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Old 07-02-2013, 12:22 PM   #21
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I'm choosing to be a luddite wrt facebook. Although my son wants an account (he's almost old enough) - and I guess I'd have to get my own and make him"friend" me so I can monitor it.
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Old 07-02-2013, 12:39 PM   #22
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My take:

You have already given up much of your privacy if you choose to use the Internet, cell phone, credit card, bank account, public utilities, etc. (If you have ever done any work with a credit bureau or identity matching service, you will know the truth of this.)

If you use any kind of rewards programs (online, grocery store cards, hotel/airline programs, etc.) or social networking, the reality is you have no real privacy left. The combination of cheap computing power and lots of data (which is publicly available at little or no real cost whether you like the idea or not) means we have no real privacy.

Frightening, yep. But, I will keep collecting my airline miles and using the Internet since the benefits outweigh the costs and risks for me.
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Old 07-02-2013, 12:52 PM   #23
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rbmrtn View Post
They don't ( can't ) read your emails. They can use any browser to report stored email address. email addresses can be retrieved without to much effort from outlook and similar clients.
Can you explain how they 'report stored email addresses'? I don't understand this.


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Originally Posted by JustMeUC View Post
I don't LIKE facebook and have never once registered with my real name or real email address. However, so many things you need to be a member of facebook to see that I created a "fake" account to be able to access stuff. I also opened up a "fake" email address that I have never used for anything else.

So, I get emails from facebook all the time telling me I might know this person or that person... and about 50% of the time, they are correct!! How the Blankity Blank do they know this? I have never once made a facebook post, never put a picture up, or done anything else on my facebook account but looked at other peoples stuff.

....

What really got me? I started buying Serendipity Beer recently, probably half a dozen times in the past month, using my "real me" Grocery Store membership card and "real me" AMEX, and now I am getting the Do you Know Serendipity beer emails..... coincidence? Possibly, but I don't think so. It's not like I am getting a "do you know budweiser" email, Serendipity Beer is not a very well known beer to say the least. REALLY REALLY REALLY scary if it is NOT a coincidence. ....

It is creepy scary that they track me like this.....
OK, I read through the 'cookie' FB link that BWE posted, and I think I see how this happened.

Quote:
Here is the Cookie Use: https://www.facebook.com/help/cookies
First, though - FB has not sent any of these to your 'real' email account, right - just you 'fake' account you set up for FB?

So on the cookie link, it first says FB only reads the cookies that it placed there (I think your browser controls this, and won't allow one site to read another's cookies). But then it goes on to say, if the site you visit publishes Facebook links (the 'Like' buttons for example), then it sounds like that page can create cookies that FB can read.

So...... if you visited the Serendipity beer site, and they have FB links, then it sounds like FB can make the connection. Or, if you visited your Grocery Store card site, and it publishes FB links, that could make the connection.

As far as the 'do you know this person' emails - easy, you said you visited other people's FB pages. FB knows the friends of these people you visited, and therefore you probably know them too. Was any of them Kevin Bacon? So they don't need to know who the 'real you' is - they just know this guy posing as a dead dog visited Joe, John and Beth's FB pages, and here's a list of friends common to those people, so let's send him a 'do you know these people' email.

None of this is particularly scary to me. Others feel differently, but I don't see what there is to get worked up about. I've had subscriptions to Hobby Magazines, and guess what - the magazines have ads for that hobby! OMG! And sometimes I get snail-mail ads from other companies that are in that hobby! Oh, the humanity!

This has been going on for decades, this is just the digital version.

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Old 07-02-2013, 01:10 PM   #24
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Yes, they only sent it to the Facebook email account. No, I did not visit the beers website.

If I want to use Google I realize they are going to track me.... I guess I thought Facebook wouldn't be able to but obviously I was wrong.
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Old 07-02-2013, 01:13 PM   #25
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The hobby magazine doesn't know everything about you, you are probably getting mail somehow related to the hobby. Facebook is aware of what brand of beer I am buying at the grocery store. Big difference.
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Old 07-02-2013, 01:22 PM   #26
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Do what the US Government did when it found out that spies were sending the Space Shuttle specs to the Russians - feed them false information.
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Old 07-02-2013, 01:26 PM   #27
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This looks like a pretty good background on cookies (I'm fairly ignorant about cookies myself, but this seemed to explain it pretty well):

Fact and Fiction: The Truth About Browser Cookies

Quote:
This does not mean that advertisers can read the cookies from the web site you are visiting—they can only read their own cookies, but because the advertising Javascript is embedded in the page, they will know the URL you are visiting. These cookies are considered third-party cookies, because they are not set by the actual page you are visiting, and they can generally be blocked without causing any serious problems.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JustMeUC
No, I did not visit the beers website.
OK, did you visit the Grocery Store web-site? If they have a FB ad or button, FB might be able to make a connection from there (the store puts up ads for things you've bought before?).

FB just wants to feed you ads to pay the bills. I guess I fail to see the harm in any of this. Just ignore the ads. I suppose it could raise eyebrows if some ads came up related to sites you visited that you might not want others to be aware that you visited (like if you were in AA and this ad popped up). But they send the ads to you - not to other people.

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Old 07-02-2013, 01:33 PM   #28
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Originally Posted by JustMeUC View Post
... I do not see any possible way they can link the fake account to the real me, yet somehow they do. ...
So just to be clear on this - they have not linked the 'real you' to the fake account/email. All they know is the same computer/browser that has logged into Facebook has also visited other sites with FB links. They may be able to get some information from the url/content of those sites, but they are not making a connection between the 'real you' and the 'FB you' - other than connecting information from common cookies.

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Old 07-02-2013, 01:37 PM   #29
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Yes, I probably did visit the grocery store website to look at the Wednesday ads.

I was looking to get a massage last week and did a search for certified massage therapists. Clicked on a couple links that Google spit out at me that took me to websites that ended up being Asian massage parlors. I am now getting emails and ads popping up with my name on them from Ashley Madison. Anyone looking over my shoulder or using my computer would assume I was frequenting such places. I don't have a hubby but if I did he would probably not be too pleased with my explanation.

******

At the end of the day, I guess I need to have several computers and be very careful to always use my VPN and make sure to always use different IP addresses. Or just accept the new reality. OK, I'm tired of thinking about it, I gonna go walk the dog and forget about it.
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Old 07-02-2013, 01:43 PM   #30
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Can you explain how they 'report stored email addresses'? I don't understand this.

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There are tools that can search your PC and extract email addresses from registry or outlook files etc. Could be run from a browser as a addon or activeX control or some JAVA app. They even sell the stuff mass mail marketers.

Email Harvester - e-mail addresses extractor, harvest emails from files stored on your PC, Outlook, compressed files.
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Old 07-02-2013, 01:54 PM   #31
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Yes, I probably did visit the grocery store website to look at the Wednesday ads.

I was looking to get a massage last week and did a search for certified massage therapists. Clicked on a couple links that Google spit out at me that took me to websites that ended up being Asian massage parlors. I am now getting emails and ads popping up with my name on them from Ashley Madison. Anyone looking over my shoulder or using my computer would assume I was frequenting such places. I don't have a hubby but if I did he would probably not be too pleased with my explanation.
Well, even though I'm not too concerned about this, I wouldn't click on one of the ad links that google serves up, unless I was already familiar with the buiness. Google obviously tracks some of that - since you seem so concerned, I'm surprised you would do that.

I've can't recall ever getting any email from an internet advertiser or web-site I've visited sent to my gmail account, unless I actually opted in and provided my address (outside of some obvious mass-mail spam). Did you actually get emails from Ashley Madison, or did their ads pop up when you read your email on the web based gmail reader? I read my gmail-email with
a local client (Thunderbird) and I never see any Google-placed ads. Hmmm, I just went on-line to read there, and I didn;t see any ads either - I have adblock on, but it reported zero blocked.

Did my explanation of 'do you know this person' make sense to you?

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Old 07-02-2013, 02:09 PM   #32
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If you went from Facebook to another social media website, such as YouTube, then looked at specific videos or posted there using another email address FB might have a clue it could use to make an association and then some suggestions. I only use FB for family matters, but always log out and close browser windows before going anywhere else.
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Old 07-02-2013, 02:27 PM   #33
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Originally Posted by JustMeUC View Post
...

I just deleted my "fake" account, reset my IP address on my router and really don't think I will ever get back on facebook again. It is creepy scary that they track me like this.....
Someone else can correct me if this is wrong, but I don't think resetting an IP on your router changes anything from the outside looking in. Your ISP sets your IP address. Your router sets the local addresses, but those aren't seen on the outside anyhow. I have some familiarity with this trying to set up some SW so I can get on and remotely control computers for family members - I needed the IP the ISP assigned (which can/will change, unless you pay for a 'static IP'), and then I needed to set up static routing on their router for their MAC, so I could point to their sub-address (local address?). I eventually set up a free account with 'TeamViewer' - since they provide a server connection that we each connect to, I don't need their IP or any router info - they make the connection when they click the TeamViewer app.

Quote:
Originally Posted by JustMeUC View Post
... I use a VPN, change countries frequently, clear my history and cookies daily. I have my prepaid smartphone hooked up to a prepaid CC that can't be traced back to me.

I hope I'm not pushing it in making light of this a bit, but.... If I were 'Big Brother', that activity would look suspicious to me, and I would focus an immense amount of effort in tracking anyone who is working so hard to be under the radar. I'd figure they must be hiding something. Did you ever consider that all this effort may be counter-productive?


Quote:
However, I suppose the fact that I check my emails on it, pretty much negates all that if companies can freely read my emails without my permission.
Well, Google has machines scanning your emails for key words in order to serve ads to you, but there is no evidence that they are 'reading' your emails. They are upfront about that, and it is well known. I'm surprised you go to all these other lengths, and then use gmail.

And that is pretty easy to get around - get an account that you pay for that does not scan your emails. They are out there, maybe $30/year - you can also buy your own domain and do this yourself.

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Old 07-02-2013, 02:28 PM   #34
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I have a Gmail account that I never use (use Outlook for my email) and only occasionally use Google for searches. Normally I will use Ixqwick or DuckDuckGo for searches because they claim to not save anything. I still get about 60 spam emails per day but my filter takes care of almost all of them. I also have Firefox set to clear all cookies whenever I exit it. I also never give my cell phone number out to anyone but people I know; never use it on anything submitted to the internet.
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Old 07-02-2013, 02:54 PM   #35
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I still want to know if me buying Serendipity beer with my grocery store card or my AMEX caused them to send me the "do you know them" email. It just seems quite unlikely that it is a coincidence.

I used ZOHO as my email address with facebook and I never used that email address for anything else. My real me email address is with Gmail.
Email often passes through multiple computers between the sender and recipient. Look at the source headers of an email in your inbox and you'll see one or more "Received:" tags. Any one of them could have peeked at your message, and obviously they know the "To:" address (yours) otherwise the email would not have arrived in your inbox.
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Old 07-02-2013, 03:30 PM   #36
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Someone else can correct me if this is wrong, but I don't think resetting an IP on your router changes anything from the outside looking in.
-ERD50
No it doesn't matter ( for the most part ). Most individuals have DHCP enabled so you get a different IP all the time ( well sometimes ).

If you have a static IP with your own domain, You could have brute force, DOS attacks or other things sniffing around but you should have a firewall appliance in place.
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Old 07-02-2013, 03:33 PM   #37
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This just goes to show that all the collective angst about the NSA metadata collection is nothing compared to the commercial data collection. We've been living with the commercial data collection for so long (knowingly or unknowingly) that of course the government would not think that what they are collecting is at all a big deal.

Besides reading the cookies and other digital tags on your computer there is also a whole industry of companies the buy and sell digital data that you leave as you live your lives. It just a massive extension of the direct marketing mailing lists that became prevalent during the 70's. They probably just need the IP address you are using and your geolocation and they can (more or less) connect you with all the other demographic data about you and others that is out there.

Really, your only choice is to live off the grid and not commit any crimes.
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Old 07-02-2013, 04:05 PM   #38
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The grocery store, or possibly AMEX must have sold my information, but HOW did they link up the real me buying that beer to the fake Facebook me? That is what I don't understand....
The same computer or private network and computer user, as determined by a signature analysis, is associated with both Facebook accounts.

The data used to do this is freely offered by the typical browser, and includes things like the browser and it's version, details on all available plug-ins, your display resolution information, operating system version, installed system fonts, cookie settings, and other similar properties. These, even without an IP address, tend to be common to only one in many thousands of users. Add in an IP address that identifies your Internet service provider and locale, and you are uniquely identified.

https://panopticlick.eff.org/


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Old 07-02-2013, 04:12 PM   #39
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This just goes to show that all the collective angst about the NSA metadata collection is nothing compared to the commercial data collection. We've been living with the commercial data collection for so long (knowingly or unknowingly) that of course the government would not think that what they are collecting is at all a big deal.

Besides reading the cookies and other digital tags on your computer there is also a whole industry of companies the buy and sell digital data that you leave as you live your lives. It just a massive extension of the direct marketing mailing lists that became prevalent during the 70's. They probably just need the IP address you are using and your geolocation and they can (more or less) connect you with all the other demographic data about you and others that is out there.

Really, your only choice is to live off the grid and not commit any crimes.

One main difference is that the companies that are looking at our 'stuff' cannot put you in a jail...
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Old 07-02-2013, 04:16 PM   #40
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The hobby magazine doesn't know everything about you, you are probably getting mail somehow related to the hobby. Facebook is aware of what brand of beer I am buying at the grocery store. Big difference.
I could be that some company knows that your special beer is sold by retailers located near you. They are trying to sell the beer to anyone in your area. The fact that you already bought the beer could just be a coincidence.
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