quote:

Originally posted by Prefontaine:

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
I'm simply left shaking my head at those of you who ceaselessly defend this crap. Incredible.

"Oh, but do you have a smartphone?" (Said in a deliberately snarky, exaggerated, imitating voice).

So. Freaking. What.

Same. The herd don't care, we are the overwhelming minority. Most are happy to blab all day about all their personal shit on instagoogletwatfacegram.

Not to be snarky, but you've got 7000 plus posts on SF. I've got over 8000. It's not like you (or me) are all that private. It's all swept up, indexed, correlated. At least, that's how I look at it.

quote:

Originally posted by r0gue:

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
I'm simply left shaking my head at those of you who ceaselessly defend this crap. Incredible.

"Oh, but do you have a smartphone?" (Said in a deliberately snarky, exaggerated, imitating voice).

So. Freaking. What.

Shake away. There's nothing to defend. I'm certain the privacy agreements that anyone who would actually bother to register and log their little robot vacuum-spy onto, would have to allow them to do whatever they're doing.

Nothing snarky at all in my post, or anyone else's that I've read here.

Sorry, rogue. I meant I was being purposely snarky. Not you.

Anyway, don't read too much into it. I was having one of those days.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:

quote:

Originally posted by r0gue:

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
I'm simply left shaking my head at those of you who ceaselessly defend this crap. Incredible.

"Oh, but do you have a smartphone?" (Said in a deliberately snarky, exaggerated, imitating voice).

So. Freaking. What.

Shake away. There's nothing to defend. I'm certain the privacy agreements that anyone who would actually bother to register and log their little robot vacuum-spy onto, would have to allow them to do whatever they're doing.

Nothing snarky at all in my post, or anyone else's that I've read here.

Sorry, rogue. I meant I was being purposely snarky. Not you.

Anyway, don't read too much into it. I was having one of those days.

No worries! And I'll add that while I don't worry about bits of privacy risk like the Roomba and/or Amazon Echo, it's for two reasons --- 1. because I do work very directly in privacy and security for a living, and I understand that technology pretty well (more the Echo if I'm honest) and thus I've assessed it.

That said, The 2nd reason I don't worry about those is an assumption of breach. It's already game over in my mind. Even the Equifax breach doesn't freak me out personally. When your SSN and Birthday are breached for the 8th time,... who cares? It's like a secret that the 5th person who knew it has just betrayed. It's out.

Now --- What DOES worry me is what nation states are doing with all of this info. By now we should be pretty well mapped as a nation. And while I don't care if they know how big my living room is, I do care that they know the org chart of my nation's defense department due to the OPM breach, and the diagnosis of those staff through several heath care breaches, and the credit score through the Equifax breach and and and and..... correlation

Lt. Smith is in charge of a critical area of our defenses, and his daughter was diagnosed with Leukemia and his credit score is shitty.. So, prime target for compromise and bribes to betray his nation. THAT's the sort of thing that I worry about. Business competitors from unfriendly states could/would be in that same position. Damaging American businesses. Shorting stocks and thus artificially disadvantaging American companies and shifting wealth to other nations through stock transaction wins. So much risk, and it'd be so easy, that I want to go back in the Matrix and be naive again!

If they ever learn to download my cats brain I'm screwed! He knows all my darkest secrets!

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:

quote:

Originally posted by r0gue:
Damn it! Now they'll know I have a dining room with a walnut table in it. That, combined with their knowledge of the temperature I like my house, and that I use a 30 minute timer around dinner time several times a week. This is problematic.

In all seriousness, if privacy concerns are truly important to someone, I can respect that. But start with your own smartphone. Because that's the most prolific and powerful information gathering device ever created. Particularly the better apps like Google Maps, but even streaming services etc. There are pockets of info about us all over the networks, and correlation is happening now, and will only become more powerful.

Do you use Google Maps and YouTube? Do you watch gun videos ever, and do you go to gun stores and a gun range? That's child's play to harvest with modern analytics. And through automation, then to start targeting you for influence. Now you might worry they'll want to influence you to the left, but I don't believe it. I think it's MUCH more likely that they'll try to sell you a Glock or a Ruger. I think their apparent left leanings are just to be on the good side of the leftists that might want to regulate the hell out of them. Again... that's just my opinion.

The only freedom I personally see at risk is that of free will. We'll be controlled through influence just like we always have been through marketing. But it will be more effective. Perhaps to some degree, more effective in that it gives us what we want and doesn't create that want,.. but there's a fuzzy line there.

This is my view. Unless you throw your smart phone away (which except for a few Luddites, everyone has), your Roomba's data is essentially meaningless as compared to what your cell phone already tells Apple, Google, or whoever.

So, unless you practically withdraw from the modern computerized world, you're giving up that kind of data everyday, and can't hardly avoid it.

And so what, for the most part? They use the data to try to sell me the kind of socks I like, not to send Al Qaeda assassins.

And most importantly to me, it is a private deal between you and Roomba. If you don't want Roomba to have that data, don't buy one. Easy.

You don't have to do anything as dramatic as throwing away your smart phone. Personally, I give away a LOT less data than most people, and here is how I do it:

My location and notifications app selections are kept very tight on my iPhone

I connect to the internet with a VPN on my iMac, MacBook Pro, and iPhone. Websites don't know my location, my ISP isn't packet sniffing me to advertise, and when I'm on free wi-fi they're not packet sniffing me either. Typically, my VPN tunnels into NYC so I hope I'm fucking up their analytics with my browsing (i.e. firearms).

I personally don't want an appliance (e.g. a Roomba) in my house connecting to the Internet and sharing god knows what. I've considered taking it a step further, and configuring my router to tunnel into my VPN. That would insure that anything connected to my network wouldn't be so vulnerable.

When I lived in Canada, a fellow American expat had two routers. One was for her Canadian ISP and the other her VPN tunneled into the USA. Netflix, Amazon, etc. all worked with the expanded US services (Canadian versions are much more limited in comparison).

---

Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity

DISCLAIMER: These are the author's own personal views and do not represent the views of the author's employer.

No offense or insult intended, but I've often wondered why personal VPNs are considered a significant technological assurance of privacy. It hides your behavior and actions from...? I suppose your local cable company. But you are a peer on the VPN network, and they have then all the visibility of you and your actions that your cable provider would have had. And being an "interesting target", I'd be concerned that they'd be compromised by threat actors.