Stalk my pals on social media and you'll know that the next words out of my mouth will be banana hammock The phenomenon of "prescient Facebook advertising", so beloved of conspiracy theorists who think social networks listen to your microphone, might instead simply be evidence of how good Facebook's algorithms have become. That's one of the surprising hypotheses to arise from research by boffins from the University of Vermont and …
Not with me. FB's known IPs and URLs get blocked at the DNS level (I use PiHole+OpenVPN as my first port-of-call, plus some manual additions to PH). Then pop over to the hopefully-trustworthy Nord and hopefully am presenting lots of different faces (though not running via Nord today).
Hopefully enough to keep my data away from prying scumbag eyes.
Nope, long way from being out of toothpaste. Only use the tin foil when making garlic bread which is only when the bakery is out (Pizza hut still don't know how to make it, even after all this time! (that said, their pizza offerings are nice but still not nearly as good as what I can do!)
Reminds me, better start whipping up the dough. Guests coming for dinner tonight..
>Not with me. FB's known IPs and URLs get blocked at the DNS level
etc.
And how did you block the Apps / OS on your friends' mobiles?
E.g.
Almost everyone I know who uses a mobile uses Zuckerberg's WhatsApp and not one asked me whether I'd object to them saying yes to uploading contact details, including mine.
And how did you block the Apps / OS on your friends' mobiles?
That's easy. I don't have friends who use that :)
Them having my publicly available phone # and email addresses aren't exactly a matter of concern. You could have those details too if you just knew the right question(s) to ask. I did make them freely available online after all :)
>That's easy. I don't have friends who use that :)
The only way you could be sure is to know that no one regards you as their 'friend', enemy, contact, etc., sufficiently to put details in their Contacts list. How would you know that? How would you be aware of people who /do/ know you and store information about you without realising to whom it's sent to or thinking it worth mentioning?
>Them having my publicly available phone # and email addresses aren't exactly a matter of concern.
... web history... dating apps... financial history... tagged images...etc... etc?
Such information is accumulated, indexed and sold on. Companies and their data assets are bought and amalgamated. The pieces that hang from an IP address, a MAC address, a Wi-fi access point are amalgamated. Somewhere, some day, someone adds a piece of information that humans recognise and you are no longer a number, or a free man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW-bFGzNMXw
Good on you for trying, but the Zuckerborg, Googleplex, etc. are enormously more powerful.
Funny, a few weeks ago there was this radio show host that was going full-on conspiracy theorist about this -- stating that targeted ads kept coming up for him in a way that made him certain Google was listening to his conversations through his Android phone.
I guess both are just as likely!
How good are the "Shadow Profiles" at generating useful probability of a potential comment? If it needs to find eight of your friends, but you don't have an official profile with friends it can use to generate those predictions, then how good is their algorithms?
I imagine it to be akin to looking at the cars your family/friends/coworkers drive & trying to guess what car you drive based on those, ignoring the fact that you may not own a car at all. Or you own a motorcycle instead, or take public transportation, or you ride a donkey because grass is cheaper than gas.
I do not have & have never had a Twitter account, so how good would their predictions be given that fact? I have had a FB account at one point back in the mists of the Dawn of Time, but that was so long ago I'm not sure it would do any good in making more than a Wild Ass Guess.
What's my next comment? Wrong. AManFromMars & BombasticBob are experimenting with typewriters & drunken monkies to produce the next chatbot!
I would love to get a look at my shadow profile. I've never had a FB account, neither has my partner, and nor do my closest friends. Tracking cookies, etc are blocked on all my devices and have been for years. So they should know very little about me but unfortunately I know my contact details will be in phones belonging to extended family and friends who are users. I often wonder if FB have managed to connect those details to my shadow profile, how much info does it contain and is any of it accurate?
Presumably FB know who your friends are because they were the ones that clicked "please import all of my contacts into facebook" button when they first signed up. As long as one or two of your friends did that then FB know at least a bit about your social circles.
I have an older friend who cannot see the harm in giving out anyone's details to whoever asks.
Gave up trying to educate him that my number is my number to give to whom I choose, not whoever he wants. So my number and email are listed.
Those details and a few about who I associate with (freely available to Google and Apple since few people using their phones make any attempt to stop the location tracking!) I can't stop leaking. But other details are easier to hide as they don't require other people to keep their traps shut.
We've long known that words are predictable. That's how predictive typing works, as featured on your phone. (The text I send most often is "Leaving work" - all I have to do is fire up my phone about 5 p.m., select "send text - to spouse", and I can enter those two words in a single tap.)
I would guess that the more time you spend on social media, the stronger the effect - because social media is very susceptible to "memes" and mobs and bandwagons. Hashtags, basically. If you post about subject X, and your friends have talked about subject X today, then it can't be that hard to predict what you're likely to say next.
I took a pro-active method to dealing with this ages back. Never had FB.
But I still get the same effect with the few bits of advertising that get through, including on YT recommended videos - which I'm not normally signed into and these days I generally use a VPN.
However, I suspect it might be a lot of "that video was going to be suggested anyway, and normally you wouldn't have noticed it, but because the conversation is in recent memory it suddenly becomes more noticeable".
And how many of our conversations are seeded by recent local events? Car maker has a big problem found in their cars and people are getting rid of them like my moggy gets rid of excess hair strands. Obviously more people are going to be buying new cars so the makers increase advertising. We'll also talk about this. Then along comes the add and "Oh hey, we were just talking about that. They must be listening!".
I don't have any friends. .... Will you be my friend? ( The really creepy coat is mine ----> )
(This one is also a good response to any marketing types that ask if you have any friends that might be interested in their crud! ... especially if you don't feel like going full Arthur Dent vs Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser that day.)
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