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I guess I mostly just don't care, I'm generally an open book, but everything spoken about in this thread has cleared up the issue to the general public for me. I posted an epilogue edit to my original post with my final stance 
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In practice I pretty much have the same stance as you in your epilogue. But it pays to be aware. The danger comes in when when it's inappropriately used to catalog you. For instance, on Facebook, I will look at a lot of conservative articles even though I'm not conservative because I believe true knowledge comes from knowing both sides. So now Facebook continually suggests articles along those lines for me. It still weirds me out when Facebook is able to access what I've viewed on Ebay or Amazon and adds pop up with those items in my feed.
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???
No troll  Posted an epilogue edit to my original post to summarize my new feelings on the issue.
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Because it isn't anonymous.
Case in point, I'm writing a website for a relatively innocuous data gathering site for a non-profit related to providing services, assistance, etc., for pregnant/nursing moms. The client asked me to have some of the data gathering to be actually anonymous (in this case, simple survey questions, like how valuable did you find the services and what was your experience at group meetings.) To make the data actually anonymous, I have to make sure that the data is stored in a way that is truly anonymous -- again, trivial in my case but the underlying table cannot have any references to the participant that answered the survey. Technically, even a timestamp, necessary for doing reports for a specific time period, could be used to associate the anonymous data with other tables that do maintain participant information, especially if there is a timestamp in those tables that could be used to correlate when the records were inserted into the database.
Most ORM's will nowadays automatically add a "created at" and "updated at" timestamp behind the scenes, or worse, introduce a foreign key without my explicitly specifying an FK. In my particular case, I'm not using a 3rd party ORM (preferring my own orm-less solution), so I know exactly what the database is persisting. Even so, the temptation was there to associate the anonymous data with the participant internally but just not reveal that association through any user-accessible data mining / reporting features. But then, the data isn't really anonymous, is it?
The point being, unless the developer things very carefully about how to ensure that the data is truly anonymous, it probably isn't.
Marc
So,
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I'm generally pretty open and don't care much for my own privacy, always hit the "submit usage data to us to help us blah blah" button in hopes of helping out the developers, and never run into anything that would make notice that my data has been misused. I suppose I may have never known, i.e. that ad card I got in the mail for printing services a week ago from may have been due to recent searches for printing services, who knows right?
That said, all the replies including yours and some further reading has changed my perspective on the matter. My thoughts are summarized in an epilogue edit to my original post Thanks Marc
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I agree with both your comments as well as many of the people who have responded to them.
The problem is not with anonymous data collection itself but often how it is used. Corporations, for the most part are interested in making money, though there are quite a number that are there simply for the power. However, as many have already suggested you cannot expect most corporations to limit their data collections to benign endeavors. A lot of "evil" people exist in most US corporations today and this has been well documented. The result is that many of these people will often find ways to use such data for their own personal benefit.
Regarding governments, especially the US government, the reasoning behind data collection is not benign in the least. It arose due to technology innovation and was immediately used for detrimental purposes to everyone. Governments, ever in the capture of corporations now seek to use such information both for non-constitutional aims as well as the aggrandizement of US policy and corporate bottom lines.
The result of this entanglement raises the stakes of personal privacy quite substantially for many people and with good reason.
Now, there are two data collections in both spheres; one which can be used and the other that can't. Corporations performing data collection are primarily interested in "targeted data", that which shows a pattern for an individual in order to produce a profit oriented endeavor such as an advertisement. However, data that governments collect; again especially that of the US, cannot be used because it simply cannot be mined effectively enough to present accurate conclusions. There is simply too much of it without any targeted reasoning behind it. As a result, even NSA analysts have openly stated that yes, they have all this data but it is of no use since they don't have the ability to research it effectively. All of this is simply done for money that goes into the pockets of technology and hardware vendors and for no other reason.
Nonetheless, this mix of government and corporate spying on individuals, most of whom are law abiding citizens in their countries, can come of no good since there is absolutely no way to hold any of these entities accountable for what they are doing until the worst happens, a data breach, which is happening increasingly to both government and corporate institutions.
Do you see where this is all going? It ain't good !
Steve Naidamast
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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Very good points, which I think for me were the "aha" turning points. My revised perspective on the matter is summarized in an epilogue edit to my original post Thanks for your response.
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I'm with you, bro... I have much better things to put my attention on than worrying about my privacy.
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Can't tell if sarcastic, but if not, then I'm kinda in the same boat. I just don't actually really care. Go ahead, read my brain waves remotely and send me telepathic advertisements, as long as you pay me  (okay, I'm kidding, that's obviously too far  )
If it became a serious nuisance to me I'd start caring, but I don't think it's gone that far. Money made by targeting me is ultimately, due to market forces, making the products cheaper or free.
Based on all the replies and some further reading though I understand the concern with any kind of data collection for the general public. I summarized my new feelings in an edit to my original post.
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There's no such thing as "anonymous".
According to Hayden, they kill people based on metadata.
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What is truly anonymous. Storing a unique ID with the data that came from you? (not)
How about submitting it with the GPS coordinates of the person?
How about access to your photos? (with GPS data built in)
They have shown that with 3 distinct transactions, they can identify someone.
You cross reference your OTHER data (CC purchases and location of the store) with GPS data,
date and time. BTW, all stored in a photo these days.
Truly anonymous data (clicks, etc. Who cares).
But people believe that if they only include your PHONE number, but not your name, they
don't know who you are! LOL
I would argue GPS data is NOT anonymous. (I know where you sleep and where you work)
Cross reference your GPS for your house, and look it up on Zillow to determine who purchased
the house, etc. Collect it long enough, and they know your doctor, your specialists,
how many pharmacy visits you do per week, and THEY NEVER EVER DELETE This stuff.
Where you take your car for service (Acura Dealership, maybe a high end client...,
Jiffy Lube... maybe make credit offers)
They also SELL this information, in many cases. And companies aggregate this and cross
reference with other data. Like when you give to ONE charity, ALL of the others start calling!
(Because charities learned that giving people keep giving).
One big buyer is Credit Card Companies. They can mesh this with your purchases, and know
if you are using multiple cards, etc. (They don't know it is you, until they cross reference)
After a certain point, they simply know too much about you!
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Yes, and the one thing I kind of neglected to take into account was the government having extreme cross-referencing power with data access to many large companies.
My revised stance has been updated in an epilogue edit to my original post. Thanks for your reply
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"Everyone" isn't afraid of it.
In fact, one could argue that an overwhelming number of people don't even care if the data collection isn't anonymized. Evidence of this is the sheer number of people using the Facebook "like" feature as they browse. There is no anonymity to this at all. It tells the site you did so and who you are. Further, you have given Facebook permission to watch over the shoulder as you browse about the internet.
Of course, that isn't the only thing. Google also likes to watch over the shoulder and people like them to do so. Again, they keep track of you.
When they sell adds, both companies say they don't say who they are selling to (and probably don't). Though with a cookie, if the advertiser has had you come around, they know it is you. And if you "liked" any of their pages they know it is you the ad is sold to. And they may even customize the add more than Facebook did. I don't really know. Just know that it is quite possible.
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Anonymous data collection is a big deal.
- It's a big deal because legally collected, anonymized data from one or more sources can be purchased and then de-anonymized. Generally you don't get to consent to this. The de-anonymized data is personally identifiable, giving companies with money as much information as if they carried out very invasive data collection.
- It's a big deal because it costs you money. Companies want to offer you the least discount that will get you to shop. Did you know that companies offer bigger discounts to the wealthy than they do to the impoverished? That's because the wealthy have more choices. I am not a fan of corporations weaponizing my socio-economic status, or making inferrences about it from general trends in their data.
- It's a big deal because corporations make inferences about me based on very sketchy data, and tailor their behavior to who they think I am. This is maybe harmless when Wal-Mart guesses my wife is pregnant because of the last couple of items she bought. It is way more sinister when a politician's back-office infers my party affiliation, voting record, religion, etc., from something as sketchy as my zip code. If police or TSA screeners do this, we call it racial profiling or ethnic stereotyping. But if Wal-Mart's computers do it, we are expected to think nothing of it.
- It's a big deal because it's asymettric. Spending a million dollars on data analysis is nothing to a big company, but it's beyond the means of all but the 1-percenters among us citizens. Same thing with spending a million dollars on lobbying.
- It's a big deal because big corporations spend millions of dollars a year lobbying congress, planting corporate-viewpoint-friendly editorials, and sending consumers soothing letters trying to convince you that it's no big deal. If in fact it was no big deal, there would be no resistance to improved privacy legislation. But invading your privacy is lucretive for companies. They don't want to give it up.
I once subscribed to the Wall Street Journal. Interesting business news, but very conservative editorial page. No big deal. But then I subscribed to Forbes. Good mutual fund ratings, but very conservative editorial page. No big deal, I ignored the editorial pages anyway. But right after that second subscription I started getting Republican Hate Speach mails about how the Democrats were destroying the country and letting those people take our jobs!!! These people were certain I was a, um, fellow traveller because you wouldn't send stuff this radical to anyone you didn't already believe was a like-minded friend. The timing made the connection obvious. I was horrified. Horrified that the hate speech existed, and horrified that some politician was inferring my political views from my subscription to two general-circulation publications.
Remember homegrocer.com? I found out that it was more expensive to buy their groceries at a zipcode in Bellevue near their warehouse than at my zipcode in Seattle's afluent Capitol Hill neighborhood. In this case, their inference worked in my favor, but that didn't make it any less creepy.
Amazon.com changes the prices of each offering dozens of times per year. They may do this for any number of reasons. But how do you know they aren't weaponizing your shopping history? Can they individualize the prices of all their items? I don't know. Do you?
The point of corporations gathering data on you and me and millions of other people is to transfer more money from your pocket to their pocket. If that's ok with you, can I have some of your money too?
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Very detailed answer, thanks. You should consider turning it into an article about privacy awareness
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Because I have am absolute right to privacy. Unless I have explicitly granted access to some portion of my personal data, nobody else has a right to it for marketing or any other purposes. That includes for credit checks! My financial information was stolen or illegally shared with the credit bureaus. Privacy in Europe is taken much more seriously than in the US and they are lax about it. I have the same rights to privacy as the NSA - more because I am a private citizen and they are part of the government.
I am in the process of stripping out all of the spying in Windows 10 (in a test VM) before I will consider installing. I have removed ALL of the MS store apps, I have disabled everything in sight. Its really hard to rip out Cortana and Echo, but I am working on that. I will be blocking all of the spying urls that I can find. I will NOT be using a Microsoft Account or its cloud or even BitLocker - MS keeps keys for everything.
I don't use the cloud. Just give your data away. Perhaps the data will still be there when you want and perhaps not. When the government has a problem with someone else they can just shut down the entire cloud provider. They have done so and hundreds of people lost their data.
I use a local 16TB RAID 6 for data storage (backed by SSDs in RAID 1 for caching).
I use my own email server and all emails on the server are deleted as soon as they are downloaded. It is, unfortunately, not yet "collocated" at my home but it does not contain any personal information.
I don't use any "social" media whatsoever. I will post to forums such as this one, usually without exposing my name. Although that is a choice that I sometimes make because I know exactly what information is exposed.
I don't use a "smart" phone. I don't need to browse the web on a tiny screen and will not "text" when an actual phone call or voice mail message will do just fine. I want a small phone that comfortably fits in my pocket when walking - not a miniature laptop. As far as "texting" is concerned, why not just use an app to send Morse Code? Just about as efficient. My phone ONLY has phone numbers stored in it. That is information that (unfortunately) the phone company has anyway. I have a (rich) friend who was finally talked into getting a smart phone by his brother. A couple of months later he opened it up to discover that all of his data was being downloaded. He couldn't even turn the phone off. He finally got the battery out. It took him hours to freeze all of his accounts (including trading accounts) and a month to clear everything up. He took the phone to the garage, retired it with a sledge hammer and went back to a dumb phone. He was nearly wiped out and was only saved from that by chance.
There is a reason for privacy. You may not have anything to hide -- most of us don't. But, there is a lot about our lives that, in the wrong hands, could be a real problem. In my opinion, the only right hands are mine. Definitely, neither government nor large corporate entity counts as the right hands. I do NOT see a need to have a unique "advertiser id"!
I just believe that MY personal data is MINE and nobody else has an automatic right to it! Why is that such a difficult concept? Why are so many people laissez faire about privacy? Once lost, its not something you can get back. Why is there an attitude that large companies can do pretty much anything with your data? It clearly is NOT to my benefit!
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Mike Marynowski wrote: Why is everyone's "privacy" of such grave concern to them, in the case of anonymous usage data?
Read this book http://www.futurecrimesbook.com/[^]
After the first two chapters, you'll want to throw away all your electronic devices and rip the wiring out of your house.
Of course, his job is to sell fear, but there is merit to what he is saying.
But basically we're already screwed when it comes to privacy.
Psychosis at 10
Film at 11
Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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to format SQL??? Really, does a large stored procedure have to be on as few lines as possible? I can't believe the author didn't just make it a single line and be done with. Oh, and as few spaces as possible.
Now I have to format it just so I can begin to get a to grips with why it isn't doing what it is supposed to be doing.
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This tool[^] might get you started.
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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Thanks: have used that before and there are a couple of others.
However, not the point. I shouldn't have to do that to existing code. Messy, inconsiderate, lazy buggers.
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R. Giskard Reventlov wrote: Messy, inconsiderate, lazy buggers.
Are you sure you're in the right line of work? Then again, you'll encounter that in any profession.
Marc
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