Is my computer spying on me???

originally posted by: Maxatoria
Ever mentioned on facebook/twitter/whoever that you buy X brand cosmetics as the ad companies are very good at slurping up everything they can about you and using it back at you?

Nope. LOL! I am not that into make-up, I have a couple products for occasional use, but have never bother talking about them with anyone.

originally posted by: pl3bscheese
You may be missing the obvious. You are the common denominator. You already gave us all the info. You purchase items, that gets tracked, and spit back to you in ads. Do you see the blur between digital and in person yet?

Okay just realized my skip stepping maybe not best for this. When you purchase with savings card, gift card, electronic card.. anything tied to you gets tracked. that information can be sold to third parties. It can eventually end up being pushed to your online accts used for say signing into browser/search engine and such. voila. welcome to 2010.

So even when I buy things at my local grocery store, using my bank card, the bank receives itemized (detailed with brands) account of everything I bought and sell that info to third parties??

a reply to: Bluesma

It is more likely a "loyaly" card from a chainstore.

If you signup for a "loyalty" card and include your email address for "promotions" then it is plausable that they could sell your buying preferences to a company that could push certain ad's through google although I have no proof of it.

If I was a big company it is certainly something I would do though.

a reply to: Bluesma

I never get any popups here or anywhere else.....never have, so its you somehow and the places you go to....

best thing to do is disable the onboard mic and webcam (put tape over the cam if you want) and then get something like ccleaner and let it have a look around and see what comes up, it'll nuke traffic cookies, clean up crap left behind from updates etc and is pretty user friendly

if you are really paranoid its not very hard to actually pop open the case on most laptops and disable the onboard speakers/webcam but literally disconnecting them

Ok this subject is pretty damn interesting.

Because more than a few times I've had those annoying ads on websites I go too and I swear "they" have been reading my mind. And I know a couple of things I never look for on-line. Crikey! But I do remember thinking how frickin' weird it was that something I had been thinking about and now, Voilà! somebody is trying to sell it to me.

Where's my tinfoil hat.

a reply to: Bluesma

It doesn't have to be the bank, just the fact that you were at a store and used your card is enough to ID the transaction. The store will the whole list. So it could be the bank, or store. I would tend to think the store, especially if you use a rewards/loyalty card. It's in the paper you have to sign, they sell off the data.

"Big Data" is a growing market, worth billions.

I seriously doubt this has anything to do with your camera, not that the tech isn't obviously there, or that there aren't people peeping if they choose, but because it's too obvious, and would cause programs that entities need to remain operational too much flack.

originally posted by: admirethedistance
I can almost guarantee you that your computer's webcam is not being used to 'spy' on you for the purpose of targeting ads. That being said, I've covered the webcam on every computer I've owned in the past 20 years with tape before ever powering it on (or removed it entirely).

Old paranoid habit.

I too have a piece of painters tape covering my webcam, unless I am using it.

My daughter's asked why. I answered because there have been a few times when my webcam has snapped pic of me out of the blue, without me purposely doing it.

It bothered me and made me wonder.

Besides who wants to see this old hag when she is online in her underwear?
EEEwwww. So it remains covered except for when I skype.

originally posted by: Bluesma

originally posted by: pl3bscheese
You may be missing the obvious. You are the common denominator. You already gave us all the info. You purchase items, that gets tracked, and spit back to you in ads. Do you see the blur between digital and in person yet?

Okay just realized my skip stepping maybe not best for this. When you purchase with savings card, gift card, electronic card.. anything tied to you gets tracked. that information can be sold to third parties. It can eventually end up being pushed to your online accts used for say signing into browser/search engine and such. voila. welcome to 2010.

So even when I buy things at my local grocery store, using my bank card, the bank receives itemized (detailed with brands) account of everything I bought and sell that info to third parties??

YES

Have you noticed these days all you have to do when returning stuff you bought with a bank card is bring in the item. Give them your card and they can then scan the item and verify you purchased it there.

Or conversely have you noticed when you return an item all they have to do is have the receipt and scan the receipt code and the money automatically goes back in your account?

Yes the banks have that information,
and yes, read the fine print in your banks
huge booklet they gave you when you opened your account.
You agreed to let them sell this information to third parties
as a condition of opening the account.

originally posted by: InFriNiTee
a reply to: Bluesma

Try watching Hulu and talking about anything. Talk about your car, makeup, cleaning your house, or just about anything(during the commercial breaks)! You will get advertisements related to what you are talking about (most times). They are watching people a lot more closely than people notice. I noticed this about 2 years ago. Just imagine if you want to have a private conversation in your own home...

I think this is a great idea! Test it out further!

originally posted by: grandmakdw


Have you noticed these days all you have to do when returning stuff you bought with a bank card is bring in the item. Give them your card and they can then scan the item and verify you purchased it there.

Or conversely have you noticed when you return an item all they have to do is have the receipt and scan the receipt code and the money automatically goes back in your account?

Yes the banks have that information,
and yes, read the fine print in your banks
huge booklet they gave you when you opened your account.
You agreed to let them sell this information to third parties
as a condition of opening the account.

Actually, no, you can't do that here! If you want to return something, you have to have a receipt, and you get either credit to buy something else at the store, or cash. They say they cannot just credit the money to the bank.
The systems in France are a bit behind.....

We opened our account so many years ago (more than 20) I am not sure what we signed, but I might check that out.

I had more been thinking about apps (Facebook and stuff) which ask for the right to access all your files and even make changes to your settings. Those things give them the right to activate whatever they want on your computer.

Some years back I bought a new video camera and recorded some test videos. I edited a video, rendered a new video (so there should be no metadata or identifying information from the original file), and uploaded the new video to YouTube. The file name was something generic like Test4.mp4, and the description I entered was something equally generic like "test video shot with my new camera." Now, sometimes YouTube suggests keywords to use to describe your video. At first, the suggestions were generic like "test" and "camera." But as the video was processed, the suggestions changed to include the manufacturer of my camera and the specific model number. I didn't add those keywords, but later when I watched the video, the advertisements shown on the page included ones for my new camera. I checked and this was one of the videos where I had mentioned the name of my camera. YouTube automatically tries to create closed captions for videos using speech recognition. My conclusion was that YouTube was scanning the captions for keyword suggestions and advertisement selections.

So, years later when I heard about TV remotes that used speech recognition to control the TV or DVR, and that sounds they recorded were sent through the Internet to third parties for processing, my immediate thought was "and if you talk to your wife about Toyota cars, the next commercial you see will be for a Toyota car."