{"id":23086,"date":"2013-11-25T10:36:10","date_gmt":"2013-11-25T15:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=23086"},"modified":"2013-11-25T10:36:10","modified_gmt":"2013-11-25T15:36:10","slug":"when-your-product-is-users-your-product-improvement-is-more-surveillance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/11\/25\/when-your-product-is-users-your-product-improvement-is-more-surveillance\/","title":{"rendered":"When your product is &#8220;users&#8221; your product improvement is &#8220;more surveillance&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.schneier.com\/blog\/archives\/2013\/11\/surveillance_as_1.html\" target=\"_blank\">Bruce Schneier<\/a> on the rising tide of <strong>non<\/strong>-governmental surveillance:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Google recently announced that it would start <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/technology\/la-fi-tn-google-ads-user-names-pictures-opt-out-20131011,0,419118.story\" target=\"_blank\">including individual users&#8217; names and photos in some ads<\/a>. This means that if you rate some product positively, your friends may see ads for that product with your name and photo attached \u2014 without your knowledge or consent. Meanwhile, Facebook is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2013\/10\/11\/facebook_privacy_deletion\/\" target=\"_blank\">eliminating a feature that allowed people to retain some portions of their anonymity on its website<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>These changes come on the heels of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/tech\/2013\/09\/17\/google-cookies-advertising\/2823183\" target=\"_blank\">Google&#8217;s move to explore replacing tracking cookies<\/a> with something that users have even less control over. Microsoft is <a href=\"http:\/\/adage.com\/article\/digital\/microsoft-cookie-replacement-span-desktop-mobile-xbox\/244638\" target=\"_blank\">doing something similar<\/a> by developing its own tracking technology.<\/p>\n<p>More generally, lots of companies are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.informationweek.com\/security\/privacy\/advertisers-evade-do-not-track-with-supe\/240162521\" target=\"_blank\">evading the &#8220;Do Not Track&#8221; rules<\/a>, meant to give users a say in whether companies track them. Turns out the whole <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/why-do-not-track-is-worse-than-a-miserable-failure-7000004634\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Do Not Track&#8221; legislation<\/a> has been a sham.<\/p>\n<p>It shouldn&#8217;t come as a surprise that big technology companies are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/business\/2013\/10\/private-tracking-arms-race\" target=\"_blank\">tracking us on the Internet<\/a> even more aggressively than before.<\/p>\n<p>If these features don&#8217;t sound particularly beneficial to you, it&#8217;s because you&#8217;re not the customer of any of these companies. You&#8217;re the product, and you&#8217;re being improved for their actual customers: their advertisers. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bruce Schneier on the rising tide of non-governmental surveillance: Google recently announced that it would start including individual users&#8217; names and photos in some ads. This means that if you rate some product positively, your friends may see ads for that product with your name and photo attached \u2014 without your knowledge or consent. Meanwhile, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,10,28,15],"tags":[97,391,328,94,154,911],"class_list":["post-23086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-liberty","category-media","category-technology","tag-advertising","tag-facebook","tag-google","tag-microsoft","tag-privacy","tag-surveillance"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-60m","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23086"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23087,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23086\/revisions\/23087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}