This is a must-read.

[dedanna1029]

Tracking the Trackers

Thinking on trying something like this myself, and sending a nuke up their computer's arses...

[viking60]

Yes and it gets scary here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... S=tracking

Most of us view personalization and privacy as desirable things, and we understand that enjoying more of one means giving up some of the other. To have goods, services and promotions tailored to our personal circumstances and desires, we need to divulge information about ourselves to corporations, governments or other outsiders.

This tradeoff has always been part of our lives as consumers and citizens. But now, thanks to the Net, we're losing our ability to understand and control those tradeoffs—to choose, consciously and with awareness of the consequences, what information about ourselves we disclose and what we don't. Incredibly detailed data about our lives are being harvested from online databases without our awareness, much less our approval.

Even though the Internet is a very social place, we tend to access it in seclusion. We often assume that we're anonymous as we go about our business online. As a result, we treat the Net not just as a shopping mall and a library but as a personal diary and, sometimes, a confessional. Through the sites we visit and the searches we make, we disclose details not only about our jobs, hobbies, families, politics and health, but also about our secrets, fantasies, even our peccadilloes.

But our sense of anonymity is largely an illusion. Pretty much everything we do online, down to individual keystrokes and clicks, is recorded, stored in cookies and corporate databases, and connected to our identities, either explicitly through our user names, credit-card numbers and the IP addresses assigned to our computers, or implicitly through our searching, surfing and purchasing histories.

[dedanna1029]

Yep, definitely.

Although, I have to admit, I'm one who doesn't care much, until it comes to certain things. Have become wreckless I guess. It's like I always say, if someone wants to come look at these bills on my computer, they're welcome to them, so long as they pay them for me.

[R_Head]

That is one reason that I do not do Social Networking, Blogs or any other stuff that requires me to connect with others and say what I think.

Some might call me antisocial but is that I like my privacy.

I funnel with who I want to be social and I do not let a site dictates how I relate to other people.

[dedanna1029]

Oh believe me, nothing dictates that to me. I'm still myself wherever I go. Repressing anyone's nature is not in my nature, in particular my own. I don't even tolerate that anywhere I go.

I think the Boss can attest to that. - my own nature I think is what he missed after I was forced to leave the mdv forum. My twitter; very good bunch on there, because of how I talk to them, always with love. Same on Facebook. I speak out, not because I'm social (I'm actually very private IRL), but because I'm a fighter against injustices, and the gov't can blow it out their proverbial rear ends - I tell them, the pReSident, everyone straight up how screwed up they're being to all of us. I got no fear of social networking, because I have no desire to hide anything I say or do. I want everyone to hear.

[R_Head]

I am a true believer that nothing is free, not even in nature.

These so called Social Networking is a place to study human behaviors, trends and God's know what else.

I refuse to be a guinea pig for others to profit or amusement.


But if that floats your boat (in reference the people that does it), sure why not?
The Internet is free... in a way

[dedanna1029]

Eh, the social networking people can do what they want. I use mine for purposes of my own. I really don't care what they do, and they can do it far as I'm concerned. Later I'll make them blow it out theirs, too. LOL I just care about doing what I gotta do for humanity on the whole.

[viking60]

I am a true believer that nothing is free, not even in nature.

These so called Social Networking is a place to study human behaviors, trends and God's know what else.

I refuse to be a guinea pig for others to profit of amusement.

I sure want to actively accept any study of that kind. But Big Brother has no interest in asking - that would reveal how bad this really is!

[dedanna1029]

See, that's what's so rich about what I do - I use their own tools against them. Big Brother's arse is exactly the one who's arse I'm shoving it all up.

Yep, they can listen in all they want! LOL

[R_Head]

The correct fight is to give them nothing at all.

No data is useless data.