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Comment by encrux | Hacker News Reader

Why would you want to go out of your way to send bogus data to the manufacturer?

I'm all for being able to choose whether or not to disclose that data, but then we'll also have to accept different choices than ours. There's no point in sabotaging others.

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No one will hand you your rights for free on a silver plate. Protesting and fighting back is the only way any progress is made in society.

> Why would you want to go out of your way to send bogus data to the manufacturer?

Because getting a ton of garbage will positively stimulate them to stop trusting this data. That helps everyone.

Though more likely no one will notice/care and they will just sell the bad data regardless

If someone's buying the data they will care sooner or later. After all, if they wanted bogus data, they can generate it themselves instead of buying it.

Please someone tell me what anyone would do with data obtained from a fridge.

Customer is out of cheese. Supermarket texts and emails you asking if you want cheese delivery (bundled with other items).

Unless there's cameras everywhere in the fridge (plus advanced object recognition that knows that that bundled up pack of goat cheese inside a ziplock bag is in fact goat cheese) or people are scanning items as they take them out I don't see how that would work and both things seem kinda unlikely so it's weird they'd start with the easiest part which is hook up the thing to the internet.

Usage patterns? Fridge being opened means someone is home. That data point is meaningless in isolation, but can be valuable if you want to use it to confirm/deny other data points - let's say another data broker is trying to get an accurate ad targeting profile but only has breadcrumbs here and there such as IP addresses, user-agents that by themselves don't mean much, but they can use other data points (such as fridge activity data) to link your otherwise-anonymous IP-based profile if they see that the only times this IP lights up is when the fridge was also used recently.

Whether that's currently done is up for debate - maybe there are other lower-hanging fruits that are easier to do, but if you've exhausted all your other options and still want even more accurate profiles, I don't see why you wouldn't do it.

I went through a serious attempt to remove all of my resumes on the web. Paid a firm, whole nine yards.

Several data brokers still have very, very old copies.. and they still sell them.. and recruiters still buy them.. and still contact me.. and still get met with an email politely telling them off.

But that years old shitty linkedin dataset still gets sold to thousands of people for thousands of dollars a year and nobody bats an eye. The recruiters are too stupid to spot the bad data and the brokers too lazy to care.

> There's no point in sabotaging others.

We're already being sabotaged, by manufacturers - what else would you call this sometimes hidden, non-disablable connectivity/"telemetry", and the disappearance of dumb options? The only question is if we let them get away with it scot-free.

Advertisements for products invade our lives, unbidden, nearly every second of every day. Turnabout, as they say, is fair play.

I agree with the other responses here, but they missed one reason: because it’s funny.

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