Have you ever entered your phone number as a recovery backup for an online account? Have you ever ordered anything online and used your name and address? If so, this information was likely harvested and sold off to some third party, without you realizing it. I recently bought a small gift for a family member and had it shipped to her address but used my name as the recipient. What I discovered a short time later is that my name had suddenly become linked to that address under a public database vissible to everyone. That is, had I actually ordered something online for myself, like people usually do, anyone would be able to type my name in this online public database and find out where I lived. The site promises more information about me, for a small fee, which I didn't pay. Ever been asked in an internet site your year of birth? Has a site ever demanded "security questions" from you in case you get locked out or forget your password? Like the name of the school you went to, or your mother's maiden name. The answers to these very common security questions could potentially be used to gain access into other accounts you have, which might also use one of the same security questions. We are giving up our privacy, and our security, without realizing it. And it's not just you. Social media sites like Facebook offer options for you to list your family members. That means even if you didn't enter the information yourself, a family member likely may have, and then these databases can reveal your family members to anyone willing to pay a small fee. For certain people, this could even be dangerous or constitute a security risk. You might think who would want to go to the trouble of harvesting all this obscure information, but some of these corporations have become extremely adept at it. It's not uncommon for large sites to receive kickbacks from companies who want to collect their user information. Most of this involves programs that are completely automated, oftentimes using artificial intelligence algorithms to automatically database the most up to date current information on vast lists of people. These companies that harvest your information then get money selling these massive database lists to advertisors (usually online, but in some cases they'll send junk mail to your house too). The advertiser can better target people if it knows their age and gender, and countless other things about them. It's more insidious than this. The latest algorithms can search the internet looking for pictures associated with a name. That means anyone entering your name can also see a picture of you, and of course your family members. If you've ever posted a picture of yourself, very likely that name is associated with the picture in the artificial intelligence data collection algorithm. That picture is very likely connected to an account, which is connected to an email, which if you've received many emails in the past with your name in them, is probably connected to that name. Just from that, these algorithms can automatically calculate the percent probability that certain names are correlated with a picture, and of course the modern day image recognition algorithms can pick out which of all those images show pictures of people or faces. In the end, what that means is if you've ever posted any picture of yourself, ever, there very likely are programs out there that have identified your picture. It's a lot more common than people think for one of their family members to have posted a picture of them, without them realizing it, with a caption for that picture which contains your first name. These harvesting algorithms can also harvest that, and make the connection to figure out the full first and last name. For example, if your sister Sue posts a picture of you with the caption "Kate", these algorithms know Sue has a sister named Kate, and so there's a 74% probablity that the image is of Kate Smith. These programs are able to harvest your information one way or another. If you have family members who carelessly give out their information and upload lots of pictures of all their family members, you may not be safe. I don't think people realize, this is not sci-fi or futuristic fantasy anymore, this is the present. This is what the internet has become.
cell phone companies were even selling your location data... they just got caught "Verizon, AT&T halt practice of selling cell phone owners' location to data brokers" https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech...phone-owners-location-data-brokers/715649002/
Google keeps all your data for years. If you have an Android smartphone, it requires a Google account so it can operate. Chance is you didn't know that Google kept all your data, including places you visited, searches you searched, videos you watched, and everything you can think of. Here, your info : https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity
Microsoft just added a feature in it's latest OS patches to link to your android and apple phones - do you think this free service is free or it allows some data collection to take place?
