Topic: Companies that are scary - page 11. (Read 2437 times)

I'm surprised that nobody mentioned the colourful monolith, all knowing uncle, the great cards dealer, advertising croupier etc. etc, google.
Latest days where quite saturated with news regarding this giant being able to record and store all our voice commands.
Check this out if you missed it somehow, it is always voluntary but enabled by default, so it is possible to "stop this service" but... service as a part of the android system is still there and running.
And how many other instances of our data collection (unfortunately still voluntary) are there? Most of googles services require us to have some sort of additional sensors enabled, I can only imagine, how much data they posses daily on one single individual. If this isn't scary, idk what is.

You must have heard about this article right where facebook was doing experiments on manipulating emotions. We have to accept the fact that not everybody in the world has the same level of smarts and common sense. Their are a lot of emotionally unstable, emotional fools out there. That doesn't mean that the intrusion by ad companies is answerable by the individual himself.


Sound good when its just the cat. Not so much when the state decides to infringe on your activities because you are becoming a thorn by the side, say like an activist journalist. They know everything about you and your behavior pattern, places you visit etc. Its not so hard to imagine such data being used to demolish political opponents or even activists.


I don't think its so simplistic. Normal people like you and me gradually become part of this machinery that determines how the world runs. When the people in power no everything and monitor everyone, their are subtle ways that information can be used to their advantage without anybody noticing. Maybe facebook doesn't want your data. But having all of it stored in their servers is a potential mine from where patterns can be derived.
You may call it paranoid but the level of false information that is being fed to reinforce viewpoints is undeniable. This is being made possible by targeted delivery of news and ads. You only ever see the things that their "algorithm" thinks will gain the most clicks form you or the most view time. You surrender yourself as a consumer because you only ever see what they show you. Where is the chance to expand your horizons and make mistakes then.
So, One really shouldn't brush off privacy concerns. They affect all of us and have far reaching consequences.

If you're that easy to manipulate and a few ads can shape your "thoughts" even billboards are dangerous for you.
The problem might not be the website, but the user behind monitor.


And? If it ever gets lost, that might be helpful when you need to find it.


None. And, what can they do with that data? They can print it and wipe their........
Sometime people get paranoid. FB has my data....what can they do with it?

Social sites are the most invasive sites as they harvest all your data and sell these data to advertisers. The place you live, your likes, your friends, the type of food you like, the things you do not like. These are all used for advertisers to market products to you. Social sites sell all the information about you. So as a user, I am careful about what i share.

For shopping sites like amazon, their intentions are about understanding what products you like. They do not harvest your private information, they track my preference in products and then market similar products to me. In this sense, they are helpful as they help me to discover new products.

Notice the differences in the two? So be careful about what you share online. Our digital identity is a precious commodity but most just get sold by social media sites without our knowledge.

For now I have not felt with the company is frightening, in fact with the company I find it helpful to find friends who have long lost contact. But in the future it could be a company can be frightening, because our information has been input by them, such as email, and our home address.

The Internet knows where your cat lives. Using the hidden meta-data about the geographic location of where the photo was taken which we share when we publish photos of our cats on sites like Instagram and other social media networks.

I think Facebook is the most evidently intrusive. They monitor all of your online activity pretty much and then shape your thoughts and such with targeted advertising. There will come a time in the future when the world decides it needs to take a step back from such intrusion in to their personal lives.

Of all the large companies that are now large internet players, do anyone particularly scare you in terms of how you data and track could be used? Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, …?