Comment by autoexec
20 hours ago
> So what sort of benefits are you reaping from your anti-fingerprinting measures?
A better question would be how are you being screwed over if you never bother to try to stop companies from collecting as much data as they possibly can about your private life? It can cost you a job offer, or cause you to pay more than your neighbor for the same products/services. It can get your data leaked, or sold to scammers. Companies use the data they collect on you for things as trivial as deciding how long to you leave you on hold. The more data they have on you, the easier it becomes for them to use it against you.
Feel free to give companies every bit of personal data they want from you. They'll be thrilled to use that information at any time and in any way they think it will benefit them. Until we have laws against surveillance capitalism the only person looking out for your interests is you, but only if you can be bothered. It'll sure help companies take advantage of you if you decide it's not worth trying.
Yeah, you know what? Life is far too short to live in fear and paranoia of the scenarios you suggest.
Anywhere I go in meatspace, people could be collecting data about me and my behavior. That has always been true since the beginning of time. An old lady can sit on her porch and take notes about my outfit, my comings and goings, and every driver who comes to my door. Today, they're saying that Target can definitely hear our WiFi/BT MACs as soon as we get into their store, and they see/track everything on camera everywhere inside. My Groucho Marx isn't going to hinder or change that!
All I can do, honestly, is be judicious about what sites I visit, and be forthright in my interactions. I should cultivate good relationships with trustworthy, reputable companies, and stay away from the rest. I cannot ultimately prevent the buying and selling behind the scenes. We cannot realistically prevent collection of everything possible.
I don't shop at Temu or Alibaba, and I don't search on Yandex. I checked my "About Me" on Amazon yesterday and it's shockingly bland and shallow. However I interact with Google, YouTube, Microsoft, and Cloudflare, it's a foregone conclusion that they know everything. My extensive 19-year history on Wikimedia projects is a shockingly rich treasure trove, if anything just my waking hours of every day since 2007! Your own karma score 22,495 in 14 years is probably a fantastic track record of when you were awake and using a computer. If you're so paranoid about Internet privacy, then you wouldn't be so willingly revealing that stuff in public.
I'm using adblocking DNS again, but awhile ago I sort of dropped the pretense of paranoia, because I understood its futility, and again, life's too short. If evil corpos want to do evil to me based on what they think they know, they can do their worst. I am a Christian man accustomed to suffering and infirmity. I got nothing to lose in this life, except integrity.
> I cannot ultimately prevent the buying and selling behind the scenes. We cannot realistically prevent collection of everything possible.
Yeah, but you can very easily _limit_ what is collected and sold behind the scenes just buy switching browsers, changing browser settings, or using a couple privacy extensions. A little goes a long way.