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It’s likely that most of you watching this show wouldn’t enjoy the prospect of every
website you’ve visited and every search term you’ve entered into a comment box being
made public knowledge.
If not made public knowledge, then you probably feel at least a little bit uncomfortable knowing
that what you do online is stored as data somewhere.
It came as quite a shock to some people in 2018 when Google became more transparent as
to what data it stored regarding your searches, where you’ve been, what sites you like to
visit.
Your security is not sacred, and that’s one reason why from 2016 to 2018 the number
of people using VPNs has grown substantially.
Big Brother is watching, and where you virtually tread, you most likely leave some dirty footprints.
Welcome to this episode of the Infographics Show, Who Is Watching What You Do Online Right
Now?
2018 was what you might call an eye-opener when it comes to user privacy, or lack thereof.
You could say that Facebook had the hardest year of its life so far, seeing that story
after story came out revealing that the social media giant hasn’t exactly been very careful
with our data.
You no doubt know all about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which showed us that user
data could carelessly be sold to bidders.
Information of about 50 million people was mined without their permission, and perhaps
for the first time some people started to realize that Mark Zuckerberg et al. weren’t
just connecting the world, but collecting the world in a sense.
Big tech loves to gush over how it’s making the world a better place, and tends not to
talk too much about that thing we call the bottom line.
But there’s a saying in the tech world that goes something like, “If it’s free, you’re
paying in another way.”
We think by the end of this show you will never agree more with this cynical but probably
true dictum.
We might look at a Guardian article from March 2018 which was given the title, “Are you
ready?
Here is all the data Facebook and Google have on you.”
The story opened by telling us that most of us are not aware of the depth of the harvesting
of our personal details.
Google is a little more open about this now, but the company you might say was not always
transparent regarding what information is stored on us.
You likely know that somewhere there is data concerning every place you visited, as long
as your device was being used and you were using Google.
If you want, you can go back and see everywhere you travelled.
This for some people might be nothing, but it has certainly spooked others out.
Maybe there are some places you went that you really wouldn’t want anyone to know
about.
But it goes a lot further than this.
All your Google searches are recorded.
Sure, you can delete your search history, but that doesn’t always mean to say it’s
gone.
And we are talking about every search you’ve ever made.
Security experts tell us this, “Clearing your browser history doesn’t do anything
to the data stored on Google’s servers.”
That’s one way that Google can target you with ads, because it has a profile on you.
You are a neat package, and there’s just not so much you can do about this if you use
Google.
It knows what apps you use, when you use them, how long you use them for.
It knows what you watch on YouTube, say, whether you’re into Christian hymns, Russian car
crashes, arguing about the merits of Jordan Peterson; if you’re worried about your weight,
if you’re feeling down, or if you’re a discerning dude or gal and watch the Infographics
Show.
The Guardian journalist wrote, “The data Google has on you can fill millions of Word
documents.”
He requested to download all the data Google had on him and it came to about three million
Word documents.
It was basically the greatest portfolio anyone could ever have on him, including him.
This is why we have seen dystopian sci-fi TV about people being replicated quite accurately
using their online data to create the new them.
As we said, you might well already understand this, but some people have never fully contemplated
their life being neatly packaged in one place, easily downloaded, possibly copied, sold,
and not so easily deleted.
Again, even if you stored things in Google Drive and then deleted those files, Google
saves them.
Even the photos you deleted, Google not only doesn’t delete them, but saves the meta-data
concerning where they were taken and when.
It’s the same for emails.
You might delete them, but Google saves them for you.
What we are trying to say is that you are always being watched and recorded when you
use these products, and you can’t just get rid of the information by pressing delete.
The same writer said he looked into what data Facebook had on him, and again, it was a lot.
For him it amounted to about 400,000 Word documents of information.
This didn’t just include posts he’d made, but all messages he’d ever sent and all
audio calls he’d ever made through Messenger.
It’s all there, stored away, never lost.
Facebook uses all this information to make a profile of you, so it can target you with
relevant ads.
Well, that’s one reason it does it, but some skeptics might tell you it’s also about
surveillance.
That is just a theory, though.
Is this a big deal?
The Electronic Privacy Information Center seems to think so.
It tells us that our data, these packages of us, are not just used for marketing purposes
but can be sold to insurance companies, banks, people who might one day rent you a house,
even by future employers.
“There are no limits to what types of information can be collected, how long it can be retained,
with whom it can be shared or how it can be used,” said the center.
That same article gave us some good news, in that the Federal Trade Commission was pushing
for a “Do Not Track” initiative to prevent companies from storing your data.
And it’s not just the likes of Google and Facebook, it’s other big tech and sometimes
small tech companies.
Remember many of us use connected products of all kinds, what we call the Internet of
Things.
Did any of you see the 2016 story about a smart toy that women used in their nether
regions for physical stimulation?
Well, as Motherboard reported, one of those types of toys was collecting data on its users.
Yes, when the woman turned the toy on and went to work, the IoT plastic master of sensuous
thrills was in some ways a mole.
Sure, the company did this to see how the toy was used, but what if someone else got
their hands on this very personal information?
The worst thing of course was that the buyers of these toys were not told that their playtime
was being recorded.
By the way, if you’re wondering why anyone would buy a connected toy such as this, it
was mainly so the lover could control it remotely and get feedback.
But there’s more, a lot more.
As one security site tells us, whenever you go to a news media site, on average, you’re
being seen by 30 third party sites.
These could be analytics firms, social networks or even font providers.
You’re not often aware of who is watching you.
Everyone wants a piece of you, and mostly that’s just because people are making money.
As the website The Conversation writes, “Think you’re reading the news for free?
New research shows you’re likely paying with your privacy.”
We are told many struggling media sites have turned to allowing you to be tracked as letting
in those trackers is a way to make cash when times are hard.
As we said, nothing is really free online.
The Conversation wrote, “Our investigation has revealed that among the 2,000-plus news-related
websites identified by Alexa, readers are, on average, connected to over 19 third-party
servers.”
This included big names such as The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times.
It added that if you check the weather using AccuWeather you will be tracked by no less
than 48 third-party servers.
What’s quite amusing is that the data brokers that harvest this information have special
names for people relating to their spending power.
Some of these include, “Power Elite”, “American Royalty” “Urban Survivors”
and “Small Town Shallow Pockets.”
All we are trying to say is that when you are browsing you are also probably giving.
But what about Big Brother, the real Big Brother and not just some sketchy uncle getting hold
of your data to make a quick buck.
What we mean is, is the government watching you?
Well, firstly you should know that when you grant an app access to your phone’s mic
or camera you can be recorded or watched at any time.
Security expert Felix Krause told The Guardian in 2017 that your iPhone can even take photos
and video without you knowing it, and then upload that data instantly.
He went as far to say that facial recognition tech could be employed without your knowing
it, or that video taken could be live-streamed to the internet without your consent.
Could the government make use of this?
Well, you might recall a man called Edward Snowden, enemy number one for a time in the
eyes of some people in the U.S. government.
He said that an NSA program called Optic Nerves got hold of Yahoo user video chats and started
taking still images every few minutes.
Quite a lot of those images he said were of people wearing only their birthday suit.
Other NSA surveillance programs consisted of building backdoors into devices.
According to The Guardian, this meant the agency could “tune in to your phone calls,
read your messages, capture pictures of you, stream videos of you, read your emails, steal
your files … at any moment they please.”
And the Brits weren’t any better.
Snowden spilled the beans on a secret program called Tempora, which was a government-sponsored
mass surveillance program consisting of extracting information from British Internet users from
fiber-optic cables.
But is big tech in cahoots with the government?
You’d think not, seeing how hard it was for the FBI to get Apple to give data stored
on an iPhone.
But Quartz writes that you can find data on when government has requested user information
from tech companies and that tells you that these companies hardly ever say no.
If government asks, according to Quartz, it shall receive.
We saw the statistics and indeed from thousands of requests the big names in tech almost always
said yes.
Then you have brazen governments that tell their citizens they are being tracked, and
the men in suits are proud of it.
In 2016, the Thai government, which has cybercrime laws you could call Draconian to the extreme,
reported that it was monitoring 40 million Line app messages its citizens were sending.
In a twist, though, the Thai government said Line was in on this but Line denied it had
given access to the Thai government.
This Big Brother outfit of a military junta certainly is watching its people, threatening
lengthy prison sentences just for liking something on Facebook that to anyone from the western
world would seem totally harmless.
China is even worse, forcing private companies to keep tabs on their users.
That government is currently in the testing stage of a massive surveillance program that
will track citizens and give them a citizen score.
This score will affect many aspects of their lives.
This is the closest thing to Big Brother we have ever seen, and one might wonder if other
countries will follow suit.
India could be called China’s Little Brother.
In 2008, the Information Technology Act gave the government permission to tap all communications
without a warrant.
Something called The National Intelligence Grid, which seems to have been in the making
for years, also wants to track a lot of information about every citizen, including their Internet
logs.
Arguably, in terms of ethical data collection it seems the EU is the least oppressive.
You might also say that some countries are quite open about their oppressive surveillance
while others talk about the value of privacy and then come in through the back door like
a cat burglar rather than a heavy-handed thief.
If this wasn’t bad enough, hackers can also harvest information from you; they can get
into your mic and camera, or they can take over your machine.
So, basically a hacker could be watching you and seeing what you are doing online, as could
the government, and of course the apps themselves know what you are doing.
We like this piece of advice from a security expert: “If your heart is set on being as
invisible to Google as you can possibly be, then don’t use the internet.”
We won’t just pick on Google, though, you could say that about many companies.
Let’s face it, this is literally what we signed up for when we didn’t read the small
print or listened to what critical security experts told us.
We just have to hope that we are never badly exploited; that tech companies protect our
data as best they can; that they fiercely guard against anyone trying to use it without
our permission.
That’s maybe wishful thinking.
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Or, do you disagree?
Do you think we do have a lot of privacy and some critics are just being paranoid?
Or do you think is it worse than we have stated today?
Also, be sure to check out our other video These Scary Things Really Happen In The Dark
Web.
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time.