Read Technology Articles by Industry Insider Rex M. Lee at: www.MySmartPrivacy.com
The article “What Surveillance Capitalism Means For You” highlights privacy, cyber security and consumer exploitation threats posed by predatory surveillance and data mining business practices employed by Google, Apple, Microsoft and other tech giants.
Let me know your thoughts on the article- Rex
Recently blogged by the Tor Project:
Don’t Let Facebook, or Any Tracker, Follow You on The Web
In the early age of the internet, people enjoyed a high level of privacy. Webpages were just hypertext documents; almost no personalization of the user experience was offered (or forced). The web today has evolved into a system of surveillance capitalism, where advertising networks follow users while they browse the web, continuously collecting traces of personal data and surfing patterns to create profiles of users in order to target them.
Of course, in the article they advise to use Tor Browser to access a special onion endpoint to access FB:
While using Tor Browser won’t prevent Facebook from acquiring your contact information if one of your friends uses the Facebook app on their mobile, it can certainly help to stop building up a profile so that third party trackers won’t know if you prefer the Washington Post or Teen Vogue, or if you’re already planning your next vacation.
We understand that for some, Facebook is still a vital part of their online lives, and deleting it isn’t realistic right now. For an added degree of protection, you can visit Facebook on the “dark web” at their .onion site using Tor Browser: https://www.facebookcorewwwi.onion/
An interesting concept. But be warned: Tor is not for the beginner. In some cases using Tor can even make you a target for government surveillance, and Tor itself has been sponsored by government intelligence services. Your account could be blocked in some cases, just by using it (one commenter states this).
There is much scare-mongering about Tor, however, and it is depicted as a software primarily used for illegal practices. While it is used for this, this depiction is unjust. Tor is also used by journalists, activists, and anyone valuing true freedom of speech.
It would be good if such strict privacy-protecting software would be more widely used, for instance when you want to do a search on your own very personal medical condition, or similar sensitive issues.
A good discussion on this blog post can be found on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17308281