GROWMAP.COM » Privacy and Data Mining http://www.growmap.com MAP Your Path to GROW Your Business Mon, 15 Mar 2010 23:42:35 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Everything You Do Online is Being Tracked. Find Out How, By Whom, Why, Now What http://www.growmap.com/how-google-web-history-works/ http://www.growmap.com/how-google-web-history-works/#comments Sun, 14 Sep 2008 11:58:39 +0000 growmap http://www.growmap.com/?p=358 If Google isn’t Big Brother they’re doing a pretty good imitation. And escaping them is no easier than getting away from the Thought Police was for Winston. Once you understand how Google Web History works you’ll have a pretty good idea how all the others who are following us around work.

LATEST GOOGLE PRIVACY ISSUE LINKS:

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES on PROTECTING YOUR INTERNET PRIVACY:

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES on GOOGLE WEB SEARCH and Other Forms of GOOGLE TRACKING:

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES ON ONLINE DATA MINING:

WHO ELSE IS TRACKING YOU AND YOUR VISITORS?:

COMPETITORS OR?:

]]> http://www.growmap.com/how-google-web-history-works/feed/ 5 If GrowMap is About Growing Your Business, Why All the Posts on Privacy? http://www.growmap.com/why-privacy/ http://www.growmap.com/why-privacy/#comments Sun, 14 Sep 2008 08:33:30 +0000 growmap http://www.growmap.com/?p=347 Before you start using any online method to grow your business – whether that be blogs, directories, social networking, advertising or any other method – you MUST understand how your activities online are being tracked so that you can control to which accounts your activities are being linked.

Bear with me because this is a very important concept that all Internet users really need to understand and absolutely critical to those who are using the Internet to promote their business, non-profit, personal interests or any worthy cause.

There is no way to know how many sites are in collusion to track your activities across the Net. If you’re very observant you’ll see new linkage between sites every day. What this means is that you must understand and learn to protect and differentiate between actions you take for yourself, those others who may use your computer or log-in information have taken, and what you do for clients or businesses.

All of the major Internet sites including search engines, ecommerce, news, business, social networking and everywhere else you visit online is tracking what you do and attributing those actions to a specific profile. They assume – often incorrectly – that whoever visits a site is the person who was last logged into any other site they collect data from. In other words:

They assume that if your user information OR your computer were logged in that YOU are the CURRENT user! This can be true EVEN IF YOU LOGGED OFF!!!

If you plan to be active online and especially if you are going to be doing client work you absolutely must understand and control the above behavior. If you don’t, at a minimum you will be very embarassed. You’re highly likely to lose clients. And you may end up endangering everyone you interact with online.

What am I talking about? You have got to understand all this stuff so you can keep your online activities separate! (And those of anyone else who uses your computer(s) or any computer you have ever used!) First you have to know WHY that is important:

  • Everything you do online is tracked
  • Your activities end up in various databases that are accessible to others
  • Many sites use cookies that automatically log you in – even if you have never been to that site before!
  • Sites often have partner sites that share these cookies and assume the person using the computer NOW is the last person who was logged into any partner site
  • Some sites add what you’re doing to their history databases EVEN IF YOU LOGGED OUT!

The above behaviors can result in these serious issues for you:

  • YOUR searches can end up in history files belong to YOUR CLIENTS
  • Posts you make online can be attributed to someone else
  • Someone else’s posts may be attributed to you
  • New accounts you create may be associated with other unrelated accounts
  • Correcting these issues can be time-consuming and may not even be possible

If you have multiple clients these issues can be particularly problematic. They can reveal personal information and research you have done for one client to another. Searches you do for friends, family or other clients may be visible to clients even if you logged out of whatever you were working on for them.

The first time you run into this problem is likely to be because of a Google site. According to Google’s Privacy FAQ for Google Web History:

“Web History saves information about your web activity, including pages you visit and searches on Google.”

That is actually not true. If you use my computer - even if you log out – if I do not log into anything Google after you use it, their system assumes what I am doing is YOU doing it!

Everything someone who does not sign into anything Google does is attributed to the last Google login used on that computer

Have you ever let someone check their Webmail from your computer? If they’re using gmail and you don’t use anything Google, Google may start tracking you as though you were them! (And you can’t always tell what email addresses are using gmail. Domains can be set up to use gmail so the address appears to be @anyotherdomain name and actually be on gmail!).

While you can remove history from what you see you can NOT remove it from Google’s database! Any data that they have collected – whether valid or garbage – has permanently been connected to you. Because of the way this data is being collected it is invalid and corrupted. Unfortunately, they don’t really care – but you should.

There is no easy way to control these issues; however, we will share methods we use to prevent such challenges in new posts soon to come starting with how Google Web History works.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

]]> http://www.growmap.com/why-privacy/feed/ 6 When FREE Is Definitely Not: What Those Free Services Are Really Costing You http://www.growmap.com/not-free/ http://www.growmap.com/not-free/#comments Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:04:16 +0000 growmap http://www.growmap.com/?p=318 When most companies – and especially corporations – provide extremely desirable and advanced services without charging you it is definitely NOT out of the goodness of their hearts. You can be assured that there is always a profit motive – always. That is a given – the obvious truth; what is not so obvious is what the means of generating profit is.

In the past, the most common way the cost of anything we receive that is free in theory has been paid for by advertising. Magazines and newspapers subsidize the cost of subscriptions with advertising. Local free publications provide the end user with a free copy which is actually paid for the ads they contain. Free to you; paid for by the advertiser. That has been the most common model.

Profit is one thing; freedom is another. Instead of paying for services with advertising we are now trading our privacy for computer services such as email and Web analytics. This is a very dangerous trade because our personal information is not being used only to better target advertising – although that IS what we are told. It is increasingly likely to be used to take away our last vestiges of freedom.

The majority of humans are quick to judge, easily swayed, and lack understanding of common logic faults. Combine those traits with an abundance of information and the potential for the innocent to be condemned, imprisoned, or worse is all too likely.

Here is a real life examples of assumptions of guilt made:

  • Drug dealers buy lots of plastic baggies; therefore, anyone who buys large quantities of plastic baggies is a drug dealer
  • Have you ever bought such common items as scouring pads, alcohol, cigarette lighters? What if you bought one or more of these items for someone else? What if a relative uses your phone number to buy them? What do these items indicate you could be? You may already be considered guilty and not even know why!
  • Before it hit the evening news how many knew that cold medicines are used for something else?
  • What other common items you buy have other uses you may not even know about?

Jumping to conclusions is highly dangerous to our liberty. Most people are only too happy to believe someone else is guilty based on superficial “evidence” and how it is presented. Many would instantly believe that someone IS a drug dealer because they buy lots of plastic baggies! Even if wiser heads come to your defense it may be too late to reverse the tide of public opinion.

Who else might buy lots of plastic baggies? How about someone having a bake sale? Or providing the snacks for children’s activities?  Or someone who gives out sandwiches to the homeless?

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Montana Supreme Court Justice James C Nelson Warns 1984 Has Arrived:

“I don’t like living in Orwell’s 1984; but I do. And, absent the next extinction event or civil libertarians taking charge of the government (the former being more likely than the latter), the best we can do is try to keep Sam and the sub-Sams on a short leash.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

THE DANGERS of LOYALTY PROGRAMS and RFID TRACKING:

INNOCENT PEOPLE ARRESTED BASED ON LOYALTY CARDS:

Know of any others? Please leave information and related links if any in comments.

]]> http://www.growmap.com/not-free/feed/ 12 Why You Really Need to Know: How Data Mining Works and How It Is Affecting You http://www.growmap.com/data-mining-privacy/ http://www.growmap.com/data-mining-privacy/#comments Wed, 10 Sep 2008 15:44:43 +0000 growmap http://www.growmap.com/?p=303 You need to clearly understand how data mining works because it is already affecting your life and will do so much more in the very near future. It is simple to understand and if you’re reading this there is a 90+% chance you use it yourself every day. Any person who wants to know all about you can do a similar search across multitudes of supposedly private databases.

A search engine (Google, Yahoo, Ask – even my favorite Zuula) are all data mining services. You type in what you want to find and the search engine provides the information you’ve requested. It isn’t quite that simple as the search engines filter the data they provide. Filtering is used to eliminate some results and decide in what order the information is presented.

Since most people only view the first page or two, the search engine has great power to influence what information is widely viewed and what is likely to be overlooked. Some are taking this further and actually censoring what appears to be available online. For now we’ll focus on data mining though.

So why should you care about data mining? Try this example. Type in the name of any famous person in your favorite search engine or tool bar. Notice all the information that you would consider private that is available to anyone online. That is just what is supposedly publicly available. What do you suppose is in private databases on that famous person – and on you? What if someone could search all of these at once:

  • All three credit reports
  • Check reporting companies
  • Medical records
  • Employment records

Being able to search by name once helped reduce what searches could find on you. This is because many people sometimes use their name in many different forms:

  • First Last
  • First Middle Last
  • First Middle Initial Last

Add to that various ways women have used for maiden, married, and then hyphenated forms and you would think that would make data more difficult to accumulate.

The power of data mining combined with identifying numbers – especially social security numbers – has largely eliminated that issue. Prove it yourself quickly by doing a quick search on any number of public databases. Here is one example:

  • Search for Jane Smith showing cities lived in, potential relatives, their age – and that is only what they’ll give you for free. Try searching for your own name or those of others you know. Imagine what someone evil might do with that information that is now free to anyone who knows how to find it?

That is not the only database online. Check out WhitePages People Search which may offer your job title, employer, members of your household, and your age to anyone who knows your name. They also offer to sell more of your personal information to those willing to pay the minimal fees they charge.

Did you notice the WhitePages Neighbor Search function? Type in any address and the database will give you the names and addresses of your neighbors. While this could be a good way to find contact information in an emergency, it could be used for evil. Those who are not aware how much information is now available to strangers could easily be targeted by con artists. If someone knows your neighbor’s names and their kids names what else might you unknowingly reveal to them because you assume this person is a friend or relative?

The fastest way to pull information about you across all sources is by using any information that is common between them. The most dangerous of these is something that never changes and the one and only piece of personal information that almost everyone has for life is their Social Security Number (SSN).

When I was young I clearly remember promises that our social security numbers (SSN) were ONLY for tax purposes and would never be used for identification! It even said that on the bottom of the little paper SSN card: FOR SOCIAL SECURITY AND TAX PURPOSES — NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION. Even the SSA’s own Web site confirms that we were assured Social Security Numbers would not be used as a National ID.

Any databases that contain social security numbers can pull all of your personal information together in minutes or faster! This is why it is a very good idea to stop giving your SSN number out to everyone who asks. Do NOT print it on your checks. Many businesses including electric companies and other utilities will insist it is mandatory when it is not – yet. Keep refusing or offer to use only the last four digits and escalate to management.

Why should you care? Where are we going? Who can speak out if even Christianity is being censored? Are you sure you can handle the truth?

LEARN TO PROTECT (as much as possible) YOUR PERSONAL PRIVACY AND FUTURE:

[WARNING: One of the easiest ways to track someone is to offer them a way to opt out of tracking! The number of groups that appear to protect us actually hurt us. Telling the difference is extremely difficult. Don't be in any hurry to use these types of sites.]

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES on PRIVACY CONCERNS:

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES on DATA MINING:

PERSONAL INFORMATION IN DATABASES COMPROMISED:

USES of SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS:

ADDITIONAL REFERENCE RESOURCES ON SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS

]]> http://www.growmap.com/data-mining-privacy/feed/ 7 Slip of the Tongue or Truth Revealed: You Have Zero Privacy Anyway – Get Over It http://www.growmap.com/zero-privacy/ http://www.growmap.com/zero-privacy/#comments Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:29:10 +0000 growmap http://www.growmap.com/?p=315 There was a furor when Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy told reporters “privacy issues are a red herring; you have zero privacy anyway…get over it!” Many could not believe he would say that; however, he was simply stating the truth – an obvious truth to those with access to the many databases that contain your life – and more problematic – things that did not actually happen but got recorded as though they did.

Still believe we have privacy? Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said “The privacy you’re concerned about is largely an illusion. All you have to give up is your illusions, not any of your privacy.” They have both known about the erosion of our privacy for so long they apparently didn’t even realize their comments would be a surprise.

Why do they say we have no privacy? Do you know what information you think is private can be easily accessed? The one that surprised me the most is who has access to your medical records. If anything should be private you would think your health would be.

Even that is not what is really threatening to our lives. Linking more and more databases together and using data mining programs to extract personal information makes it available to far too many untrustworthy individuals, companies, and government agencies.

Once you understand how data mining works you will never take privacy for granted again and more importantly, you will have a better idea what you can do to protect yourself.

LEARN TO PROTECT (as much as possible) YOUR PERSONAL PRIVACY AND FUTURE:

[WARNING: One of the easiest ways to track someone is to offer them a way to opt out of tracking. Many groups that claim or appear to protect us actually hurt us. Telling the difference is extremely difficult; however, checking to see who the members are often reveals their true purpose. Don't be in any hurry to use these types of sites.]

ADDITIONAL 2008 RESOURCES on PRIVACY CONCERNS:

ADVANCED READING ON PRIVACY ISSUES:

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES (2007 and earlier):

What if profit is the real red herring? Maybe it isn’t all about money. Maybe it is all about control.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES on DATA MINING:

]]> http://www.growmap.com/zero-privacy/feed/ 4 What Does Privacy Have to Do With Being Middle Class? What You Need to Know Now! http://www.growmap.com/what-does-privacy-have-to-do-with-being-middle-class-what-you-need-to-know-now/ http://www.growmap.com/what-does-privacy-have-to-do-with-being-middle-class-what-you-need-to-know-now/#comments Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:40:59 +0000 growmap http://www.growmap.com/?p=312 Be honest. How fast would debts consume whatever savings or property you own? Our fairy-tale middle class is one life-line away from living in the street. To truly be middle class now in the U.S. would require at least a six figure income and a net worth of over a million dollars. The United States is now the land of the great imaginary middle-class.

If you lose your job or have a medical emergency your credit is very likely to be damaged. Once that happens you can forget about getting insurance, or a corporate position (or any other employer who uses credit screening), or even renting to put a roof over your head!

This is a systematic intentional move toward increasing poverty and planned homelessness!

A recent AOL Internet online privacy survey proves that most people simply do not understand the dangers of providing information. The risk is not in the one question you answered today (or the additional information you offered in email, chat, or on social networking). The issue is that what you think is anonymous is not. It can all be tracked back to you to build a huge personal profile on each one of us.

Most computer users are unaware of the awesome power of data mining and how deeply it may already be affecting their lives. Each of us already uses data mining whenever we use a search engine such as Google or Yahoo to locate information. We type in what we wish to know and the search engine presents everything it can find on that subject in the databases it can access.

Like all things useful, data mining is a double-edged sword. Whether it is good for us or bad all depends on who is swinging that sword. Read on about how to protect your privacy.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: WHAT IS MIDDLE CLASS ANYWAY?

THE TRUTH BEHIND CLASS, POVERTY, and the ECONOMY:

]]> http://www.growmap.com/what-does-privacy-have-to-do-with-being-middle-class-what-you-need-to-know-now/feed/ 24 Privacy Issues Part 1: How Credit Reporting is Already Affecting Your Survival http://www.growmap.com/credit-reports/ http://www.growmap.com/credit-reports/#comments Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:29:04 +0000 growmap http://www.growmap.com/?p=305 Could something you reveal today radically change your life without you realizing it? The answer is a resounding yes – and I hope you will take the time to understand how and why. Information you share online or off is being used to control your future. How can that be? Here are some examples of what can happen:

  • Make you, your family, or business uninsurable
  • Affect your ability to stay employed
  • Dramatically increase your debt by changing your interest rates
  • Make you the target of Identity Theft
  • Expose your innermost secrets; perhaps even subject you to threats of blackmail
  • Even prevent you from renting a place to live

What could possibly do that? I know some will be tempted to play ostrich and put their heads in the sand at this point. I pray for your sake that you keep reading. The same computer technology that allows a search engine to find what you seek online can allow all the data about you to be gathered together and used for purposes far different than what you thought you were doing.

Someone has only to tell the Data Mining program what they want to know and give it access to as many databases as possible and off it goes collecting all there is to know about you. The more databases it can access, the more information it can return. This has been going on for decades in a limited way. The consolidation of all these databases has massively increased the possibility that your future will be impacted.

Most consumers now realize they have a credit file. There are actually three credit databases and any person who has an account with them can run a credit report on you. Others you do business with routinely run credit reports on you. Technically they are supposed to get your permission first.

Many now know about FICO scores and that what is in your credit report greatly affects what it costs to buy anything (car, house, products and services) on credit. What some do not realize yet is that credit reports do not only affect your purchases. They can also affect whether you get hired.

Many employers pull credit reports as part of their screening process. Some check the credit of employees being considered for promotion. Rental management agencies routinely screen credit reports of those applying to rent property. More and more property is being accumulated by companies with policies of refusing to rent to those with less than stellar credit or those who have a negative banking history.

Errors in your credit report can have dire financial consequences. CBS News reported that an astounding 4 out of 5 credit reports contain errors! That is 80%! Unfortunately, most databases DO contain massive numbers of errors.

There are several big reasons for these errors. Do you realize how many other people have the same name as you do? People often use different forms of their name: full name, middle initial, first name only.There are 50,372 people known to be named John Smith.

There is even a Web site now that tells you how many people share your name. The more common your name the more likely some of their activities ended up on your credit report. (This is why the issues of a National ID System and using your Social Security number on everything will not die.)

If 80% of all databases are wrong that means there is an 80% chance they are affecting you already in some way. Once errors appear in these databases they can be a nightmare to correct. Today that might mean no credit, no housing, and no job. If a National ID system is imposed it may prohibit you from buying anything – not even food!

  • Even if your credit it perfect now, most Americans are at best only a few paychecks from poverty.
  • Even if you have paid every bill on time errors in your files could seriously jeopardize life as you know it.

Credit reporting was original kept secret. Today, most people are not only aware that credit reports affect what they pay, they also know they have credit scores. Consumer pressure finally led to a way to get free credit reports online. These could easily contain at least the FISA credit score – but don’t.

How long has this been an issue? Credit Report Horror stories about the difficulty of correcting errors have been online since before 1991 and How to Fix Your Credit Report is still a leading topic in 2008. It is now common knowledge that errors in your credit report and Identity Theft can reek havoc in our lives.

This is but the tip of the iceberg and we are living aboard the Titanic. If you want to know what is hidden under the water and survive the trip watch for the next installment of this series:

What You Don’t Know About Privacy Issues Is ALREADY Hurting You![coming very soon].

The easiest way to make sure you don’t miss it is to use one of the Subscribe functions in the bottom right corner of this page.

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