OK Blue Moon, now I see what you did there. You already had my attention with the AI facial recognition stuff you have been posting about, but this thread puts things in terms even I can understand. Good Job with that - I think I am now awake. (or is it woke nowadays?)

Question is, what can we do about the harvesting / selling of our personal information or is it already too late???
I don't Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, Quora, Nextdoor, TikTok or even Gaia Online.

I do use google and Gmail. Gmail by itself is nefarious but I still use it. TFF and THF is about the extent of my social media and I try to keep location services turned off on my phone unless using a weather app, Google Maps, or Waze. But to just use most apps or even run a smart phone, you pretty much have to choose the Accept box so what is the solution for privacy of myself and my data???

I too am going with BS-
And if not personally I think it’s a DH thing to do-
I would never send you any money for anything that would help support doing this-

This is great. It will do especially well in the SaltLife. Can we hack the Bluetooth controllers on Power Poles?

Thanks for all of the engagement and playing along. I enjoy writing stories that tie together things I’m passionate about. Flying, fishing, tech startups and the ongoing battle for digital privacy are all in my wheelhouse so I cobbled together a little story to try to lighten things up in the OT and as Jon suspected, to shine light on the privacy, or more specifically, data aggregation issue.

Some of you know that I’ve been involved with dozens of startups including several Tier 1 ISPs that carry the majority of the world’s Internet traffic. I’m also involved with traditional advertising and digital marketing. In other words, I have unique insight into the issue. My story is a simple example of how your data is being exploited.

In my analogy I used silly waypoint boat data to represent everyone’s personal data that is actually being scraped, combined, and exploited constantly from every source imaginable. The companies exploiting your actual data have the same level of ethics and concern for your personal data and wellbeing as the wicked startup hacker in my story.

I’ve been in the room dozens of times when ideas were hatched that launched startups, apps, products and services. Most follow a similar flow as my story. I’m just trying to provide some insight to give everyone an idea of what we’re up against.

The privacy issue is complicated and the technology behind it is mostly hidden from view so it's difficult for most people to get their head around it. Instead of thinking the cat is out of the bag and we can’t do anything about it, if we unite and come together, we can stop damaging data aggregation through regulation. Aggregated data is the headwater where most of the privacy problems that harm us start.

I felt like I made some progress by the way some of you responded to the villain in my story. I truly feel this is a liberty and freedom issue. We all need to rise up with passion to stop data aggregation and long term storage of our metadata. Your data, and the data of everyone you love, will continue to be exploited until you finally stand up and demand it stops. That means you and yours will be targeted, conned, and discriminated against, and otherwise harmed until you stop it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not inciting violence, just regulation...

What I’m suggesting will in no way hurt the Internet but it will go a long way toward fixing it. Amazon, Google (Alphabet), Facebook, Apple or Microsoft will all be fine. It might sting a few of their “third party partners” that are data aggregators but they will survive. They just need to be regulated.

To come up to speed on this issue I suggest everyone start by reading Data and Goliath, The Hidden Battle to Collect Your Data and Control Your World by Bruce Schneier. It’s one of the best books on the subject written for a nontechnical mainstream audience. It also provides a high level overview on practical steps to take. If anyone needs guidance on the subject, feel free to look me up privately.

BTW, if your Ultrex goes wacky, don’t shoot me, I’m just the messenger…

Blue Moon

Big data is a magnificent yet terrifying tool. Used for my purposes it is fine but marketing turns it into an onslaught of junk mail/email.

skynet will swallow us all up and all that will be left are the machines.

I stay unpredictable. Algorithms hate unpredictability so they toss it out. Skynet would exclude me from the dataset.

Just ordered a Rafael Drone Dome, bring it!

needs a "Stay off my brush pile" feature.