How to stop your data from being sold by 1300+ tracking companies #Tech Privacy

"Do you know what data the 1300+ tracking companies have on you? Privacy blogger Dan Tynan didn't until he had had enough of being stalked by grandpa-friendly Jitterbug phone ads. Tracking company BlueKai and its partners had compiled 471 separate pieces of data on him. Some surprisingly accurate, some not (hence the Jitterbug ad). But what's worse is that opting out of tracking is surprisingly hard. On the Network Advertising Initiative Opt Out Page you can ask the 98 member companies listed there to stop tracking you and on Evidon's Global Opt Out page you can give some 200 more the boot — but that's only about 300 companies out of 1300. And even if they all comply with your opt-out request, it doesn't mean that they'll stop collecting data on you, only that they'll stop serving you targeted ads."

Please read and follow "Tracking the Web Trackers" VIA @SlashDot

Code "BLUE" Windows 8 & Server update will keep constant connection to mothership EVEN when in sleep mode #Tech #News

Blue [is] the codename for the first of a number of annual...updates to Windows 8 that is expected to hit late this summer. Supposedly Blue will [also] span...Windows Phone, Windows Server, Windows RT...SkyDrive and Outlook.com.
...
Blue is optimized for power efficiency. ...when sleeping an ultrabook would remain connected to Internet-based apps such as email and social networks, so it remains constantly up to date. 

Please read full at:
http://blogs.computerworld.com/windows/21949/windows-blue-download-leaked-build-9364-ahoy-itbwcw

The Internet is a surveillance state by Bruce Schneier #Tech #News

CNN: The Internet is a surveillance state. Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, and whether we like it or not, we're being tracked all the time. Google tracks us, both on its pages and on other pages it has access to. Facebook does the same; it even tracks non-Facebook users. Apple tracks us on our iPhones and iPads. One reporter used a tool called Collusion to track who was tracking him; 105 companies tracked his Internet use during one 36-hour period.

Increasingly, what we do on the Internet is being combined with other data about us. Unmasking Broadwell's identity involved correlating her Internet activity with her hotel stays. Everything we do now involves computers, and computers produce data as a natural by-product. Everything is now being saved and correlated, and many big-data companies make money by building up intimate profiles of our lives from a variety of sources.

Facebook, for example, correlates your online behavior with your purchasing habits offline. And there's more. There's location data from your cell phone, there's a record of your movements from closed-circuit TVs.

This is ubiquitous surveillance: All of us being watched, all the time, and that data being stored forever. This is what a surveillance state looks like, and it's efficient beyond the wildest dreams of George Orwell.


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FACEBOOK reveals secrets & private information you haven’t shared #tech #socialmedia #news

The increasing amount of personal information that can been gleaned by computer programs that track how people use Facebook has been revealed by an extensive academic study.

Such programmes can discern undisclosed private information such as Facebook users' sexuality, drug-use habits and even whether their parents separated when they were young, according to the study by Cambridge university academics.

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Global E-mail Patterns Reveal "Clash of Civilizations" | MIT Technology Review

The global pattern of e-mail communication reflects the cultural fault lines thought to determine future conflict, say computational social scientists.

Please continue reading at:
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/512116/global-e-mail-patterns-reveal-clash-of-civilizations/