[dmw07]

Originally Posted by ScumLord

I'm sure if they could do that easily they would, all they want is your money

Yeah, they want cash. But they can't profile you without your consent. Facial recognition is good enough, the laws on stalking, keeping records of people without their consent are also good enough to deter companies. Digital data, there is little or no law in relation to this.

Originally Posted by ScumLord

It's a computer watching you and treating your data with complete indifference.

I used to write case matrices and code for a company, to overcome such a problem. That was 4 years ago. I was/am a poor coder and i was not the first to try it either. It was relatively successful. We had the full co-operation of the customers though.

Originally Posted by ScumLord

I suppose that's just the side effects of being on the cutting edge of technological advances. They're creating a new world and the law has barely woken up to the new world we all live in.

I think you are right there. We are a victim of incomparable changes in law and technology.

Right, i'm off down the shop to buy a crunchie. That google ad banner for one is tempting me

[ScumLord]

Originally Posted by dmw07

I used to write case matrices and code for a company, to overcome such a problem. That was 4 years ago. I was/am a poor coder and i was not the first to try it either. It was relatively successful. We had the full co-operation of the customers though.

You wrote code that turned a computer into a biggot?

[Dude111]

Originally Posted by ScumLord

I don't see what's wrong with any of that.

The ones who are MOST AFFECTED by google are unfortunetly those of us that live IN THE USA!! (Where they are trying to get all info they can and collect it)

[D]

Originally Posted by dmw07

Re:Ad's. I've disabled them several times now. Every new agreement i sign, they come back. Annoying having to take them off is all.

Just talking to a mate about the quote above, legality of data and the use of data by companies in computing came into the conversation.

Just run with me for a minute;
If, for instance a shop keeper saved CCTV footage of me, for longer than 2 years and used it to build up a character (Faux or real) of me and what i like. Then used that information to target me, to knowingly or hopefully take my money by exchange of goods, where would i stand in relation to the law?

Reason i'm waffling is there is little or no law around it. The only thing that stops google from being those "corporate bastards", is google. They are effectively policing, themselves. So it's back to my main point really. What google does, it up to google.

Most shops already do this. Loyalty cards are used to collect what you buy and when you buy.

I remember seeing an article how shops noticed at a particular time there was a surge in beer and nappies on friday evenings. It turned out that husbands coming home at the weekend and the wives were calling and asking them to pick up nappies some were buying some beer.

What the shop did was move the beer and nappies closer so that more husbands would see and buy beer. Sales of beer went up 40%.

[dmw07]

Originally Posted by D

Most shops already do this. Loyalty cards are used to collect what you buy and when you buy.

I remember seeing an article how shops noticed at a particular time there was a surge in beer and nappies on friday evenings. It turned out that husbands coming home at the weekend and the wives were calling and asking them to pick up nappies some were buying some beer.

What the shop did was move the beer and nappies closer so that more husbands would see and buy beer. Sales of beer went up 40%.

Ah that's trend analysis at a higher level, i think you speak of. We did that with purely the epos receipt from the till. You can do that without the customers notice as you are not personally identifying with their purchase. It's at an aggregated and anonymised level.

What i'm talking about, targets YOU. Whether or not YOU buy a beer and nappies on Friday at 6.21:23 on 30th September with a €50 note.

As for the loyalty cards, they are a great linkage. We never linked a purchase with a person, unless we had written consent to do so. When we started to matrix a persons purchasing habit we found some amazing information about them. Scary actually.

[Khannie]

Originally Posted by dmw07

When we started to matrix a persons purchasing habit we found some amazing information about them. Scary actually.

Sounds interesting...tell me more.

[dmw07]

Originally Posted by Khannie

Sounds interesting...tell me more.

I'll send you a pm.

[thirtythirty]

I'd be interested to hear people's proposals for where they are moving to when they leave Google, and how they think it will be any different (apart from the poorer quality service). I'm quite sure Bing or Yahoo don't store information of any sort

As for the CCTV anecdote, I personally would be delighted if Tesco analysed all their CCTV of me and moved everything I liked, and everything I might like, to beside the front door. That'd save me wading through the cr@p I know I definitely don't want just to find the things I do want, and also give me the option to go beyond "my stuff" to find new things if I so decide to.

It's also interesting to see people's varying definition of being evil. Where someone arguing it's "evil" to promote Google+ on Google ;I'd wonder if they'd call it evil if 820 Cabs had a sticker on their dashboard promoting a new service they had because they "should really have a sticker from all the cab companies in the interest of fairness". I personally would call it leveraging your service, as is normal business practice.

I also guess challenging the Chinese government and refusing to bow to government censorship of Google search results doesn't constitute an act of their "don't be evil" mantra.

[Volovo]

This is a really interesting thread!

Then Chrome and android were marketed in pretty much the same way as microsofts ie. Free for all until people become dependent on it. This is the hook in the fishes mouth

Thats one of the things I am afraid of, just how dependant we are all becoming on google, and what they decide to do with that dependancy.

I use:
Google Search
Google Maps
(Google) Android
Google Chrome
Gmail
Google Docs
Youtube
Google News
Google Plus
and Google Translate.

What about when google wallet becomes everybody's choice of payment? Google Drive is google's version of dropbox, I will probably start using that too.

It is a fantastically innovative company, and all of products and services are top notch. They offer the user a brilliant service, but at what cost? Our privacy?

In one way I don't mind certain ads being tailored to me, but I am afraid of just how powerful google is with all of that information about me. What if it falls into the wrong hands?

[Volovo]

Originally Posted by spottyelephant

That'd save me wading through the cr@p I know I definitely don't want just to find the things I do want, and also give me the option to go beyond "my stuff" to find new things if I so decide to.

I agree with everything in your post but think about this, are you really making the decision to "find new things"? Or is it the company that knows you so well placing a product right under your nose so you'll buy it, even though before you walked into the shop you didn't know you wanted it?

[thirtythirty]

Originally Posted by Volovo

I agree with everything in your post but think about this, are you really making the decision to "find new things"? Or is it the company that knows you so well placing a product right under your nose so you'll buy it, even though before you walked into the shop you didn't know you wanted it?

I can only speak for myself, but categorically yes!

Every so often I get a "spending itch" and decide to buy a new toy, and at that point I start my broad search/thinking of *everything* to see what I'm going to treat myself to. Outside of that I literally only buy the normal/necessity items.

[dmw07]

Originally Posted by Volovo

just how dependant we are all becoming on google

Go to a pub quiz night anywhere near you. Do you remember a time when the people that had the best phones didn't win because they had the fastest processor?

Humans retaining information is becoming a thing of the past. This is not such a bad thing, we just have to be aware of it.

Digital data retrieval and storage laws are non existent but that is not to say that the data is being used for anything other than capitalist conglomerates manipulative monetary extraction of finance on a sheep based species spoon feed what they do and don't like.

Not everyone is materialistic though, so a lot of data is pointless. I wouldn't be too worried about google using your data. They have been actively selling it for years. Nothing bad has happened so far.

[BostonB]

I just find the whole thing annoying. I don't want my phone numbers on facebook, I don't want my gmail email addresses on my phone. When I swap the sim in a phone I don't want it to enable mobile data then every app start updating, downloading data. If my gmail gets compromised, I don't want it to compromise every other online service I have. I don't want people who have my gmail, know what I watch on youtube.

It would be different if these companies made it easy and transparent to control who sees what, and which service shares with what. But too often they make subtle changes, buried in some menu 3 levels deep, and always bias to share information than block it.

I love technology. But I want to control it, not be dictated to by it.

[Torqay]

Originally Posted by BostonB

I love technology. But I want to control it, not be dictated to by it.

Your hopes are in vain.

Between 2011 and 2016 the amount of mobile data traffic will grow at a compound annual rate of 78 percent as the number of mobile devices connected to the Internet exceeds the number of people on Earth in four years' time, according to a study by Cisco Systems Inc.

By then, machines & AI will become more important than humans as the economic driver.

With technological evolution faster than biological evolution, in another 5 or 10 years time, there will be machines that are more "intelligent" than human beings.

Then the scene will be set for machines to control human beings.

And the Google machine could well be the mothership.

[BostonB]

LOL good point!

I had the experience of being without the internet, TV, and mobile phone, for a few weeks, and using a basic phone for a while I just enjoyed it so much, I've kinda been opting out of social media and such lately. Good for the soul.