “So they know I subscribe to HGTV Magazine? What’s the big deal?”
Second point - This requires some imagination on your part. Thought experiment - You are walking out of the grocery store to your car. A person who you do not know stops you and says: “Hi Bob, of 4329 Willow Court. I understand your wife is Judy, and she has recently been treated for skin cancer, that’s a pity. And your nine year old, Jenna is in soccer and plays the violin. Your 14 year old, Jason really spends a lot of time gaming. Oh, and how is it working out paying off that student loan? And it looks like your credit card is getting close to it’s limit. And by the way, who is Felicia? It seems you knew her in high school and recently chatted? Oh, by the way, because I know all that information, I was able to sell it! I made good money too!”
You wouldn’t like that encounter very much, would you?
The alternative to customized advertising is not no advertising, it is just advertising for things you would likely to be less interested in. I am a teetotaler who has scene countless commercials for beer and liquor, I would rather have companies offering me deals on things i actually use.
The part where the guy talks to me is the part I don’t like. The guy behind me in the grocery store line knows everything I buy and he could follow me out and find out what kind of car I drive. He knows what I look like, approximately how old I am, if I am married, what kind of clothes I like to wear. He knows the general area where I live. I don’t try to hide any of that from the people in the store, why is it scary that less information about me is online?
What, you mean like the millions of pages of pre-internet newspaper, magazine, etc articles that have been digitized and put online? Or recent articles mentioning past events? Are you serious?
That pretty clearly isn’t the cite I was asking for.
Again, I can’t find any story about Safeway employees copying license plate numbers to get information on customers from the DMV and that they did it so often that it allowed the DMV to lower fees. But if you have a link to an actual account backing up that specific story, I’d love to see it.
I have no information about this, nor proof that it has ever happened.
Do you dispute the claim that it* could* happen, without fast-forwarding to the future? Because it certainly can.
Well, anything can happen, but I’d like to think that any Safeway manager knows that these days there are a ton of better, easier, cheaper ways to get info on your customers than running their plates through the DMV (if that’s even legal).
But I’d still wager a 30 roll pack of Charmin Ultra Soft that the story as told is apocryphal.
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More information about you is available online than what the guy behind you in line is going to glean.
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It’s scary (in a relative sort of way) because the guy behind you in line doesn’t care about that stuff, and won’t remember it.
For the most part nobody online cares about the information either. The only information 99.9% of the people online care about is my propensity to shop at their store. It is easy to conjure scary stories about possible misuse of data, but just as easy to think of a story about someone following me home from the store and doing even worse things. I am not worried about either happening.