Ok Sup Forums i'm kinda freaking the fuck out
i heard this board knows stuff that normal people would not believe
so i want you to explain to me how the fuck do google ads know how to show me the ads they do? (i'm aware of the normal shit, searches and facebook and shit) but i swear to god i've never mentioned slot machines or gambling online or on my phone ever.
like a week or so ago i went and played the slots a few times and now i'm getting fucking online slot game ads.
am i losing my mind?
Probably using your location.
how the fuck do i stop this?
do i just have to stop using tech altogether?
Well, you can just use an alternative like duckduckgo or searx. Microsoft sells your data too so you may want to use linux.
yeah man but like i said i’ve never even searched or mentioned slots or gambling on any device ever
Don't use a smartphone
A guy on reddit said that malls use Bluetooth and wifi to monitor what ads people look at or where they spend most of their time. So maybe it's the same here?
I've had a similarly weird event happen. I was chatting with people on Slack (inb4 h8 for using Slack), and we briefly discussed a news story about African women becoming infertile after having a certain vaccination, and that same day, I got a youtube recommendation to watch some video about arguments against anti vaxxers.
Disable location services on all your devices
If you need maps, don't use Google maps
Also why the fuck aren't you blocking that visual cancer?
thing is these were just sports betting places that happen to have slot machines
it must be what the first post said
they just tracked my location
im getting a motorola razor
>am i losing my mind?
ONE: You're not losing your mind. It's happening. The botnet is real.
TWO: The only way to be sure is to stop using tech, but look, we all know how hard that is. All you can do is limit your exposure where you can.
THREE: check'd
i need maps as i live in a huge ass city and am job hunting so i need to find addresses
also im using apple
inb4 fag
>111
>333
i swear this place is making me a schizo
See, there's nothing you can do about it. At least you think about it and care, though. Soldier on.
To be frank, pretty much. At the very least, ditch your smartphone for a cheap and old burner phone.
>im using apple
>cares about privacy
boy do you have a lot to learn
Don't take your smartphone to the location.
Don't talk about the location in presence of devices.
Don't insert or search for the location.
>on any device
That's not the only way the get info. I accidentally ran into a friend once and he started talking about lawn mowers because he was trying to buy one; I started getting a lot of lawn mower ads on my phone later that day. I guess it's just listening for keywords or whatever.
>never get any personalized ads
now if only I could filter ads in the real world, but that's what staying holed up in the room is for
they know more than you can imagine
they know enough to make an AI model that can literally predict your behavior a week in advance.
>BUT IT'S SO CONVENIENT TO NOT HAVE TO THINK ECKSDEEEEE XDDDD
>I LIEK BEIN A SHEEP :DDDDDD GIB MOR BOTNET IN MY BUTT MR GOOGLES.
you are not awake yet, your nightmare is just beginning.
>botnet
second time mentioned ITT
what is it?
you are in the google botnet
be free my dude
Malls and a lot of large retail chains are doing that. It works by having their wi-fi networks record the MAC addresses of anything that sends out a "what wi-fi networks are around? pls respond" packet. That gives them a unique identifier for anyone who walks into or near the store with a smartphone that's on and not in airplane mode, whether or not they actually connect to the wi-fi network. They correlate that with your other devices and real identity through a variety of other means.
The best thing you can do is not rely on a smartphone for everything. Leave the damn thing at home and pretend it has a landline attached to it. Up until around ten or fifteen years ago everyone got along perfectly well without being reachable 24/7 by everyone and having a pocket internet connection. You can still live like that, the only thing stopping you is habit. Need to find a place? Look up directions before you go (and use OpenStreetMap). Think someone might message you? You'll get it when you get home. Need to keep track of appointments? Pocket notebook and pen. Need to wake up early? They still sell alarm clocks.
is it only for profit? if so, id say its just smart marketing tactics but being the paranoid fuck that i am i cant help but feel some sort of 1984 thought police scenario happening
is it more enjoyable?
They only do it for marketing purposes, but it's impossible to do something for marketing purposes and not have it be at risk of being used for other purposes. Large retail chains have some awfully shitty IT, so it could be exposed in a security breach, either to a criminal group or to the whole internet. And it'd be pretty straightforward for a government to demand access so they could use it for surveillance and law enforcement.
As for beyond that, full-on thought police? Well China is already brazenly trying to do that sort of thing, but I wouldn't put it out of the realm of possibility for it to happen here. (For "here" meaning the US, UK, EU, etc) You could have a straightforward descent into authoritarianism, where the incoming would-be despots find that the government already has surveillance tools ready-made for their propaganda and dissent-squashing purposes. (Happening in Poland and some other eastern-European countries) Or we could sleepwalk into it, by having the companies and ad networks doing the surveillance wanting to make sure they keep out anything that isn't nice, happy, benign, and brand-safe. People and organizations that don't toe the party line for what it's acceptable to think, believe, and do will slowly start having a hard time finding places that are willing to do business with them. Not out of an evil government consciously trying to suppress dissent, but by a crowd of self-interested businesses with worried PR departments who want to avoid having their company associated with anything that could cause a scandal or bad publicity.
Stop having a smartphone
holy fuck that was a quality post
could you expand a bit more about the dissent squashing propaganda tools in Poland and eastern europe and what the situation is?
This.
While profit is the primary motivation for organizations tracking individuals, smartphones will continue to suck.
Only when we move beyond capitalism to a true autocratic dictatorial national socialist state, will tracking such as that which we experience be valid, moral and just.
Please. The level of tracking we have today would only make it easier for a nazi state to kill whomever it wants and clean it up.
OP, right now it's extremely hard to escape the Google overwatch and still be a "functioning" member of society. Do as you please, but keep this in mind.
This kind of shit happens to me all the time. I'll be talking to someone about something then if I go to google search it will pop up as one of the first results no matter what I type in. idk if i'm paranoid or if they actually tap into microphones on your devices.
Okay, here's a good one for you: about a month ago, my friends mentioned a streamer in a Facebook group chat, and I didn't know who he was, so o asked about him and they said he was a famous Nintendo let's player. I said something to the effect of how the last let's player I watched was years ago, and it was NintendoCapriSun. Fast forward to the next day, and I get a NintendoCapriSun video suggested to me on YouTube. I've disabled the personal data shit on Gboard, so they're supposedly not using that to get suggestions. Explain away. Are Google straight up liars, or is Facebook selling my group message contents to Google?
Obviously it's recording your mic. What else, IT magic?
>using facebook
>expecting anything but to have your entire life publicized and your interests monitored
bruh wut
For the general situation, you can read this: huffingtonpost.com
Huffington Post is left-wing, so they lead with a bit about an abortion crackdown. But agree with that or no, read the rest of it for a bunch of other ways they're making life difficult for anyone who opposes the ruling party on a bunch of other issues, including links to Polish media, if you want to dig further. If you still don't believe them, do some searching, you can find reporting on it from sites of many political colors.
I don't know if or to what extent they're using law-enforcement and national-security surveillance techniques to target people and organizations they don't like, but I have a hard time believing that they'd refrain from doing so. Mainly because, in any government, the only thing that prevents that from happening is some kind of custom and respect for democracy, human rights, rule of law, etc. A government that doesn't care about such things can, if they can convince or coerce the civil service into going along, use those capabilities for anything.
You'd only be changing one dictator for another. You just want a dictator who will dictate things you agree with instead of things you disagree with, and oppress people you dislike instead of people you do like.
Anyway remember that power corrupts, no matter who wields it or on what basis.
>I've disabled the personal data shit on Gboard, so they're supposedly not using that to get suggestions.
They probably just say they don't and then do it anyway, possibly by other means. They recently got caught doing so with location tracking.
theguardian.com
Yep is commonly known Google records conversations using the mic and tailors search results using mined keywords.
As to the location issue, you can delete locations you were previously at or disable location history at Google, just have to search for the link.
Corporatist Shill
Not really. I don't like it either. But it's the truth if you wanna blend in as a normie.
I'm not saying I don't expect it. I just wondered which was the more likely scenario. Also, Facebook Messenger has an end-to-end encryption service.
I hadn't heard about this before. Thank you for sharing.
Just to briefly touch on the private company censorship angle, there was a thread on /k/ the other day about Google censoring shopping links related to the purchase of ar-15 rifles and even just general gun sales. Would you consider this an example of a private company censoring stuff to protect its image?
could be a number of ways.
1. browser finger printing
2. ip address
3. software on your computer could have given you a UUID
4. you forgot to opt out of windows 10 targeted ads
5. probably a combination of all of the above
I haven't heard about that specifically, but a.) it wouldn't surprise me if it were happening, and b.) yes, I would consider it to be an example, though a mild first-step sort of thing. There've certainly been other companies doing things like severing ties with the NRA. Gun owners as a demographic are a large enough part of the US population that I doubt that its imminent that individual gun owners will discriminated against for being gun owners, but the farther out you are, the more likely it gets. China's already building a credit-score system for good citizenship (ie, doing things the party likes and not doing things the party doesn't like). Right now they'll only ding you for stuff like protesting or being a persistent dissident, but the plan is to eventually punish you for things like spending too much time playing video games. Credit-scoring in general is a good place to watch for signs of this happening, since they already collect a lot of data on you and try to avoid talking about what, exactly, affects your score.
This stuff is gonna happen slowly and incrementally, like that story about the crabs in a pot who don't notice the water warming up until its too late.
But the conversation was entirely text-based, and on the Slack platform, which is not owned by Google.
nearly every website links you to google or google analytics in the background and they keep cookies about everywhere youve been
If you had at any point:
-read the paper
-read non-trash news online
-listened to the news on the radio ever
-even looked for a few seconds on a phone's Terms of Service screen
-just sat and thought about things
-read nineteen-eighty-four, brave new world, or whatever "let's not fall into a totalitarian nightmare, children" book you were supposed to read in school
You would have known that these companies aren't making tools for your amusement and convenience, they're making addictive, information-harvesting distractions, and charging you for the privilege of having one on your person at all times.
Unless you're underageb& and grew up thinking technology was always like this you might have an excuse for not knowing, but otherwise you're a fucking imbecile.
if you think motorola is going to make a difference you are wrong. any form of smartphone will have this provlem.
>i need maps as i live in a huge ass city and am job hunting so i need to find addresses
Call ahead or ask people for directions, or get a GPS or Thomas Guide, you helpless idiot.
You know you can still just print out directions from your computer before you leave, don't tell me you've forgotten?
Is the typical first-world person today helpless without their smartphone? If not yet, will their children be able to do anything without handholding from a computer?
Aren’t we at the point where opting out is the biggest redflag of all though?
If you don’t have Facebook or a smartphone as a millenial you’re weird.
We probably are, and that's the biggest reason you should do it. See also: number of people using Tor, Signal, etc etc.
You should do it to flag yourself?
You should do it because the more people do it, the less suspicious it becomes, and the less likely it is to meet with interference - eg a hiring manager who won't take someone with no facebook account, an ISP that wants to block Tor traffic, etc.
Location data.
And even if you turn that off your phone company knows your location at all times when you have data on, you can be tracked through wifi and bluetooth, or you could be friends with gamblers.
>print out maps from online
>getting gps
jesus fuck you’re stupid
how are either of those unreasonable options?
Google ALWAYS tracks your location, monitors your WiFi connections, and listens to your microphone. Even if you as much as said the word "slot machines", Google will know about it.
Did you not see that > fox news report?
The guy took a phone on airplane mode woth no SIM card around DC, hooked a thing up to his computer to see what is being fed into it, plugged his phone in to his pc and entered Google on his browser, then all his location data from the whole day was uploaded to Google, it was so specific there were some entries where the phone could tell he was "existing vehicles" and his location accurate to the meter and it was all uploaded to Google without his knowledge or consent
Don't talk in the vicinity of any of these devices:
>any smartphone
>any Xbox
>any Alexa or similar smart home device
>any computer running Windows
Do not use:
>a smartphone, ever
>Google maps
>Gmail
>YouTube
>Chrome
>Or any Google services
>Intel processors made in the past three years
>Twitter
>Skype
>Link any of your user accounts from any service with another user account at a different servicd, either with the same email, or the same username
>ever give your phone number to any website service, be it eBay or email or a McDonalds rewards card
This post needs to be at least four times longer, but by now you know it's a fool's errand
>Friend has hangover, tell him to get those emergen-c vitamin packets
>Go home and see emergen-c ad on the internet
Post yours
those are still things you do online
unless you buy a paper map and carry paper schedules for all the public transport you are still feeding your information into it
Just practice being a good servant to AI God
People report the same thing with FB.
All these companies have enormous incentives to listen in on everything.