xplorer 

A situation I was not aware of, but which is apparently common enough to be flagged as a problem. ... Apparently the matter was being minimized, until this was posted on Twitter: further confirmation that companies tend to act quickly when visibility becomes an issue.

SMCJB 

I'm not being critical of her, or her actions. Just highlight how difficult it would be to regulate something like this effectively. Finally I use uBer a lot, and regularly get calls from the driver, so they definitely have your phone number as well, and if they pick you up from home, know your home address as well.

I think that the person delivering the service or driving the car is legitimately given a contact phone number in these cases, because, as stated, they may need to get in touch with you. Maybe you don't answer at your door, for instance.

I also think that the potential for weird stuff happening is enormous. I also do not know how to "regulate something like this effectively" -- although I do think that, ultimately, we need to.

More examples of the fact that these are not easy questions for us to figure out now. Eventually, we will, and probably will have to.

Bob.

SMCJB 

On a related subject, a large industry participant who I deal with, recently did a "deal" with another large industry participant who i have, and never have had, any relationship with. I immediately started getting marketing emails from the second company. Obviously being concerned for your safety and getting unwanted email are two very different things, but don't they violate our privacy in exactly the same way? I'm not being critical of her, or her actions. Just highlight how difficult it would be to regulate something like this effectively. Finally I use uBer a lot, and regularly get calls from the driver, so they definitely have your phone number as well, and if they pick you up from home, know your home address as well.

Privacy safeguards in the US are considerably different from those in the EU.

As for the legality of what the guy did, again I think it depends on jurisdiction, but the Information Commissioner in the UK (they are the privacy watchdog) said that if the customer's phone number was being used for a purpose other than the original purpose for which it was provided, she may have a case for reporting it to the police.

the internet is a gift and curse.

It's a gift because you can disseminate great information in a short amount of time,

but it's a curse because of privacy issues, and even worse, fraud, which I've been a victim of so many times.

just like old time post agencies: if you write some mail it is like a postcard where every participant in the delivery system could read all your romantic phrases.
In fact as a longtime pioneer who established back in 95 a internet provider company - I am aware of things to be sent open and about things to better hide:
Today i am using a reliable mail service (proton.com - which I have no connection with other than using it) to send "more important mail" with attached files. The good thing - you only can login via browser. Everything is encoded. There is no download like normal mail providers. You can login and download immediately the attachments to your machine and then you may log out. The service is in Switzerland and the usage is free up to 500MB. From there some real low cost scheme is available. Great about this: No ADS, no SPAM no bugs. It just works.
I had it installed for friends as a circumvent of the sniffing large companies, scanning ALL files. And as a emergency exit for difficult mail management. You can be alerted on every device when new mails are running in.

Just to summarize - some data management for privacy needs to be installed - family first - then for the company too.

GFIs1

thanks @GFIs1

I heard of Proton Mail - Switzerland based and they do not allow any type of snooping in their servers. For the privacy conscious it's a very worthwhile service.


I think the correct website it this though

https://protonmail.com/

xplorer 

thanks @GFIs1 I heard of Proton Mail - Switzerland based and they do not allow any type of snooping in their servers. For the privacy conscious it's a very worthwhile service. I think the correct website it this though https://protonmail.com/

Thank: True - just didn't want to make plain advertising here on fio
GFIs1

GFIs1 

Thank: True - just didn't want to make plain advertising here on fio GFIs1

Sure, it's not like it's a trading service, plus they do have free option if one wants to check them out.

This Washington Post article is further proof of the profound implications associated with having personal data online available in the public domain.

I am quoting a few key passages, emhpasis mine.

Quoting 

Facebook’s recent suspension of Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm that played a key role in President Trump’s 2016 campaign, highlights the rapid rise of a company that claimed it had reached new heights in marrying the art of political persuasion with the science of big data.

Quoting 

What is clear is that the services Cambridge Analytica offered are increasingly coveted by modern political campaigns. Yet Facebook users had few indications of how their personal data was collected, refashioned and deployed on behalf of candidates. A Cambridge University professor working for Cambridge Analytica in 2014 created an app, called Thisisyourdigitallife, that offered personality predictions and billed itself on Facebook as “a research app used by psychologists.” The professor, a Russian American named Aleksandr Kogan, used the app to gain access to demographic information — including the names of users, their “likes,” friend lists, and other data. Once obtained by Cambridge Analytica, political campaigns could use those profiles to target users with highly tailored messages, ads or fundraising requests. Facebook said 270,000 people downloaded the app. But people familiar with how such systems work — including a former Cambridge Analytica employee — said the app would have given Cambridge access to information on the friends of each of those people, a number that almost certainly reached into the tens of millions.

Quoting 

Cambridge Analytica — which was funded by Trump supporter and hedge fund executive Robert Mercer, and once had on its board the president’s former senior adviser Stephen K. Bannon — has denied wrongdoing. The company has said its “psychometric profiles” could predict the personality and political leanings of most U.S. voters.

Quoting 

Despite years of reports of developers abusing data, Facebook’s processes for dealing with developers who broke the company’s rules were lax, said two former Facebook employees whose job it was to review data use by third parties. The company does not audit developers who siphon data, the people said. If a developer was found to have broken the rules — usually because of a story in the news — the company would give them a warning or kick them off the platform, but it did not take steps to ensure that data taken inappropriately had been deleted, they said. Sandy Parakilas, a former privacy manager at Facebook, said that during his tenure at Facebook, the company did not conduct a single audit of developers.

xplorer 

This Washington Post article is further proof of the profound implications associated with having personal data online available in the public domain. I am quoting a few key passages, emhpasis mine.

While none of this is technically wrong in a legal sense, it is an enormous misuse of information that the original people involved did not know would happen, and did not expect, and almost certainly would not have agreed to.

The fact that Facebook users made it publicly available just shows how trustingly naive people are. But they should be able to do so without someone who is cynically exploitative taking advantage of them.

While Facebook obviously was initially naive as well, thinking that all sharing of information is good (also profitable to themselves), they have also been careless and unconcerned about the damage caused to their customers, and to the larger society. Clearly, at some point it simply was not in their interests to become concerned about it, so they made the choice not to.

There are a lot of occasions where people will say something like "there oughta be a law," and usually it's pretty superficial. But in this case, there really ought to be a law, and an entire body of law, to prevent this kind of abuse.

Also, frankly, some lawsuits. If it's no longer in the interests of social media companies to be unconcerned about the use of their data, then suddenly, magically, the issues will get addressed and dealt with.

Bob.

EU GDPR becomes active on 25th May 2018. Violation fines are supposedly able to be levied at 4% of turnover. But for anybody who knows the Snowden story it's all probably irrelevant and far too late.

In the meantime even pub chains are worried about lists of customers kept locally by managers - from the sublime slime to the ridiculous indeed.