You downloaded FaceApp. Here?s what you?ve just done to your privacy.

[Zundfolge]

This is what freaks me out about DNA.

Use of biometrics in general is frightening because they're simply not secure. If someone steals your Gmail password then worst case scenario you have to create a new account with a new password. But if people hack someone using your biometric identity they have your "username and password" FOREVER. Its not like you can have your DNA re-sequenced.

[Justin]

Just another reason to not do the entire "Social Media" thing...

This is more than just social media.

The entirety of Android OS is essentially built to be very easy to harvest your personal data.
IOS is only a little bit better.
And Windows has followed suit, starting with Win 7, and has only gotten worse with Win 10.

And then, of course, there is basically every single email provider out there from Comcast to Gmail and Outlook.

Saying "oh, well, I don't facebook so I'm ok" is a very false sense of security.

[Justin]

But it does own your data.

Unless VBulletin has significantly changed since my admin days, the only data it owns is the data you explicitly type into it.

Evidently VBulletin's secondary way of generating income (other than from software sales) is to wait until a forum gets to a certain size and then buy it out and plaster it with ads.

At least as of a few years ago, VBulletin-powered forums don't dial home and send all of your posts and profile information to VBulletin HQ where it can be analyzed by marketing algorithms.

[Justin]

Let me walk that back a bit. People talk about their personal lives, show pictures of their dogs and what they eat, and any ole stranger can come look. Also, there is a limited control of what you post (can't delete a sale thread). I'm not making a judgment call here, just pointing out that what happens here is not all that different from what we distintas about other sites like Facebook.

Unless the backend of VBulletin has changed, the major difference between VB and FB is that VB does not centrally store and datamine what gets posted by its users, nor does VB have the ability to see what you're up to on other website. Also, VB gives much finer control to forum owners/admins than FB does, even for groups, and doesn't try to enforce a one-size-fits-all corporate social policy on all of the different sites using their software.

Sure, you can argue there are some similarities; eg the admins here can see what IP you're posting from, just like FB corporate can, and yeah, search engine spiders and archive sites may crawl the page and make records of it, but from the standpoint of being able to effectively scrape site data and feed it into industrial scale databases for analysis and cross referencing, comparing VB to FB is a lot like comparing an infant in a baseball-themed onesie to an MLB pitcher.

[electronman1729]

Facebook is for chumps

[Irving]

I'm not trying to compare the software, just the social aspect of the social media.

[Gman]

There are hooks for the forum that tie into Google Analytics, but the only info here is what you put here. I don't have to login to this forum to get non-related apps to work on my phone, for example.

[Skip]

Use of biometrics in general is frightening because they're simply not secure. If someone steals your Gmail password then worst case scenario you have to create a new account with a new password. But if people hack someone using your biometric identity they have your "username and password" FOREVER. Its not like you can have your DNA re-sequenced.

Exactly.

Add in the intense political polarization/corruption and I trust this even less.

The thing about selective sampling of suspects DNA is that the population was limited to suspects of an actual crime (time, place). With national/global databases this isn't so. Anyone who has done the DNA services, or had a close family member do it, has probably already had their info shared with LE for searches (without explicit consent or notification).

[Aloha_Shooter]

This is more than just social media.

The entirety of Android OS is essentially built to be very easy to harvest your personal data.
IOS is only a little bit better.
And Windows has followed suit, starting with Win 7, and has only gotten worse with Win 10.

And then, of course, there is basically every single email provider out there from Comcast to Gmail and Outlook.

Saying "oh, well, I don't facebook so I'm ok" is a very false sense of security.

.. and that leads to some difficult personal decisions. I prefer the customizability and hardware design of Android devices but Google makes its money from data mining while Apple makes most of its profit from overpriced hardware (which works very well and is very convenient) while Microsoft makes its money by charging customers to keep shitty software working (sort of). That overstates each case somewhat ... but only somewhat. Really, Google offers its main products "free" so how do people think it became a multi-billion dollar enterprise?

Facebook is for chumps

Agreed. If anyone comes across a Facebook account claiming to be me, it's a fake.

There are hooks for the forum that tie into Google Analytics, but the only info here is what you put here. I don't have to login to this forum to get non-related apps to work on my phone, for example.

I have google-analytics.com flagged in NoScript as untrusted and it is completely blocked by Ghostery in my browser. Hasn't hurt me on any of the sites I browse.

[Irving]

Any time I hear from Google about storage space for my photos, videos, drive, I want to tell them to fuck off because I know they are using ten times the space for all my personal data they've collected.