Posted on 03/26/2014 7:30:32 PM PDT by kingattax
These days, it’s nearly impossible for the average consumer to expect anonymity online or off—at least not without a bit of legwork.
Data brokers—companies that specialize in gathering information about consumers and selling it to third parties—have turned the collection and sale of publicly available personal information into a multibillion-dollar industry.
At any given moment, hundreds of these companies are analyzing everything from our zip codes, income, and ethnicity to our taste in music, our driving records, and how often we search for funny cat videos.
They then take that information, sort us into groups, and make a fortune selling it to marketers, employers, charities, government agencies, and other businesses. As to what they do with this information, the details can be hazy. Some information is sold to marketers, but some can be used to screen prospective employees, to run background checks, to detect identity theft, or to come up with a dubious alternative to traditional credit scores.
We know little about data tracking and the companies that do it. Neither regulators nor lawmakers have managed to wrap their heads around data brokers quite yet.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
But what about the government?
Thx for posting this. I wish a Freeper would post a similar article on anonymizers.
Great article, and it has good links worth following as well.
Well, I learned one thing. Get rid of tracking. Thanks:)
Any good add-ons for Firefox?
youre welcome
Laz - any comments?
I use MRU Blaster and CCleaner before I shut my PC down at night. Both programs clean the garbage out of your files so you don’t end up storing it.
ping
For FF AddOns I have AdBlock Plus, DoNotTrack Plus, NoScript and Facebook Blocker. I never see any advertising on my browser.
Move to Cuba?
I have been using the name: Mandi Woodruff
I am not being tracked : )
I’m good!
I don’t own a car, therefore, I don’t have any other driving record other than clean. I keep up the license, just in case. I then have no need for car insurance, either.
I have paid in cash since 1988, and have no credit cards, and no loans, so they lose there, too.
I do not have a house, so there is no mortgage (reverse or otherwise), Oh sure, there are utility bills, but that’s enough.
I have ‘privacy doo-hickees’ on my laptop, so I’m good.
Firefox Anti-Tracking Extensions:
DoNotTrackPlus
https://www.abine.com/
Ghostery
https://www.ghostery.com/
Disconnect
https://disconnect.me/
Save.
ping to read tomorrow
Good way to finally get on the list of those suspicious people who don’t want to be tracked like the rest of the citizens!
Oh, dear Lord. I’m doing research for a book series and I can only imagine the lists that I’m on for the searches I’ve done. (Probably a few gov’t ones, as well.)
Then there are the searches done out of curiosity. I’ll see someone commenting or making a joke that I won’t get, Google the subject matter and really, REALLY wish I hadn’t.
And then I think, “What’s that about?” and do it again when I encounter something else that I’m curious about a week later. (I learn slow, apparently.)
The problem is that people give their information willingly on facebook, in agreements to use their iPhones, credit cards, bank loans, google searches, social media sites etc.. and they don’t understand the ramifications of that.
That metadata is collected and converted in profiles that corporations then purchase in order to market.
The problem is that insurance companies are now looking at your meta data in order to explore ways to make certain individuals “high risk”
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