Hey YouTube, Jim here! Welcome to Top10Archive! Ever since the dawn
of the technological revolution, our privacy seems to be increasingly at risk for attack.
Perhaps the most weird fact of all, is that we actually agree and give these companies permission
most of the time. Today, we’re going through the Top 10 Creepy Ways Companies Collect Data!
10. Your Health & Habits Independent journalism can
really be the friend of the consumer when it comes to releasing information that big companies don’t
want you to know. Take ProPublica’s release of information, when they leaked that the data
gathered by medical devices (heart rates, sleep patterns, and steps taken) is sold to IT companies
and even health insurers, who use it against their clients to deny reimbursements. Suddenly,
your private sleep data and the status of your health seems more delicate than ever, right?
9. What Floor You’re On Back in 2017, the popular
weather app AccuWeather got caught selling their users location without their consent or knowledge.
They didn’t stop after getting caught, either. The worst part is that they follow you not just
to your town, where you'd assume they’d have enough to figure out the weather, but right down
to the square foot or square meter. In fact, they were measuring what floor of a building
users were on. I know what you’re thinking, “Just go into settings and turn off location services.”
It’s not so easy. AccuWeather was so shady with their users that they’d actually continue tracking
their location after it was turned off. Even without a sim card or without being signed in to
your account on the phone, it would continue. 8. Your Sexual Orientation
Though Facebook doesn’t outright ask you about your sexual orientation,
it doesn’t mean they don’t know it from your behavior. In 2013, a paper was able to show
great accuracy in inferring whether someone is homosexual or heterosexual. Additionally,
Facebook can also tell whether you’re happy or emotionally stable. All of this, along with so
much more, is being collected and "used" with the selling point that it's for our benefit by giving
us a more pleasurable viewing experience. 7. Your Account Balance
In 2015, Apple, who generally claims they’re looking out for their users’ privacy,
filed a patent for a new program to run on your phone 24/7. The program would monitor
as you checked your banking apps. Then use the data of your balance and sell it to advertisers.
Were they stealthy about it? See for yourself what the patent said:
“Goods and services are marketed to particular target groups of users [ . . . ] based on the
amount of pre-paid credit available to each user.” What does this mean? They could share how much you
owed on your credit card, how much credit you still had left, and then sell that information
to anyone who wanted it. 6. Whether You’re Pregnant
This one was quite famous as far as privacy breaches. In 2012, The New York Times leaked
that Target was monitoring shopping behavior on their website to analyze whether their clients
were pregnant. Then they’d send specific offers to those users on baby gear and other pregnancy
items. When they started sending coupons to one teenager in the mail, her father complained,
only to be surprised by the news he wasn’t aware of himself.
5. If there’s trouble in paradise Facebook knows that you’re thinking
about stepping away or stepping out on your current relationship. Facebook data showed
that one specific data point was whether a couple was “facebook official” for over three months.
The most likely sign for breaking up? Summer. It was the most dangerous season for relationships.
4. Your Conversations Apparently, you’re not wrong to think that someone
is listening. Many apps have software that’s purposely hidden and use your mic to record what’s
around. Why would they want that, you ask? They want to know which ads work, and those that don't.
They’ll hear ads that are played around you and then see if you go on to make purchases from
those retailers, restaurants, etc. Surely, you’re thinking it’s only dark apps that nobody uses,
but even Google Home starts recording every time you use the word “okay”, whether or not you follow
it with “Google”. Those conversations are saved somewhere in the world, and “okay” being one of
the most-said words in the world, wouldn’t you want to know what’s out there recorded of you?
3. Phone Calls In 2018, it was
Facebook again who was called out for misbehaving. It started monitoring every
call made on Android devices that had their apps installed. After the Cambridge Analytica leak,
people started paying special attention to what data companies had on them. They found full
records of phone calls from their Android users, which included length of calls, names, and texts.
Though they say they never listened to any of it, there are other companies that do
and make money off of it by selling the content of those calls to advertisers.
2. Medical Records Tech companies aren’t
just gathering your information by spying on you, they’re also outright
buying it. Facebook sent buyers to hospitals to buy records of illnesses and prescriptions for “a
research project.” They’d get it without any names as per privacy laws. But, there was a great deal
of benefit for the hospitals as well. They’d get information on which patients might need
treatment, aka, business. It never went anywhere because Cambridge Analytica broke first. Should
you stop worrying now? Hardly. Other companies like CVS, Rite Aid, GE, and IBM have all exchanged
money for health information. Why? There are billions of dollars in it.
1. Your Face Facial recognition is one of the scariest privacy
breaches we have nowadays. Cameras are everywhere and many nations are using them to track you from
the moment you step out of your house until you return. Cameras at stores are watching, too.
This means that you can be tracked in your tastes. That shirt you almost bought? Someday
you could be seeing ads for it online just hours later. What else could happen?
Amazon is trying to sell a program like this for policing, the way it's used in countries
like China. This technology has deep flaws because it makes mistakes on people of color,
which would lead to many unforeseen problems. Thanks for watching! Do you know of some other
ways companies are collecting data on us? Let us know in the comments! The only thing
we’d like to collect is you as a subscriber if you’re not one already. Click that bell
and please give this video a like if you found it helpful, scary, infuriating, or whatever!