Why worry about the NSA when Madison Avenue is stealing all your secrets?

http://doctorbeet.blogspot.co.uk/201...names-and.html

I wonder if LG and Canonical want to work together, same shoddy practises. It's a pity really because I like LG.

The article is very alarming.
I've not a smart tv, just an "old" plasma.

Is this issue only for LG, or we have "testimonies" about other companies?

Throughout the world, people very quickly realized that there are no meaningful privacy laws ... yet. They figured out that computers could talk back, and that no one actually reads the "terms and conditions" that users have no choice but to say that they "Accept." (They also know that no one has yet handed-down a court decision to the effect that such things are meaningless; that no one has actually "agreed to" anything nor even made a "choice.")

These things take time. However, in the meantime, all of these people have forgotten about one small but critical psychological point: desensitization.

When something is annoying but you can't find a way to get rid of it, pretty soon you start to ignore it, and whatever-it-is becomes ineffective. Likewise, when you realize that something has negative effects, pretty soon you stop doing it, and whatever-it-is once again becomes ineffective. Furthermore, this conditioned response is permanent.

For example:

• When I go to the grocery store, I pay cash (so you don't have a credit-card number to track), and I tell them that I do not have and do not want a "so-and-so card." (They helpfully drop one into my bag, and I just-as-helpfully drop it into the trash on the way out.) It did not take me long to realize where a lot of my junk-mail was coming from, and because of this conditioned response, which was in response to the grocery store's offensively intrusive "marketing" attempts, this store is now much less effective at marketing to me. (A simple sign in the aisle, like grocery stores used to do, would be just as effective as it ever was.)
  • Also, take note that, if you don't give your personal information away, they pull a "store card" from under the counter so as to give you the same discount anyway, since that is "the true cost of the merchandise," not the artificially-inflated ones that they use strictly as a (phony!) inducement.
• Today is a very typical day. Today, I received in various accounts 1,360 "targeted e-mails." One hundred percent of them were discarded, unread. No one actually sent me any e-mails today.
• I do not go to any web-site except that an "ad blocker" is running. If the site displays even one advertisement to me, by some means, anyway, then my conditioned response is to leave that site and never return to it again. "The Internet is not television." (And guess what: I don't watch television, either. I don't even own a television.)

And... I am not alone.

The key problem in all of these "nosy, intrusive" approaches to so-called "advertising" is that they've sold people on the notion that, by "secretly" monitoring me, they can somehow guess what I want to buy ... and that, if just the right advertisement came swimming in front of my face at just the right time, I would drop everything that I was doing and actually salivate in response to the bell.

But what's actually happening is that the dogs, finding themselves surrounded by annoying bells, not only ignore the bells but whenever possible eat the bell-ringers. (Heh. Will someone tell that to the Salvation Army this time of year??)

The same persons who clutch their pearls over the NSA let merchants and advertisers right into their most private sanctums. I can't say I trust the NSA, but I certainly do not trust the "Mad Men."

When people realize that their televisions might rat on their porno, they'll get interested in this.

While I understand the point that you are making, I do not believe that your statement is literally true.

I am pretty sure that here, in the UK, there was a case with Microsoft (yeah, it would be them again) where they tried to enforce their EULA and failed to do that. In the UK, established practice is that, unless the customer has the chance to read the conditions before they commit to the sale and have the chance to say no, any conditions that come purely from that document are not enforceable. As you can imagine, any conditions that you cannot read at the point of sale do not seem to fall into the enforceable category, so if, for example, you buy a computer in a box, bundled with various bits of software, and you had no opportunity to even see the bundled software, it makes the conditions on that bundled software difficult to enforce, if it goes to court.

Now, this was a number of years ago and I'm not sure I remember all of the details, and it is possible that Mickeysoft's lawyers withdrew before getting a contrary decision that could endanger their EULA, but IIRC the judge had little time for their business practices in this regard (and the fact that they seemed to take something of a 'Well, this is legal and the US, how dare you tell us that we can't get away with it in the UK and have instead to obey your strange local law' position, which, in hindsight, was probably never going to win all that much affection from a judge).

Mind you, go back to one of the big 'box shifters' such as PC World, tell them the terms and conditions are unenforceable and they'll try to bluster you out of your rights, in the same way that people often try to do if you try to get your rights under the Sale of Goods act (or European legislation, for that matter), rather than distinctly less generous ones that they would like you to have.

You could ditch your TV..

I've been TV free since the Army botched my PCS to Hawaii in 2003.

At least the TV can't actually film or record you, unlike Flash on a computer with active webcam and microphone:
http://www.winhelp.us/securing-adobe-flash-player.html

that's what i initially thought when i saw this thread.
but sometimes a piece of duct tape is just as good as free and open source software.
or: http://www.paulhobson.com/wordpress/...02/hackers.jpg

thanks to sundialsvcs for his long post.
i think it's very good to take the time and put these thoughts/emotions into a structured piece of text.

no, you are not alone.

another thing (esp. here on the internet) is that the US way of interpreting things seems to easily take over. so thanks to salasi for pointing that out, too.

Yep, no surprise to me, this is the millennium of everybody watching everybody.

@eric: good example of desensitization.

I am concerned about my new flat screen mirror

its watching me

grins like a sheep

It won't be long before the ultimate tools of freedom have advanced tracking features.

Well it's true, today everybody is either watching or tracking us whether it's the NSA, google, madison avenue or other entities all for the mighty dollar or excessive paranoia. I don't like it and I wish there were ways to keep things private without cutting the technology we use.

What bothers me is what the future of our privacy will take in the coming years. If it's bad now, it can become worse later on.

Who knows, maybe one day they may force us to embed microchips in our bodies for tracking.

You and your habits are for sale.

There is NO privacy.