Please sign and share this White House petition asking the Obama administration to propose a law limiting the amount of private consumer information that companies collect and use on the Internet.
Advertising networks operated by companies like Google follow your every move on the Internet, may read your email, and target you with advertising that is most likely to appeal to your interests. Although advertising helps to supports Websites like Xenite.Org, it has been distributed with almost no government oversight.
Furthermore, companies like Google collect your private information in many ways for their own profit and gain. In a recent court case that was decided in Google’s favor, the Internet giant argued that its users have “no legitimate expectation of privacy”. Even if you use Google’s search engine while logged out of your Google account they record everything you do and use that information to build products and technologies that earn them more money.
Although every company has a right to make a profit for its goods and services, advertising networks like that operated by Google have an unfair advantage over consumers because they don’t disclose to the consumers just what information is being collected or how its being used.
Today’s advertising technologies are not benign. They have been developed with psychological warfare techniques, designed to provoke specific emotional responses in people who see the ads repeatedly, and they are targeted by following your Internet activity from Website to Website. A growing business in the Internet advertising industry is called “retargeting”, where networks follow you from Website to Website and show you preferred advertising. The more often you see an ad, the more likely you are to trust the advertiser and buy their products and services. This is basic propaganda theory that goes all the way back to Nazi Germany’s propaganda practices.
Advertising and marketing are ingrained in western society. We are accustomed to seeing ads but most people are not aware that advertisers can now literally follow them around in all their Web activities.
We need better laws requiring companies to better inform consumers about what information is collected, how that information is used, how long that information is stored, and allowing consumers to “turn off” the advertising without having to go through complicated steps that are designed and intended to frustrate consumers and keep the advertising networks in your back pocket.
Google and other advertising networks have criticized the United States government and other western governments for merely scanning emails and telephone conversations in their search for Al Qaeda operatives and supporters. Where the governments are NOT trying to influence your behavior and opinions, these companies ARE. Al Qaeda has spread its dangerous war against the world to nearly 30 countries. We elect our governments to protect us and they have all the resources they need to fight Al Qaeda, but we have almost no protections from our own advertising networks.
Tell your friends and family that we can do something about the constant invasion of your personal privacy on the Internet by signing and promoting this White House petition: http://wh.gov/l8KVK.
Take action today while you still have a chance to impose reasonable limits on these technologies. The technology companies have made it clear they have no consciences and they will do whatever they wish to make a proift.
In the meantime, people can start to defend themselves using specific software (browser plugins) that try to protect their privacy from the prying eyes of the corporate Big Brothers. For example, check Disconnect.me or AdBlockPlus.org (or AdBlock Edge).
I don’t know if those browser plugins are adequate for Google. Google’s “raw” links redirect via Google itself, and it uses inline javascript to change them into direct links which have tracking code attached via events; whether javascript is enabled or disabled, then, still the tracking data is returned. Simple blocking does not suffice; it is necessary to modify the page source code. I have written my own script for doing this, and at the same time disabling various other tracking measures; it is ugly, but at least I can be sure that it does the job.
It goes without saying of course that one should block cookies from Google, never sign up for a Google account, and avoid using any Google product (apart from the search engine itself, which is pretty unavoidable due to the lack of decent alternatives). Or indeed any so-called “cloud” service. The same functionality is available from many different purely local applications, and the only reason such services exist at all is to enable the providers to collect private data from people who are too lazy to figure out other ways to obtain the functionality they seek.
Mobile phones are an utter nightmare for this sort of thing. If you use a decrypting MITM SSL proxy to intercept the connection of an Android phone you will see it sending out all sorts of tracking data even when you think you have disabled this in the phone’s settings. And the individual apps which run on top of that OS are a law unto themselves. The amount of hacking required to ensure that no tracking functionality remains on the phone is ridiculous.
Apple’s iphones and ipads are even worse, both in terms of collection of private data and of the difficulty of stopping them doing it.
The most difficult thing, though, is simply to get people to understand what is happening at all, either in this specific instance or in terms of the more general necessity to watch for and guard against psychological manipulation. It is so widespread and pervasive that the most common reaction is to erect an adamantine wall of subconscious, absolute denial that it happens at all. People are far too ready to accept things as being what they should be without taking the trouble to discover the truth of what they actually are. I am reminded of Sauron teaching the Elves how to make rings, or Galadriel trying to persuade the White Council to accept Gandalf rather than Saruman as its head…