Another case of Big Brother watching ?

[ProDave]

Things like You Tube and Google.  Why, I mean WHY does anyone feel the need to register and "sign in" to use them?  they work for me just fine without signing my life away to them.

And as for "the cloud"  Why would you want to store all your documents on some web based storage system that someone of offering you for free.  It costs money to host such a service. Ask yourself WHY someone is offering a service to you for free, that they are paying to provide?  Ask yourself what revenue stream is paying for this service.  

No thank you, my documents get saved on my computer.

 

[phil d]

Things like You Tube and Google.  Why, I mean WHY does anyone feel the need to register and "sign in" to use them?  they work for me just fine without signing my life away to them.

And as for "the cloud"  Why would you want to store all your documents on some web based storage system that someone of offering you for free.  It costs money to host such a service. Ask yourself WHY someone is offering a service to you for free, that they are paying to provide?  Ask yourself what revenue stream is paying for this service.  

No thank you, my documents get saved on my computer.

Exactly! I have a portable hard drive for storing my stuff on, at least that way I have control of who see's whats on it. the cloud is about as secure as leaving your personal stuff lying on the pavement.

 

[Evans Electric]

You make a good point guys .  At the moment its just my photos on my NEW phone ...( Did I mention my New phone ?)  ....I'll try to get out of that  .  

Also I mentioned once , I bought a couple of CD,s on Amazon , a fairly obscure American folk & country singer I happen to like ..........  my next visit to Youtube  had videos listed of said singer .  

 

[phil d]

You make a good point guys .  At the moment its just my photos on my NEW phone ...( Did I mention my New phone ?)  ....I'll try to get out of that  .  

Also I mentioned once , I bought a couple of CD,s on Amazon , a fairly obscure American folk & country singer I happen to like ..........  my next visit to Youtube  had videos listed of said singer .  

One of the things you have to watch now is the 'tick in the box', in the beginning anything that needed permissions to share stuff used to have a thing that said something like, ' if you are happy for us to use your info tick the box' this was always in small writing, now it says on a lot of them, ' if you don't want us to use your info tick the box' , the problem is we've become so used to the other way we don't read the message and so don't tick the box.

Another one which is a pain is the 'terms and conditions' somewhere in them it says, 'by agreeing to our terms you allow us to share your information with our partners', If you don't tick the 'agree terms' box it doesn't let you carry on, if you do it shares some of your info, which is why you get all that carp after listening to a song on YT. recently I've been looking on fleabay a lot, now I've noticed the adverts on my browser are showing the sorts of stuff I've been looking at.

 

[binky]

. recently I've been looking on fleabay a lot, now I've noticed the adverts on my browser are showing the sorts of stuff I've been looking at.

 I had the Yellow pages rep in my office a few years ago explainig how they track what you look at and pop-up reminders to people. Don't click on FB ads either, it does the same thing. In fact one of my little joys is avoiding all these things, or clicking on things I'm not interested in to confuse them and mess up their algorithims.

 

[Evans Electric]

Don't click on FB ads either,

Why do we get stuff like on here ......"Open the Forum with Facebook "     Why do I need to do that ?  

 

[Sharpend]

Why do we get stuff like on here ......"Open the Forum with Facebook "     Why do I need to do that ?  

Because if we didn’t we’d only have a few old pharts on here, they’d be no new snowflakes as asking them to remember more than one password confuses them. 

 

[Blue Duck]

Here is a list of trackers (not including Google FB & twitter), from a randomly selected clickbait article in the daily star.

Yes they probably mean nothing but what they are doing is selling information about you to other companies and building up a profile on you to target you with further advertising.

Google is probably the worst offender, and when you sign in they are building an empire on what you look at online.

If you don't like this then you need to get A VPN or a browser that screens information.

 https://duckduckgo.com

 

[Sharpend]

i thought that was a link to your website!!

 

[Blue Duck]

Quack.

Just a coincidence.

I have no website, I am a Mallard.

:slap

 

[Sharpend]

so you're not really a duck, you're more a train?

 

[Evans Electric]

Ah!    The name  Mallard...takes me back to  a time when Britain was Great and  Mallard was & still is , the fastest steam  locomotive in the world.    

Totally off topic  ..I plead guilty M'lud. 

 

[OnOff]

Best we all throw our tellys away then:

https://www.technobuffalo.com/wikileaks-cia-can-turn-your-smart-tv-into-a-surveillance-device%3famp

 

[phil d]

Remember a few months ago when that scandal broke about one of those 'things' having a microphone in and although it wasn't used the maker said they'forgot' it was in there? Well a short while before that happened I remember hearing about a woman who had one of those alexa things, she was chatting to a friend and they were on about favourite colours and she said hers was blue, a few seconds later the background on her computer changed to blue, apparently the alexa thing had told the computer to do it. 

It makes you wonder exactly what these things do do, when they're sat there acting all innocent like.

 

[Evans Electric]

I certainly won't be having one . 

 

[phil d]

I certainly won't be having one . 

Nah me neither, I had all this technology long before it became trendy, 20 years in fact, mine doesn't need the internet, or a phonecard, it even works when we have a powercut, it can turn lights on and off, alter the heating, change channel on the tv, all the stuff these new ones does, and a lot more, try asking an Alexa for a cold beer, or a sandwich and see how far it gets you, no I got a Shirley, far better functionality. lol

 

[rapparee]

My daughter was showing me an app, I think it was snap chat or something, and she showed me a page where is shows on a map where all her friends were. If you zoomed out it even showed the one in holiday in Turkey.

Me, I keep "location" turned off on my phone unless I actually want to use it for navigation.

And there was an article recently about these google "smart speaker" things, They are constantly listening. The aparently "review" some of the captured conversations and there is even an employee forum where they exchange "funny" things people have heard.

I won't be having one of those in my house any time soon.  Hell I don't even have a microphone or camera on my PC.

I totally believe this.

Me and a friend mentioned someone who I used to work with. We hadn't seen or heard of him for eight years. That evening facebook was recommending him to me as a friend.

 

[Evans Electric]

Nah me neither, I had all this technology long before it became trendy, 20 years in fact, mine doesn't need the internet, or a phonecard, it even works when we have a powercut, it can turn lights on and off, alter the heating, change channel on the tv, all the stuff these new ones does, and a lot more, try asking an Alexa for a cold beer, or a sandwich and see how far it gets you, no I got a Shirley, far better functionality. lol

Theres no OFF switch on those though  Phil? 

 

[phil d]

Theres no OFF switch on those though  Phil? 

true, but I can't complain, she looks after me and I've had a lot worse.lol

 

[Evans Electric]

Glad to hear it .