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Comment by zoltaan | Hacker News Reader

I always felt a bit silly logging in to Facebook in a private browser window in every other week, many times through a VPN. Also not sharing much more than jokes and cartoons or memes. Not to mention my absense from the hip social web, including Tinder, but many more as well.

I don't feel silly anymore. :)

(btw: my name is not zoltaan ;) )

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Outliers such as yourself won't do much to curtail the practice of companies amassing identifiable, weaponizable, and often undersecured data about their users. And because the data is valuable and there have been few regulations put in place to balance that value with the burden of responsible handling, those companies will continue to collect more and in more creative ways, whittling away at your creative maneuvers to avoid it.

In my estimation, this is a good first step, but privacy has to be a feature of the system, not just a heavy shield you carry through it.

I just don't see the doom and gloom. You say "weaponizable" but even the worst offenders for oversharing aren't giving facebook information that seems that bad? Compare the data talked about in this article (likes, jobs, dating preferences) to data that already is public knowledge and avaliable to everyone: (assuming US) how much you payed in property taxes, where you live, what your phone number is, which political party you're registered to vote in (depending on the state this might also be linked to your telephone number or even last 4 SSN), all documents related to any companies you may have incorporated. Your public data footprint is far more expansive than the tiny slice companies like tinder and facebook have. The only reason they don't bother linking to the public realm is that personal data (unaggregated) is worthless from the prospective of "building models to sell adds".

They still build profiles on you though. When you phones wifi is near someone with an android phone or a Facebook app they'll handshake and tell the interwebs where you are and with whom.

Do you have a link to more info about this?

Hopefully you also don't have any friends.

On the web? No, not much. :)

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