
Telecom firms mine for gold in big data despite privacy concerns - DiabloD3
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/23/us-mobile-world-bigdata-idUSBREA1M09F20140223
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DanielBMarkham
What we need here isn't regulation -- the cell business at least in the U.S.
has all kinds of regulation. What we need is the ability of the consumer to
sue these companies if any of their data gets released.

Regulation puts all the risk in one bucket, the regulator. If the company can
deal with the regulator, they're good to go. And we've seen how good
government oversight of privacy is going to be.

Open things up for civil suits, on the other hand, changes the _economics_
drastically. Companies don't have to worry about making one agency happy.
Instead, they have to worry about each and every customer. That's exactly the
kind of care we expect from these bozos in the first place.

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discostrings
Without regulation or a sudden increase in awareness, this sort of activity
will only increase in the near future. Internet service providers who measure
their success solely by profit are not going to forgo this revenue opportunity
otherwise. It's just where their incentives are aligned (other than in places
like Germany perhaps, where people tend to give more thought to information
privacy issues).

Any thoughts on the best way to use the Internet while exempting oneself from
this sort of analysis, without significantly degrading the experience? VPNs
are the first obvious answer, but what's the best approach? Are there others?

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mjn
Even with a VPN, there's quite a bit of data-mining that can be done just by
looking at the total traffic, ignoring destinations. An interested ISP could
probably still guess when you're watching streaming video, when people in your
household typically wake up, sleep, and leave for work, etc. You could make
that harder by padding the link with dummy traffic, though, like some darknet
software does. That'd probably work, especially if we assume the ISP is just
doing aggregate data-mining on usage data, not targeting you specifically and
willing to spend much time de-obfuscating your obfuscation scheme. But it
might be expensive to be pumping dummy data 24/7 if your VPN or home
connection has traffic limits or bills by the GB.

Something similar is a concern with power companies as well. Even though
electric meters only record total usage (kW being used by the apartment, not
tagged with what it's being used for), the move to smart meters that record
power usage frequently has led to some concern, because you can do all kinds
of analysis just from the raw electric-usage data. Different
devices/appliances tend to have noticeable signatures, so an interested power
company can tell when the washing machine goes on, when the TV is in use,
arrive at good guesses of your sleeping and cooking patterns, etc.

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timthorn
Not just when the TV is on, but also which programme is on TV.

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mch0lic
Operators might have shit load of data flowing through their network but they
need the ways to structure that so its a big investment, on the other hand,
mobile aggregators are freaking obsessed about mining every bit of info they
have (i know this because I was hired to squeeze that juice) so they could
push you more crap. Even if you don't participate in SMS games (quizzes, tv
voting, etc) there services like emergency top up (for prepaid sims) that you
probably used at least once or twice. Those are usually also provided by
mobile aggregators itself or through MA partners, and they do know on which
channel request came, what VAS app is that, how often you do this and etc.
Ideally they can cross check your phone number on all of their services and
content provider services to get plenty info to know who you are and what you
will buy next.

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gumby
Obama's "reform" of the NSA spying practices makes this worse. He continues
the data collection but leaves the data at the telcos. It is certain that they
will 1> ask to be paid for the "burden" of collecting this info and 2> will
monetize other ways as well since it's already lying around.

I really like O but sometimes he can be bone-headed.

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nl
People complain about Facebook and Google, but it's the carriers that are the
real problem.

We shouldn't forget that there are tools to avoid tracking by both Google and
Facebook, but AFAIK there is no way to avoid cell tower triangulation and
tracking. Nor am I aware of any laws regulating it.

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nraynaud
I have worked around monetizing telco customers location in the past, and I
don't think it was smart actually. And there is also a big economic issue, if
I'm tracked for money as a customer, where is my share of the loot?

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hnha
You get tailored advertisements so you just know what you really want to buy
and so you don't need to invest time researching what product might better.

~~~
nraynaud
yeah, last time I clicked a related article on a news site, it happened to
link to an article to a women's magazine, I got women's underwear
advertisement for weeks afterwards.

So, no, I don't want to receive advertisement for perfume because I waited for
my GF in front of a perfume shop, thanks.

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Houshalter
Somewhat ironic this webpage contains dozens of trackers.

