A free lunch with Edward Snowden
I work as a data specialist for a large corporate.
This last couple of weeks I had my own Edward Snowden moment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden
Our country recently had an election. Internet access in my country is expensive so if you offer people free internet access or wifi pretty much everyone will take you up on the offer so this company struck up a deal with the electoral commission to offer free wifi at all election voting stations… so that those who were waiting in line would be able to surf the web while waiting…
That’s really big of them….
…what’s the catch?
Well you have to watch a two minute video from their sponsors…
That sounds reasonable right? You stuck in a queue anyway right?
So they ask you to register… this is where it starts get a bit grey for me… after all you have just had to sit through a message from their sponsors and they made a cool $2 million profit for the day just from their sponsors by the way.
So the registration is to get your full names, email address etc. is taking it a bit far…
But wait there is more…
As part of the registration you have to accept the terms and conditions….which we know nobody reads.
If anyone had read the T&C’s they would have seen the clause wherein you accept and agree to allowing them to install a tracking pixel on your phone, which just by the way can’t even be removed if you format the device.
At the same time that you agree to have the tracking pixel installed you also waive all your rights to protection of personal information and consent to alleviate yourself of all of the privacy rights the legislators have tried so hard to guarantee…
Essentially you give the company a signed blank check to anything and everything they deems fit to do with your data…
Simply marvelous…
A sample of the data that is being collected came buy my desk…
It contains:
All your private details from the registration
All your device details
Geolocation information
Your web browsing activities
Sites visited – time on site etc.
App activity etc.
The company now wants to apply data science to categorize and classify you so that they can package you up as a product and sell you to their customers.
So with you free wifi lunch at the voting booth you end up getting a little more than you bargained for. And the best… or worst… part about it all is everybody “legally” consented to it.
1.2 Million devices were registered in one day…. I prefer to use the terms “compromised” or “infected”
I guess the question we need to start asking ourselves next time someone asks us to a free lunch is…
Yup. And thank you for posting You and others are at least doing what they can to expose the issue. Here's a trailer, described as "A documentary about what you're really agreeing to when you click "I accept"."
They already know's ALL about most of people , what you eat , when you taking dump , where you have been , who's your family , every single thing about you .So , do we go with that flow or do we need to go of the grid ? Now is the time of total control , cctv everywhere no one can hide .
This is FUD. A tracking pixel is just an include link from a third party server of an image so small that you don't see it, and that is named in a way that is unique for each visitor.
Tracking pixels are not "installed" but simply downloaded to your browsing cache like any other image. They do nothing but signal the third party server about visits of the same visitor on every page that implements the tracking pixel. Being plain normal web data, they are trivially removed by a browser cache clean, and obviously a formatting will get rid of them like it will get rid of everything else.
LOL, @recursive, you beat me to it! I didn't read through all the comments at first. Glad there is some common sense floating around in here! Hopefully, you vote me up, and together we can rise to the top of the comments.
yup, that's my understanding of regular tracking pixels too... This one is supposedly different, when I work shopped with the exec he was bragging about this new tech coming out of Malaysia that came with the wifi deployment kit... I'm still digging for more info on it cause I want to dig a lot deeper technically...
However in the mean time I have seen the dataset and its impressive and far more comprehensive than just a regular tracking pixel type data...
It's very possible that a malicious Wifi hotspot would use some exploit on the phone and compromise it. I believe intelligence agencies are doing that routinely not only on public WiFi but also on the very 4G hotspots of your operator, probably with the (forced and gagged) consent of your operator. But then, if you think this was an instance of that, you would need to be more specific about what is being done on the phone: just calling that a "tracking pixel" is conflating unrelated concepts and creating confusion, which makes your post appear as FUD.
I also installed a tracking pixel on my laptop, and even when i format the pixel is still there....no whaitwhait..its just a dead-pixel...damn and i reinstalled Windows, 6 times because of your article..thanks for nothing.
I was travelling through Europe for a few months without cell phone service. I remember being in Venice with no service at all, yet Google Maps still had a blue dot that knew exactly where I was.
Well. That's call Offline map browsing. The blue dot works because the gps signal is working without internet.
And the second point they know the koordinates of some wirelesshotspots and with that information google-maps can make some triangular-calc's even when your not connected with those spots.
or you can read the recent book by Glenn Greenwald @ancientofdays
@cristi I've saved the documentary link already in hopes of reaching out to them in hopes to interview for my podcast.. Do you know offhand if the book author is also behind/affiliated with the documentary? I can research it of course, but just if you know... Thanks! Guy
No, author is an investigator reporter to whom Snowden confided. you dont want to read the book
Much thanks! I googled him.
Edward Snowden was an allowed leak to implement the Hawthorne Effect globally. In short, when people think they are being watched they change their behavior, this is also talked about as a Panopticon effect. If the powers that shouldn't be really wanted him dead, they wouldn't be making Hollywood films about him, while Snowden is tweeting from a verified account. The entire deification of Snowden needs to stop because he told us NOTHING that the likes of William Binney and countless others hadn't ALREADY told us. The fact the media gives him so much attention should have tipped you off by now. Snowden is 100% cointelpro, and was 100% an allowed leak. His "revelations" did nothing but make the public scared that they were being watched by the government. You need a new hero.
100% an allowed leak?? Yeah and this is why he lives in a Big House in Hawai and has all the freedom in this world right?
Lulz, did I just take down your personal hero? Too bad, the truth is the truth. Snowden is and was an allowed leak: Enjoy your Hollywood propaganda film... Snowden The Movie. ROFL.
Since you can't download hardware across the internet, reformatting a device will certainly get rid of software which "install a tracking pixel on your phone".
The pixel, which is just a dot on your screen, is most likely a clear pixel image, which isn't installed on your phone, but rather sends a request to a server for the image each time you use your phone. Nobody downloads the pixel either. You download and agree to use their software. Software which can be removed.
My company uses tracking pixels every day. This is nothing new.
Scare tactics should not be upvoted on Steemit.
When will they have access to my Social Security Number too?!
When you are too dump to give it to them.
All they have to do is hack into any financial institution or apartment complex and that information is theirs
What country you talking about??
Wow that's some serious shit!
Is there anyway that you could get some more info?
Info like who is the company? if you can disclose such info
a copy of the "tracking pixel" so it could be analyzed by more people and see who else could be behind this.
Unfortunately I have heard of similar things happening in some countries in Latin America.