Do Not Track
Episode One
I input a news and data site for one of my favorite video games. The site is called wowhead and it gives information about the game World of Warcraft. It had 56 third party tracking identities associated with it. I also put YouTube which only had three third party identities associated. Trackers are third party agencies that collect data about the websites you visit and the things that you buy or click on. They then sell that data to companies who generate advertisements based on your data that is collected. The third party trackers do not operate on amazon because we create the profile for ourselves there. My data footprint impacts those around me and people I do not even know. It is used to compare me to others and judge others.
If you are trying to go about the web unseen there are a few ways to go about it. One is to use browsers that prevent tracking, once such browser is the Tor Browser. The Tor browser is run by volunteers and works for accessing parts of the web that normal browsers cannot as well as makes a good place for software developers to test run with a level or privacy. Some browsers such as Mozilla Firefox offer private browser modes. These stop cookies and remove temporary data which helps to prevent tracking. There are search engines such as DuckDuckGo that do not allow your searches to be tracked. Also there are programs such as CCleaner that remove cookies and temporary files. When our data is the currency that pays for the web, if we want total freedom we will have to pay for usage of most sites. This is not a feature now, but it could be in the future. For now the main payment is sometimes slower connection to sites and the lack of saved history. I think Do Not Track provided some information that I did not previously know and it helped to motivate me to use safer browsing habits since I know how much I am being watched.
Episode Two
This tracking thing started when advertising companies needed an effective way to exist on the internet. They tried pop-up ads initially and they failed miserably. From the ashes of the pop-up add come the third party trackers. This allowed advertising companies to create a profile of an individual that no other medium could. The system is based on cookies which are text files that sites place on your computer and they follow you from site to site. These cookies create your consumer profile based on where you visit or what you click. The trackers have enabled us to use a free internet but they became the very backbone of the system and because of that we do not really have an alternative. For example I said i would pay $15/year for Facebook without trackers and $20/year for Google. I overshot on Facebook, they get $9/year from my data, and woefully undershot on Google who receive $45/year from my data. Thus, we are to be tracked and there is little we can do about it.
Now that I know how much money the businesses make off of my data and cookies I looked into ways to prevent them from residing on my computer. Similar to what i said before, programs like CCleaner are great options. CCleaner will clear the cookies from every browser as well as remove temp and junk files. Another program is Spybot search and destroy. Spybot has a similar cookie removing feature and will block known harmful scripts from working on your computer. These programs are very effective at removing cookies and are definitely the way to go if you want to protect your computer from tracking.
Episode Three
Like mining can create a profile of a person based on the information that they share and like on a site such as Facebook. It looks into the items you like, your age, sex, school and jobs, and other data. Some agencies can use this data to create the profile on you and assess advertisements or even sell insurance or loans based on the information. Do Not Track uses the insurance and loan example to determine your personality, credit and health insurance. It said that I scored high in openmindedness and adventurous, neither of which I particularly identify with. It then used these traits along with a high extrovert and neurotic score to say that I am at risk of quitting my job without cause, be a high health risk, and prone to bodily harm. I feel like none of that is accurate to who I am as a person. This practice works the best at a certain threshold which happens to be 250 or more likes... I have only liked 32 things in the last 6+ years on Facebook. As a result it created a pretty crummy profile of who I actually am. They discussed two algorithms, the first collects basic information about you while the second connects you to your networks and those outside of it. These algorithms can be used to asses many details about you as a person. They use the loan company as an example because someone without credit could get a loan based on their digital self. This gives a social benefit to the algorithms because they give someone an opportunity to get a loan that could not have done that before. All this culminates in our digital self, an identity or profile that is created by ourselves and other agencies online. We have control over what information we willingly display but there is also information that we cannot control. We should do what we can to protect ourselves and this digital self but it is quite the daunting task to keep track of every possible avenue for tracking agencies and others to access our personal information and add it to our digital self profile.
Well what if you do not have a Facebook profile? The trouble lies in the nature of the Internet today. We are constantly being tracked by cookies and other services. These show advertisers what we buy and what sites we visit, in a sense they show what we like even though we did not hit a like button. So by saying “you are what you like” it means we are creating a digital self from our sites and activities online. If you were to like everything on Facebook it would create an inaccurate profile of yourself and the Like Mining would create similar results to if you liked very little items on Facebook..
Episode Four
Do Not Track said that “our smartphones are computers that we do not have control over” this is a perfect statement for how this episode made me feel. I have around fifteen apps on my phone and many of those require the use of location services or my contacts. These apps often access information without us actively knowing. Most of the information is harmless but it is still often used to create targeted ads on the browser of your smart phone. Google is one example of a tracker in our smartphones, it used location data as well as searches to create a profile for us. We can do things to limit the access to this information but it will not remove the information entirely. This data essentially creates a day to day story of our lives and what we do when interfacing with our phones our moving about within WiFi or cellular networks. If you avidly use free WiFi at Starbucks or other local businesses, they have terms of use agreements that often give tracking agencies access to your phone to some degree. These work based of a permissions system and help to pay for the “free” WiFi. These layers of tracking can be used to create advertising profiles about you or even by your government to see what your doing and assess your risk to the nation. In Russia the government sent out a text to all the people in a protest to say that they were participating in an illegal action. Ultimately this impacts us as the individuals. We are the ones whose information is being solicited an used often without our active knowledge of it. We can limit access to geolocation services and other services on our phone to help protect us. There are also browsers that do not use trackers or other agencies. If we use these and create the right concoction of phone settings we can dodge some of the tracking but not all.
It is pretty scary how much information can be gathered from your smartphone. There are programs that can help prevent some of the tracking. The first was mentioned in the Do Not Track documentary and it is called Clueful. Clueful is by the developer Bitdefender who makes several antivirus programs. Clueful tells you what information your apps are giving or tracking so you have more knowledge. It does not specifically stop tracking but it does give the user a heads up. I cannot link to the app store in this post but here is a link to the Bitdefender website. You can also protect your phone by using the Tor Browser and DuckDuckGo search engine. My smartphone shows my personal location and it also has access to emails, texts, calls, and other personal data. These all provide risks for identity theft or other harmful activities.
Episode Five
Big Data is the new holy grail of our time, it is seen as an infinite source of knowledge and opportunity. However, big data is just data and is limited in the same ways that all data is limited. This data is generated and analyzed by algorithms. Algorithms are operations of code that achieve a certain purpose or action. These can sift through our search history to see what to sell us of flag us as a terrorist to the NSA. They can also take huge bodies of data to determine who would be the best suited for a job or house loan. The trouble with the algorithms and big data, is that they are ultimately limited by the humans that interface with them. There is a myth that big data will solve all our problems and make us rich! This is a fallacy because the data cannot speak for itself, it must be analyzed and interfaced with by a human. As a result it is innately flawed due to the human who works with it. The algorithms we create to analyze the data could exclude people of color or females from access to a home or a job. They can also determine that you love gummie bears and would be the perfect consumer of a giant five pound gummie bear. This boils down to the idea that we have to be careful when looking at data and trying to give it a voice that determines a person’s future. If crafted correctly and without bias, which is implausible, algorithms can help us wade through the wealth of data that is available to us and make informed decisions to help our society in the future... we will see if this ever becomes a reality.
How do we know if we are being categorized? Well Do Not Track said that it is next to impossible to find out how we are being categorized. They provided two routes to see what advertisements are being selected for us. One way is to check your Google account and look at the ad parameters pages to see what Google has identified as the ads for you. Another way to see the ads targeting you is with the browser extension called Floodwatch which shows the ads you are subjected to as you go through the Internet. Do Not Track tells us about the algorithms the Chicago police use to create a “heat list” of potential criminals. This is similar to the idea of Pre-Cogs in Minority Report. This is problematic because many of the people on the list are black. It is also problematic because it promotes racial profiling by allowing an algorithm to select potential criminals based upon a set of criteria. Janet Vertesi hid her pregnancy from big data by using several safe browsing and purchasing techniques. She started by telling friends and family not to post the news online or on social media sites. They used the Tor browser and DuckDuckGo search engine to find and buy baby items online. Vertesi and her husband also opened a PO box and an amazon profile with private information that could not be associated back to them. They payed for everything with cash and used cash purchased amazon gift cards to use amazon. All of these things helped them stay away from big data and letting the news of their pregnancy become a reason for ad profiling. Algorithms and big data create profiles of data collected and processed by algorithms. This information can impact our civil rights in many ways. The first way is by limiting housing or jobs based on data collected that could create a profile of the person that is harmful. Secondly, referring back to the CPD “heat list” it is a way to racially profile and limit a person’s future. These algorithms can dominate our world. So many of us feed into the system that Google has created. There are many algorithms working behind the scenes for Google that change how we see the web and interact with others. One could also consider the scoring algorithms for big tests like the SAT or the GRE. These algorithms can change our future by determining a grade of our abilities. These among other algorithms are likely to dominate our world and near future.
Episode Six
The filter bubble is the lens that we see our world through. It is what determines the news we see, the opinions and ideas we come across, and the digital world that we live in. It is constructed by the things we like and the friends we have online. If we have friends who like similar things to us, then we will be shown things that they like as well as our own. It ultimately creates a personalizes stream of information that is determined to be pleasing to us by an algorithm. As a result we often only see one side of the truth and miss information from the whole story. The example used in the documentary is the conflict in Israel, if you are pro Israel then you will be fed a stream of similar minded comments and news articles. This contracts with old forms of press because we create and determine what we see. It use to be up to the editor who had his own ideas and the companies ideas for what information and news to include. This all leads to the process of optimization. Facebook and other sites optimize the information we see based upon the stream of pleasing and like-minded news articles. This creates a happy user who is likely to use the site more and click on more things within the site, thus earning them more money and a dedicated subscriber base. This does not create an informed public because we are only seeing what we agree with and not the other side. We as humans must seek out and display our desire for an informed population in order to achieve one.
Eli Parsier talked at TED about filter bubbles and why to not get stuck in them. filter bubbles promote and enhance our already existing opinions and world views. If we have such broken world views then they cannot be challenged due to the filter bubble. This is because we only see information that aligns with our beliefs and do not get the chance to see the other side. This filter bubble is so alluring to most people to the point that Facebook has become the primary digital new provider in our day. As a result mass media is coming to the end of its days. Many journalism and news companies are not selling as many physical and digital copies of their new articles. This shortage is making companies cater to the Facebook economy and news agencies that are not able to adapt are going out of business. Facebook argues that we create a news feed by following friends with similar views and beliefs as well as liking pages or other sources of information that align with our beliefs. This is why they say it is our fault that we receive partial stories or one-sided accounts through Facebook. I would say that this is true, if we are going to use Facebook our our primary source of news, we should be away of the limitations of the site. It will only show us information that relates to us and if we buy into that, then it is our fault for being misinformed in relation to news and events. Facebook discovered that people want to see articles and news that align with their views and beliefs. As a result they have designed their news feed algorithm to only show what shares your views. In terms of business they are keeping more people using the site because they are giving them this information. If someone saw both sides of an argument on Facebook they may be less likely to enjoy their time and they would read less of the news feed posts. To burst the filter bubble we must look outside Facebook to many other news sites to see the whole story. We should also like a wide range of people and organizations on Facebook to create a news feed that may be less biased to our specific filter bubbles. It may be uncomfortable or more work to break out of the filter bubbles, but it will make us better informed humans in the process.
Episode Seven
The Internet started with a Utopian perspective of a free domain for public use. Users could use it for business or other purposes without having to pay into big business and government. Unfortunately this has not become the reality of the Internet that we live in today. Edward Snowden was a contractor for the NSA and he revealed the mass amount of data that is being gathered by the government and the gross level of freedom that they have to our personal information. This reduces to two power players in the internet of today, the government and the market. The government has a level of authority over the internet and quite a lot of freedom to gather our usage of the internet and other information. For American citizens, this became more prominent after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the passing of the patriot act. However, much of this information is gathered and stored by the market. Companies such as Facebook and Google have these tracking agencies that the government uses to garner our information. Thanks to these players, we have limited power over the difference between privacy and security in the digital world. There is unfortunately not much difference between security and privacy, why secure items that do not require privacy? This conflicts with the practices that the NSA uses of holistic surveillance and information banking because there is now little to no privacy in the items that they are trying to secure. I think we should eliminate this mass holistic surveillance to promote a better digital society in the future, and to do that we need people to actually care about what is being collected on their behalf. Until people can give a crap about the surveillance, we will not make any quality change towards a brighter future.
Edward Snowden released information that showed the world the extent to which the NSA is tracking us and infringing on our privacy. As a result many people have started to change their behaviors on and off line. We also have a populous that is slightly more aware of what our government is doing and may be more willing to stop these invasions of privacy. Privacy matters because it is essential to society and life. We are less likely to share our beliefs, have separation between work and home life, and many other things if there was absolutely no privacy. Ultimately, we are all hiding something from someone and it is not to be malicious but for our own safety. We need to get smart about privacy by asking ourselves what we know, finding out about what we don’t know, use programs and practices of privacy protection, and tell our friends to do the same process. this can help to reclaim privacy because it is an important part of our society. We should care about our digital footprint because we never know if information collected now may hurt or limit our future. We also want to make sure that our friends or family are not impacted by our digital footprint since they interact with us. Thus many people are affected by our digital footprint so we should do what we can to manage it in a safe way. Our private data is owned by us and the companies that we use to interact with others. This is why we should read privacy policies and terms of use agreements. Companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, and others use our data and technically own it due to the terms of use that we agree to. The future of privacy is for it to not exist if we keep on the path we currently are on. We as a people of the global society must be smart and rethink how we use digital technology. We should divest from the companies to promote loss of privacy and invest in those that protect it if we want to keep privacy around.
Reflection
In the end, I feel as if i have become an Internet pessimist. I am woefully aware of the amount of information that is gathered from my daily actions and that of those around me. I was aware of this before but did not care enough to understand what it actually meant for me and my future. I think that we have to ability to change the systems surrounding the Internet but it will be a slow and difficult task. Much of the Internet is built on the back of cookies and third party information collectors. This does not specifically bother me but it does open the door for more heinous acts of surveillance and invasions of privacy. I hope that we can change the system for the sake of our lives and those who will use it after us.
