[HN Gopher] How Corporations Harvest Data
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       How Corporations Harvest Data
        
       Author : dkzlv
       Score  : 9 points
       Date   : 2021-02-16 11:48 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (dkzlv.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (dkzlv.com)
        
       | uniqueid wrote:
       | Great post! If the author reads this, for his/her next article in
       | the series, please google articles on the 'spurious data'
       | approach used by TrackMeNot. In my opinion, spurious data is the
       | best approach to counter tracking, even if it's the least
       | popular. The basic idea is to regularly perform arbitrary actions
       | over the internet. Done properly, it cheapens all the information
       | others may collect about you.
        
         | dkzlv wrote:
         | Hi! Author's here.
         | 
         | Just read about this extension, thanks. The concept is rather
         | interesting. Most probably you can cause some problems for
         | corporations if you constantly add informational noise, but I
         | don't think it will really change anything significantly. You
         | see they will still get real information about you, even if it
         | has some noise. Your real behavior is the most valuable here,
         | and it will not go anywhere.
         | 
         | Also I'm quite sure Google can detect automatic actions very
         | well, it's a thing they need for detecting bots, who click on
         | ads or leave comments on youtube. Same goes for most of the
         | tech corporations.
        
           | wsinks wrote:
           | Awesome article author!
           | 
           | I just forwarded it to a student of the space. Such a long
           | and well thought through article with great hilarious images
           | along the way.
           | 
           | Thanks for writing, I've signed up for more spam from you.
        
           | uniqueid wrote:
           | It's an approach that didn't gain popularity. Bruce Schneier
           | panned the idea, if I recall correctly, because he thought
           | the extra traffic was wasteful. He's so well respected,
           | perhaps that played a role.
           | 
           | I think there are variations of the approach that could make
           | many kinds of tracking pretty useless.
           | 
           | Part of my confidence comes from my bias that 'AI' is mostly
           | hype. Google hasn't manage to filter all spam from their
           | results nor to 'read the users mind' particularly well when
           | parsing search results. I think they'd have trouble
           | separating generated results from real ones.
           | 
           | Somehow this reply sounds combative. That's completely
           | unintentional.
           | 
           | I look forward to your next post.
        
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