The New York Times rounds up direct links to several services surveillance opt-out screens, including some I’d never thought to look for (Amazon), as well as instructions for installing tracking blockers and no-script extensions that will limit the data trail you exhaust behind yourself as you traverse the net.
My mom (Hi mom!) isn’t exactly a tech expert. We have the stereotypical boomer parent/millennial child relationship. I help her update her OS and figure out her cable bill, she cautions me about sketchy hackers stealing my identity and warns me not to open strange email attachments.“Just because you’re paranoid,” she likes to joke in her motherly way, “doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.” I laugh then brush it off.
But mom, I’m here to say: You were right.The relentlessly unyielding (but highly profitable) personalization of the products and services we use is getting deeper and creepier than ever. This type of data is incredibly valuable, we’re producing a ton of it every day, and it’s all being used to turn us into products. As one Facebook developer famously said: “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads.”
How to See What the Internet Knows About You (And How to Stop It)
[Tim Herrera/New York Times]
(via Naked Capitalism)