[Real Talk] The Internet of Things

Discussion in 'General Chat' started by Ortheore, Aug 2, 2015.

  1. Ortheore

    Ortheore One beautiful monster

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    For those of you who don't feel like watching the above video, the internet of things refers to the increasing extent to which various devices are growing to be interconnected. All of the data obtained by these devices is then shared among other devices with the result that many things in the world around you can become automated to reflect your own needs and preferences, even for things that you might not even know what your preference is.

    The exciting thing about it is, this is happening right now. It isn't hard to see how things like smartwatches are the next step in the process of creating this internet of things.

    So what does this mean for you? How can you see this impacting our lives? Are there any areas you think will be of particular benefit to you and the world? What negatives are there in relation to this? What does this mean for the concept of privacy? Lastly, how do you feel about this- are you excited by these rapid changes to the world or are you more concerned about how this will affect you?
     
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  2. Nightfall Alicorn

    Nightfall Alicorn Left Pokémon Online, most likely not coming back.

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    Can't watch video due to data.

    Well, I find it fun and interesting how technology advanced so quickly. Privacy does rise a concern as well as security for us. We don't wanna make what happened in The Terminator become reality. It can feel uncomfortable how devices can connect to living creatures, to me, sometimes. Although as long as I know the front and ends of applications, the good and bads as well as the limit of what devices are authorised to connect to and what they allowed do, I'm happy and enjoy using them. I think overall it's just staying in control. They really do make our lives easily being able to social.
     
  3. sulcata

    sulcata stéphane curry best waifu Forum Moderator Server Administrator Forum Moderator Server Administrator

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    With all these things and all their data collection, it gets annoying. I just tend to get annoyed when things try to guess my preferences. Like YouTube suggested videos; I'm pretty sure by now we've all realized that it just displays your YouTube search history as suggestions right? Like I see videos that I literally just watched. I don't like the feeling of people probing into sides of me from just showing them an unrelated video. Quite frankly it makes me very uncomfortable. There are not nearly enough "opt out" features, which imo you shouldn't need to opt out of tracking. While I don't enjoy it, I'm not completely against anonymized tracking, i.e. search history used to improve searches with IP address and all personal information discarded.

    I think personal settings should be just that, personal. There should be no need to store them on any sort of cloud. I'd be more comfortable if the settings stored on said cloud were encrypted by the client and decrypted by the client so that only the encrypted form is available to corporate eyes. I'm not really *that* familiar with cloud store, so I do admit that I'm possibly talking out of my ass and this may already be a thing.

    Going on again about "opt out" settings, one of my main concerns is that nobody makes any attempt to respect the few users who go out of their way to avoid being tracked. Browsers have implemented a basically useless "Do not track" checkbox that tells sites to, well... not track you. But this would require compliance from the websites, the ones tracking, who have no incentive to do so. Surprise, surprise, next to no websites, including Google, respect this option and track anyway, making it virtually useless. From what I've heard, Yahoo at least alerts you that they're ignoring it, though I'm not sure if this still applies.

    Speaking of Google, they've been trying to find ways to track users without Cookies for advertising purposes, as more and more are disabling them. Implementing their own custom AdIDs and even attempting to "finger print" devices based on user agent, IP address, etc. (can't remember where I found the article mentioning this).

    I'm unsure of Google, but I know first hand that other advertising companies make/made use of "flash cookies", cookies stored for Adobe Flash. These are separate from browser cookies and do not clear with a simple "delete search history". There's actually a special Flash Control Panel accessible from Adobe's site that one can use to limit/delete them. These Flash Cookies are particularly nasty in that they can and have been used to continuously reinstall regular cookies when read by an appropriate Flash banner advertisement.

    I like that the EU is experimenting with online privacy, although I don't really like the specifics of things like "Right to be forgotten" sounding a bit too 1984ish to me. Sites announcing that they're using cookies is cool I guess, although not really that important. It's better than the U.S.'s attempted legislation of the Internet (if anyone has been keeping up with it) and general apathy toward ever increasing tracking.

    Before we start installing devices to track every personal detail of our very being with things like heartrate monitors and temperature preferences, we should probably figure out how to give people privacy while reading an online article or watching a YouTube video. Staying private on a mere browser is difficult even with cookies disabled, ad block, and a user agent switcher.

    i'm not going into realworld impacts of this. they should be relatively apparent in the news and this is getting long. dictatorships use all sorts of tracking tools monitoring ingoing and outgoing requests, but it's not like they were ever subject to law anyway. they do however have the same opportunity to tap into all these new found technologies easily.
     
    Last edited: Aug 2, 2015
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  4. Ortheore

    Ortheore One beautiful monster

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    That's the thing, for a lot of these things it's hard to know the specific details of what something does. For instance when you download an app and it asks for permission to access your phone's location, what are you gonna do? You may not know why it needs that data or what that data will be used for. How can you find out? And what can you do about it if you don't like it? Not download the app? I mean there's a reason you wanted to use the app in the first place. Are there many other ways around this?

    As I see it, limited consumer choice underpins many of the reasons why "opt-out" isn't really a thing. Would you really just not use facebook/google/youtube/whatever when they are immensely useful and a significant part of our lives because of feeling uncomfortable about your privacy and that the data collected could be used against you? To me using these services offers real, tangible benefits, while privacy and data being used for nefarious purposes are much more vague and intangible, almost like it's more of a theoretical possibility (I know it isn't theoretical, but that's how it feels). So many people just kinda suck it up and use these services anyway. Not to mention that a lot of people won't even think of this kind of thing. So if people are going to use it regardless of privacy issues why won't companies collect data? Never mind that people who do see this as an issue get screwed over, not when there's money to be made.

    Personally I'm one of those people aware of the issues with privacy, but that use these sites regardless. I'm optimistic about how this will play out in practice- I don't see this data being used for negative purposes to be a significant possibility, while it has a lot of potential to have a positive impact in all kinds of areas. That said, that's a dangerous line of thinking and it's always possible that this occurs subtly without my noticing. I'm just going to trust that this doesn't come back to bite me in the arse. As for privacy and feeling exposed, idk it isn't something I think about too much in the context of this ocean of data. I mean if it's someone I can put a face to knowing my innermost secrets that's a little different, but I perceive it differently in this context
     
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  5. IceKirby

    IceKirby A.K.A. RiceKirby

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    I remember what a teacher used to say about 12 years ago: Computers are stupid creatures.
    And to this day I still find myself agreeing with her. Unless you tell a computer exactly what you want without any mistake, they are not going to do it right.

    "But lots of computers try predict what you actually wanted" is what some people can say, but most of the time that's still far from being actually useful, at least for me. As such, I always tend to do things myself than letting a computer software decide what they think I want, since, you know, I find them to be dumb creatures.

    Sure, all that connectivity is useful for some people, I'm not really asking for it to explode and die. All I want is to still retain the option to do stuff by myself instead of having a refrigerator decide what I need to buy.
     
  6. Haze Victory

    Haze Victory Dem slumps..~

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    So ppl aren't gonna train for the day when titans breach the wall?Damn,that's dangerous.
    Anyway,I can find myself being less of a couch potato now that I don't find Pokemon interesting,and don't spend as much time on this. I doubt I will go back to the scrawny life I had before.Only when one gets off technology does one realize how harmful it had been all along,and I honestly feel the smart devices are the main reason for ppl becoming couch potatoes.It's partially the fault of the people to spend so much of time on their luxury devices,but then again ppl are social creatures and are likely to cling to their devices as long as their friends do,and vice versa.Please,it's not like I expect everyone to have abs or stay ripped all the time,but lol,it's pathetic how weak the average person is,and the case doesn't seem to be resolving over the years.I am pretty sure the average man, or woman for that matter, is much weaker now than what they used to be a decade back. The only thing I am gonna blame for this is technology that provides over-luxury,and this is only gonna grow as the web of technology widens.I can see humans going dormant in the near future and starting to completely rely on technology to decide their daily life (Similar to what happens in Psycho pass,but much more dormant than that).
     
    Last edited: Aug 4, 2015
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  7. Ortheore

    Ortheore One beautiful monster

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    This raises a really cool point, makes me think of Wall-E. It's easy to view using all this data to streamline decision-making as diminishing human autonomy, to the point where our lives are run by machines, rather than us using them to improve our lives. That's a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the point.

    I guess the big question is, how can we avoid the pitfalls of the internet of things? Could we see products that obscure user identities become more widely used?
     
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  8. sulcata

    sulcata stéphane curry best waifu Forum Moderator Server Administrator Forum Moderator Server Administrator

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    It's mostly the data collection in conjunction with shoving it back in your face without an "opt out" that I find annoying. I like a relatively impersonal experience. It's the reason I go onto the internet for the most part (excluding PO).

    These "nefarious purposes" are a bit more than just "vague and intangible"
    http://surveillance.rsf.org/en/
    Granted these abuses don't occur in countries you or I live in, but they're very real for their citizens. As technology continues to become more and more personal, the risks for those within these regimes become more and more potent.

    I feel a lot of people overestimate the professionalism and discreetness of organizations dealing with these kinds of information. There have been abuses in the past by the NSA. Those 12 only include "substantiated cases" that the NSA cared to report. "Several" went to the Department of Justice; who knows what happened to the rest or what they involved. I'm skeptical of the "essentially one per year" claim as very easily this could be an increasing trend (i.e. concentrated in recent years); I'd like to see exact dates of abuse to substantiate or reject the possibility of this trend or lack thereof.

    I myself have actually worked as an intern with a private company monitoring web traffic for advertising purposes, looking at quite a bit of personal information. Granted the more personally indentifying stuff was willfully given and they had me sign a contract to not reveal said information, although I don't think it applies since I was not of age while signing; not that I would actually reveal anything specific anyway. My point is, the information is given to people as well as companies, and these people aren't always trustworthy security experts and analysts as one would hope; some might not even be adults! There's not some sort of license people need to work with this data.
     
  9. Nightfall Alicorn

    Nightfall Alicorn Left Pokémon Online, most likely not coming back.

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    Private browsing rises a concern as well. Since it only hides history and cookies access like it's a different user but sites can still track the user's IP on what activity they do on their sites unless they are on a dynamic IP.

    I think users can change some ad settings on their Google account but I'm not entirely sure. But, I don't think sites like Google and Yahoo, I don't know about Facebook, are going to go far with our private data to cause harm. I just know Google demands users to have their in real life name on their Google profile. But personally I would prefer an internet nickname. But this is just going to convince users to enter false information about themselves and breaking the agreement on sign ups.
     
  10. sulcata

    sulcata stéphane curry best waifu Forum Moderator Server Administrator Forum Moderator Server Administrator

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    I don't think they're going out of their way to cause harm to their users with the data they're collecting. Their only motivation is to increase ad revenue. By showing relevant ads, users are more likely to click advertisements or to buy the products advertised. I do think there needs to be some "respect", for lack of a better word, to users who are clearly trying to avoid said tracking who do not feel comfortable with having their browsing experience tailored towards them, which can and does include modifying search results for better or worse. At the moment YouTube (sry, it's the most clear example for me) feels pretty uncomfortable when racy images from music one may have listened to two or three days ago start popping up off to the side while showing someone an unrelated video. Again, nobody made said feature to harm or cause discomfort to others, they just didn't think it through very well.

    I personally don't think IP is very good to track users with. Most people end up having dynamic IPs making them next to worthless for anything more than very short-term tracking (a couple hours or a day). It's difficult to tell when they're switched between users especially if cookies are disabled. A lot of static IPs may be used by multiple users at the same time, again making it a poor tool. Proxying and the like is a pain, but also an option. Use HTTPS whenever possible. The only easy information to obtain from IPs is location to the nearest large urbanish area and ISP. ISPs are probably where a lot of personal info can "go wrong" since many of them, to my understanding, sell off anonymized* data for research purposes and presumably marketing; seems sort of weird for a service customers are paying for (i.e. not a free service relying on ad revenue). They also submit it to authorities with proper subpoenas, which is very reasonable.

    *How anonymized this data is remains relatively vague. A lot of times search histories and page visits, such as on Facebook, can be used to precisely identify individuals. One would hope only websites or only webpages with get/post data removed are shown, but that's idealism.
     
  11. [OG]Swanna Lady

    [OG]Swanna Lady New Member

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