thanks @aquarian1

I had not seen your Vault7 posts from March 2017. I think the "news and current events" section of the forum is excluded for some reason from the site's indexing system. I kinda stopped posting myself in there.

xplorer 

thanks @aquarian1 I had not seen your Vault7 posts from March 2017. I think the "news and current events" section of the forum is excluded for some reason from the site's indexing system. I kinda stopped posting myself in there.

I didn't know what you mentioned above.
If there are any ideas from the thread you feel of value to include in this thread please feel free to cut and paste.

I think your thread is VERY important and people vastly underestimate the extent of the problem.

aquarian1 

If there are any ideas from the thread you feel of value to include in this thread please feel free to cut and paste. I think your thread is VERY important and people vastly underestimate the extent of the problem.

Thanks again. I think the Vault 7 thread tackles a slightly different matter, i.e. covert surveillance, which is also a very serious issue.

In this thread I try to focus on the personal data people are giving up voluntarily, although sometimes unwittingly.


As for the fact that people underestimate the issue, my take is that some people care more about privacy, others care less, and that's fine, as long as everyone is aware of what they are giving up, which is not always the case.

xplorer 

Thanks again. I think the Vault 7 thread tackles a slightly different matter, i.e. covert surveillance, which is also a very serious issue. In this thread I try to focus on the personal data people are giving up voluntarily, although sometimes unwittingly. As for the fact that people underestimate the issue, my take is that some people care more about privacy, others care less, and that's fine, as long as everyone is aware of what they are giving up, which is not always the case.

I understand.

There are many examples of people giving up information with and without their consent.
For example few people have read Gxxgle's user agreement and in the Gxxmail one they say they read all your emails.
(Now understand what "read" means - we record them and keep them forever.)

Of course, there is always an excuse.
As in "make your experience more enjoyable
"drive ads you are interested in."

but the cover reason isn't the real reason.

Why do I say this?
If it was you would be given a choice -
a = let us read and record them and give you a better "user experience"
b= no thanks

So I never accepted there terms and conditions and never established an account with them.

Do you think they play fair and do not collect information about me?
Of course not they continue to collect information illegally.

Can I stop them? - Not practically
------------------------------------------------------

---Imagine a fictious company called "G"
Me: I want to be sure you don't have a file on me.
"G": Ok prove who you are
Me; you mean give you the information about me I don't want you to have so you can have it and record it and then tell me you didn't collect it?
"G": By using our services or communicating with us you have agreed to allow us to collect the inoformation on you, even your communication asking that we make sure we don't have a file.
Me; that's a catch 22!
"G": That's why we are we and you are mud.

A friend has a gxxmail account and I don't

I email them or they email me.

Even though I haven't accepted the invasion of piracy agreement they have.

my email and email address is recorded - forever

INSURGE INTELLIGENCE, a new crowd-funded investigative journalism project, breaks the exclusive story of how the United States intelligence community funded, nurtured and incubated Google as part of a drive to dominate the world through control of information. Seed-funded by the NSA and CIA, Google was merely the first among a plethora of private sector start-ups co-opted by US intelligence to retain ‘information superiority.’

The origins of this ingenious strategy trace back to a secret Pentagon-sponsored group, that for the last two decades has functioned as a bridge between the US government and elites across the business, industry, finance, corporate, and media sectors. The group has allowed some of the most powerful special interests in corporate America to systematically circumvent democratic accountability and the rule of law to influence government policies, as well as public opinion in the US and around the world.

The results have been catastrophic: NSA mass surveillance, a permanent state of global war, and a new initiative to transform the US military into Skynet.

source:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-28/how-cia-made-google

xplorer 

Thanks again. I think the Vault 7 thread tackles a slightly different matter, i.e. covert surveillance, which is also a very serious issue.

yes. the thread has a twitter invasion post as well.
So not vault 7

Until a year ago I had been using a plugin called Web Of Trust in my browser. Its function was to tell me in advance which websites may be untrustworthy (carrying malware, privacy issues, etc.) before I visited them.

Little did I know, the company called Web Of Trust was ironically selling my browsing data to 3rd parties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WOT_Services

The Scalper's Journey Guys, apologies for the seemingly random/off-topic post, but TSJ has high visibility and I think it's best that this reaches as many people as possible. If you are using WOT (also known as Web Of Trust, a.k.a. myWOT) you may want to consider removing …

From a recent NY Times article:

Quoting 

Amid Uber’s laundry list of scandals, which included sexual harassment accusations and an undisclosed security breach, there was an important revelation that everyone can learn from. It involved Unroll.me, a free service that unsubscribes you from junk mail. To gather intelligence about its competition, Uber bought information about its main rival, Lyft, from Unroll.me. How did Uber do that, exactly? Unroll.me scanned the contents of its users’ inboxes and sold anonymized data, information that did not have individuals’ names attached to it — in this case, emailed Lyft receipts — to Uber.

Now, this is less evil than actually handing over non-anonymous data, but it's still not something that the users knew was going to happen. Maybe they didn't want Uber to gain an advantage over Lyft. Maybe they just wouldn't want their data making money for someone else. Maybe they thought what was in their inbox was nobody else's business, period.

The company gave themselves a legal out, by including language in their privacy policy that explicitly stated they could do that. Since no one ever reads either privacy policies or End User Agreements, they knew that no one was going to object, or even know.

Full text here. Skip down to the section headed "Read Privacy Policies" : https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/27/technology/personaltech/new-years-resolutions-technology.html?_r=0

Bob.

bobwest 

Full text here. Skip down to the section headed "Read Privacy Policies"

Thank you Bob. A very good and informative article.

This unroll.me situation confirms once more that nothing is ever completely free online - if it is appears as free, one seriously needs to question what you may be giving up in return.