Violating Americans’ privacy "not just unethical but illegal," senator says.

NSA finally admits to spying on Americans by purchasing sensitive data::Violating Americans’ privacy “not just unethical but illegal,” senator says.

  • piecat@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    10 months ago

    I bet, if they haven’t already, some of the info stored by sites is how we interact with it. And I bet with AI you can pretty much fingerprint someone based on habits.

    So even your alt accounts will know it’s you.

    Edit: why do you think Reddit made the big push for their own app? Engagement, time spent looking at a post, how fast you scroll past something, all useful metrics for ad revenue. And we know that ad companies like tracking us.

    Any spooky shit comes after the systems are developed for ads.

    • CashewNut 🏴󠁢󠁥󠁧󠁿@lemmy.worldEnglish
      41·
      10 months ago

      I don’t think AI is necessary. Reddit was able to find all my alt accounts pretty easily years back. Now I’m banned I can’t even sign up without the new account being banned in a few days for trying to circumvent it.

      • Fishbone@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        10 months ago

        Edit: Likely Sounds to me like an IP and/or MAC address ban (MAC address is tied to motherboards IIRC). I got banned once from one of my old favorite games (PSO2) for mistakenly swapping my vpn mid game. After a lot of troubleshooting and an apartment move in between, a MAC spoofing program is what did the trick.

        Side note, does lemmy use markdown format? If not, does anyone know what it uses?

        • T156@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          10 months ago

          MAC address is tied to motherboards IIRC

          It isn’t. It’s tied to your network hardware, and can be randomised/changed at will (or at least, the one it sends out can be altered). Some phones do that when connecting, to make it harder to track them, for example.

          If you’re using an ethernet port on your motherboard, then it’d be tied to that, but if you’re using Wi-Fi/Ethernet from a Network card, it’ll be connected to the card.

          • Fishbone@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            10 months ago

            Ah, that makes more sense. I couldn’t remember the specifics but I’ve have always done ethernet on my pc so that checks out for my experience.

      • piecat@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        10 months ago

        Depends, depends. In your case it’s probably about cookies, or IP. Maybe it’s inferred identity, hence why it takes a few days.

        Are cookies or IP enough for 90% of people? Yeah. But I’m sure that data is worth less, because they already have tons of data on those folks.

        What about the 10% that might be using a VPN? The <1% using tor?

        That data could be more valuable because it’s harder to get.