250 Ways to get your Data

Typical News Website Cookie Notice — now read below and weep!

Lots of us that are on Twitter get our news from there. There are millions of users posting links to news websites and most of these news websites, these days, are behind a paywall, so we can’t read the article unless we pay!

But there are also 100’s of news websites who do not have a paywall, but they need us to accept their cookie notice. Their cookie notice is SO big, it means that unless you accept it, there’s absolutely no way that you can read the article that you have been lured towards.

So what do you do, just click away? Well you’ve taken the trouble of being enticed to go and read the article, so you might as well click the cookie notice and read the article. But have you ever really investigated what you are giving acceptance too?

After investigating many websites who have this very large cookie notice, obscuring the article, I have discovered that there are around 250 companies, who are after your data.

They introduce their cookie notice with the following wording. I have grabbed this from a media website named archant.co.uk.

We are committed to building local communities through high-quality journalism and content. We and our partners use technology such as cookies to personalise content and advertising for you, to provide social media features and to better understand our audience. By enabling cookies you will help us to fund the journalism & content you enjoy, safeguarding it for the future and personalising your reading experience across all Archant Community Media Ltd owned brands. By choosing not to accept cookies you will receive a generic content and advertising experience, not tailored to you or your local interests. If you do not wish for us to use cookies (other than those that are strictly necessary) please change the buttons below and save & exit. You can revisit your choice at any time by clicking ‘Manage cookies’ at the bottom of this site.

Let’s be clear, this is not just Google or Facebook ads, these are 250 companies across the world, who wish to push ads to you based on your unique IP address. These aren’t just ads on their website, these are ads wherever you go.

In essence The Internet and the media websites and others, have constructed a new tax, that tax is your data and ads. If you wish to consume any content these days, that is the tax you are paying. Regardless of their suggestion that you can manage, what you receive in terms of ads, it’s not that easy to manage it and it takes time, a lot of time, especially seeing as we’re all so time poor and surf the web in split second increments.

I move away now from any website that has this huge cookie notice — I avoid them all the time. Instead I consume my news in other ways, Twitter is great, but definitely avoid clicking through to news websites. The Apple News app is not bad, but even inside there they have loads of ads and now most news channels request a subscription.

I’m afraid this is only going to get worse as media channels are trying to get their revenues up.

The company I researched by the way has a £87 million turnover and employ 1,277 people. See the stats below.

Happy news surfing, but just know what you are saying YES too.

Michael de Groot

Our data our human right!

Created using Word Swag

I recently watched The Great Hack on Netflix. At the time when the Cambridge Analytica story broke I was right on it and it changed my view of Facebook forever. I still have an account but the truth is I’d rather not. Trouble is because so many people are on Facebook, you can’t ignore it as a channel to promote your business or event. I hate that they have such a hold on us all. It’s actually worse then governments, we are such slaves to social media and especially Facebook, yuk!

I actually was a massive promoter of FB way back when they were just a spot on everyone’s mind. I even introduced friends and family to join it so we could engage with each other. Some friends even said, really Michael, you think it’s important for me to be on Facebook?

Even before the CA story broke, I had stopped using FB, maybe I just sensed that they were a timesuck for everyone and that the fake news brigade were pointing a fire hose at it.

One thing that did surprise me from The Great Hack documentary was a name I had not heard of before Brittany Kaiser, she was the deal maker for CA and did the deal with Donald Trump’s campaign team. Wow, how lucky was Trump that she walked into his campaign HQ. She showed a significant degree of remorse and even described the tools they had used as military grade weapons.

Mark Zuckerberg reminds me of one of the characters straight out of Star Wars, you know one of the evil officers on the enemy ship, especially with his haircut. We like to describe Trump like evil, but actually Zuckerberg is 100 times more evil compared to Trump. The billions have definitely gone to his head.

I believe it won’t be long before he’s out of Facebook now.

The documentary, which I know focuses almost exclusively on Facebook, is probably just the tip of the iceberg and of course they’re not the only company who are data miners. They all are, Amazon, Apple, Google (Alphabet), Microsoft and many others that aren’t even famous yet. In case you’re thinking WhatsApp or Instagram, you are correct, but they’re part of Facebook, who are already guilty.

The biggest crime I believe Facebook are allowing is companies uploading our emails or mobile numbers to their Facebook custom audiences product, which means they can target us directly. And Mark Zuckerberg says he doesn’t sell our data, which is a complete and outrageous lie. Every couple of weeks I go inside my personal settings and delete a bunch of companies who are using my email address to target adverts to me. They have to physically upload my data to FB and then FB lists those companies on my ads settings. Unbelievable! 🙈

All of us need to get educated and realise that our data is being mined by all of the biggest companies on the Internet and there are no signs on the horizon that this is going to change anytime soon.

Happy data protecting!

Michael de Groot

The tech revolution — hurting or helping?

Hugh MacLeod

Well that depends on the eye of the beholder, the person who just was trolled, spammed, hacked or they had their private data stolen, because they trusted Facebook or Google or Twitter or Tumblr or Instagram and all of the others who exist and don’t exist yet.

When you have a service, which is free to the user and the prime objective is to get as many eyeballs as possible on the platform, so they can parade it in front of advertisers, you have just created a toxic recipe for disaster.

Why?

Because now the same platform that has billions of users, becomes very attractive to governments at large. Ever wondered why not one single government in the world has taken any serious action against Facebook? Because they all want access to the public data. I have sat through presentations where cyber security professionals can walk all over Facebook in nano-seconds and deliver the kind of intelligence on people they would have only dreamt of years ago. Mark Zuckerberg will be loved and hated always.

Loved because now criminals and charities can get in front of millions. Loved because governments are able to manipulate audiences. Brexit and Trump come to mind and they are the ones that grab the headlines.

If you believe that Facebook can police the millions of users that create bad stuff, the so-called bad actors, think again and again and again. They may tell us they have employed thousands of employees staring at screens, trying to catch the bad actors.

What’s the solution Michael?

It’s so simple, you will be amazed why it has never been done before.

Verification!

Instead of spending millions on having people stare at screens, trying to catch bad people in the act, good luck with that, have them spend the time verifying every single user, whether existing or new and especially the new (hacking) kind.

Everyone should have a verification tick. Governments can do it with all citizens, well most of them anyway, so why can’t these platforms adopt the same approach.

Sure it will slow down the user growth and billions of dollars of income, but it sure would be a guarantee that bad actors would find it much harder to keep adding fake accounts all over the place.

Yeah I know, it will never happen!

Happy scrolling!

@stayingaliveuk

ps. And then I found Yoti and kiwanja on here.

Analytica

Even the name Cambridge Analytica gives me the creeps. Cambridge obviously is a famous University in England and has a great standing, after all some famous people were students there.

So using the University town’s name in your business title is a clever move. It just feels reputable and very knowledgable. Add a bit of Harry Potter sparkle by adding the word ‘Analytica’ and it sounds like a spell straight out of one of J.K. Rowling’s novels.

And indeed it was a spell and everyone fell for it, most of all us the citizens of the world that have handed over all our personal details, so freely and trustingly to the biggest data farm in the world, Facebook.

Of course you will get companies farming that data, scraping it and utilising it to their own benefit. And Facebook allowed you to grab the data with those amazing apps you could create. They’re the ones that you again so freely trusted, signing up to them because they looked and sounded so enticing. Everyone wants to know about their personality, their match partner and many other schemes to hand over your data.

Maybe, just maybe we will be wiser next time, although I doubt it. On a Radio programme I heard a young person interviewed saying how much she loves her social media and that she’s on it all the time, as are all her friends too. It seems almost inconceivable that something we’re so addicted to, we’ll ever going to leave behind.

“Face me I face you white neon sign at work on dark background, Phoenix Art Museum” by Dayne Topkin on Unsplash

Don’t get me wrong it does a lot of good in the world too, whole communities (tribes) can stay in touch with each other on topics they enjoy. Indeed Zuck (short for Mark Zuckerberg) even went on a tour to talk to communities in the real world and get them to speak openly about how much they have benefitted from Facebook. Very clever Mr Zuckerberg, very clever to get people on-side this way, pulling them in even further, ever deeper.

And why didn’t you come to the EU Zuck? Because you know we don’t trust you anymore, you know that we’ll be after you and your schemes and expose them.

Actually Governments love Facebook, that’s why they’ve gotten away with billions of tax dollars and pounds. Governments can get data on individuals like they’ve never been able to before.

Just watch the TV series ‘Hunted’ and you will see how those intelligence experts can grab data from Facebook in just a few clicks. We’re the stupid ones, we’re the ones that fell for Zuck’s web of deceit and manipulation. He cleverly pulled us in and make us feel secure and maybe even loved by the Facebook family.

Happy liking!

Michael de Groot