w 7 problem

[Dusty Rider]

Mark, is your work friend voluntarily sharing that data?

[Russell Holton]

For an illustration of this polarization, see the attached, from a work friend. It a report based on data auto-uploaded by her 2017 Chevy Cruze, and auto-delivered to her insurance company.

I like to think I know a fair amount about the Cruze, at least the First Generation (2011-mid 2016), but not so much about the Second Gen (2016.5-2019). Do you know how it was uploaded? There's a couple way ways: A device plugged into the diagnostic port (which means that this could be any car with the ODBII system - about 1996 and later), or, it's something they signed up with the insurance company that gets it's information from OnStar.

Edit: I hit "post" too soon. This is part of OnStar Smart Driver. It's an optional program with an option to share the info with your insurance company.

[Terry Carraway]

One of these would generate some VERY interesting numbers, when I take one of my cars to the track.

[Mark Horak]

Yes, my friend is voluntarily sharing the driving data from her Chevy Cruze. Yes, it is probably a feature of OnStar, which I also believe provides the Wi-Fi hotpot in her car. In any case, it illustrates that the car itself can and does track and share data about its usage.

And such sharing is less and less voluntary. Your Smart TV is is likely reporting your usage by default. Any FitBit device reports your usage to FitBit before you can have it yourself. Windows 10 dumps a veritable fire hose of involuntary data about your usage back to Microsoft and beyond. Your smartphone tracks everywhere you go. Facebook and Google snag everything about you this isn't tied down. (It has become an industry standard for commercial web pages to report your visits to Facebook using the "Facebook Pixel.") And on and on. This is the data collection and sharing epoch; is it thoroughly pervasive already and becoming more so.

And for some of us, it has put a big damper on embracing new technology. I no longer jump on the latest version of Windows, and in fact am avoiding Win10 like the plague. I am far less interested in new cars than I have ever been, and will probably retain my 2004 vehicle for as long as it holds up. And you can guess what I think about ADS-B out.

[Ray Tackett]

Your Smart TV is is likely reporting your usage by default.

Yep. And with Vizio, you can't turn it off. Fortunately, I live three miles from the local antenna farm, so I use OTA rather than cable. There are two ways to stifle the TV if you can get OTA reception. My way was never to tell it my Wifi password and I never hooked up an ethernet cable. All other wifi in range is password-protected as well. The other way would be to set your router to block WAN access for the device.

Vizio recently settled a lawsuit about the data slurp, but all the settlement requires is notification.

As for Xfinity's (Comcast's) voice rmote, fugheddaboudit.

[Cole Loftus]

My motherboard is just old enough that Win 10 will not load on it.

It was a mess when they had the free upgrade. I ran their hardware/software compatibility checker, and it said everything was fine. But it would not load. Round and round I went, and finally I called MS tech support, after a few things, they asked what motherboard I had, I told them, and they said that chipset was not supported. Oh well.

I don't remember which chipset, and I am not home to check. I am thinking maybe H61 sounds familiar. It is an i7 2011 pin CPU.

Some folks had their computers upgraded [sic] to Win10 automatically, but couldn't run it, back when MS was forcing it.

And for some of us, it has put a big damper on embracing new technology. I no longer jump on the latest version of Windows, and in fact am avoiding Win10 like the plague.

Same here. Running Win7 as long as I can. Trying to keep up on the problems and data suction on askwoody.com.

Yep. And with Vizio, you can't turn it off. Fortunately, I live three miles from the local antenna farm, so I use OTA rather than cable. There are two ways to stifle the TV if you can get OTA reception. My way was never to tell it my Wifi password and I never hooked up an ethernet cable. All other wifi in range is password-protected as well. The other way would be to set your router to block WAN access for the device.

Vizio recently settled a lawsuit about the data slurp, but all the settlement requires is notification.

As for Xfinity's (Comcast's) voice rmote, fugheddaboudit.

Mikes in the conversation area -- what could go wrong? Brings to mind the court orders to produce Alexa records.

[Reams Goodloe]

>>I buy my business machines from Puget Systems and...<

Bill -

They are next door (maybe even the same building) as one of my big trademark clients, not far away in Auburn.
I bought some things from Puget years ago, but the outfit that does our IT work has kinda standardized around Dell, so we've ended up with a number of their machines.
But, 2019 will likely require a major change in hardware and operating systems, as well as various programs. Everyone is screaming about the planned obsolescence of W7. Not to mention we need a new server to run new server software. We do run a lot of orphan programs without any particular difficulties, however<g>

Reams

[Reams Goodloe]

Mark -

I'm with you on the excess data gathering and sharing businesses..... IOT is all the rage, but it is the end of privacy.... I turn off all "location services" and hit "do not allow" as much as possible, but I suspect that just means various tech outfits just won't admit that they've actually snagged the data, from some sharing plan deal with some provider where I didn't get all of the OFF or NO settings RESET since their latest update that reversed my earlier work. Pushing stones uphill makes you feel like you are trying to build a bit of a privacy fence, but in the long run, I think the science fiction writers have unfortunately predicted the grim future of privacy in a tech world.....

Reams

[Russell Holton]

On the downside of data gathering: How Targeted Marketing Harms Those Who’ve Miscarried.

[Mark Horak]

I'm with you on the excess data gathering and sharing businesses.....

It is so unbelievably pervasive now, and recent patent filings from Google and Facebook inter alia are revealing their ideas for taking it to yet another level. Google's example: You're wearing a t-shirt in your home showing the visage of some performer; Google will recognize you and the performer with their home monitoring equipment and send you targeted ads for that performer.

Yesterday I received a happy note from Audible telling me how many hours I has listened to Audible books last year; they must feel I'd be proud of that, but it actually just creeps me out, and has me considering how to defeat this tracking too. And that's life in this technology epoch: either giving in or else trying in vain to thwart your technology's relentless data pilfering. For those old enough to remember when the book 1984 depicted a frightening dystopian future, I wonder how many of us considered that we (not so much the government) would be creating that future ourselves for commercial purposes.

[Dave Siciliano]

Touching story Russell. I’m just tired of all the over-marketing. Not a fan of ordering or looking at something on-line and getting multiple solicitations for that product afterwards.

[Ray Tackett]

... I’m just tired of all the over-marketing. Not a fan of ordering or looking at something on-line and getting multiple solicitations for that product afterwards.

Assuming you use Firefox or Chrome and not Internet Exploder, go into your settings and set third-party cookies to "never". That will kill a fair amount of tracking. A little heavier technically is to add some entries to your "hosts" file. On XP or W7, it's C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts. In that file, you can effectively shut off domains by mapping them to your own machine. I kill off Google's doubleclick and a few others that way.

When your system tries to resolve a domain name to an IP address, it generally uses DNS, an outside service. What's in hosts is looked at before DNS is used, and if the domain is found, there is no DNS search. Your own machine is always referenceable as IP address 127.0.0.1.

Exanples from my own hosts file:

127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.net
127.0.0.1 google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1 google-analytics.net
127.0.0.1 www.doubleclick.com
127.0.0.1 www.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 doubleclick.com
127.0.0.1 doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 www.doubleclick.de
127.0.0.1 doubleclick.de
127.0.0.1 hotcleaner.com
127.0.0.1 www.hotcleaner.com
127.0.0.1 coinhive.com

If, for example, a site tries to use Google Analytics on your browsing, nothing happens, because your machine has nothing to provide.

[Cole Loftus]

It is so unbelievably pervasive now, and recent patent filings from Google and Facebook inter alia are revealing their ideas for taking it to yet another level. Google's example: You're wearing a t-shirt in your home showing the visage of some performer; Google will recognize you and the performer with their home monitoring equipment and send you targeted ads for that performer.

Yesterday I received a happy note from Audible telling me how many hours I has listened to Audible books last year; they must feel I'd be proud of that, but it actually just creeps me out, and has me considering how to defeat this tracking too. And that's life in this technology epoch: either giving in or else trying in vain to thwart your technology's relentless data pilfering. For those old enough to remember when the book 1984 depicted a frightening dystopian future, I wonder how many of us considered that we (not so much the government) would be creating that future ourselves for commercial purposes.

Not exactly "double-plus good".

[Cole Loftus]

Assuming you use Firefox or Chrome and not Internet Exploder, go into your settings and set third-party cookies to "never". That will kill a fair amount of tracking. A little heavier technically is to add some entries to your "hosts" file. On XP or W7, it's C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts. In that file, you can effectively shut off domains by mapping them to your own machine. I kill off Google's doubleclick and a few others that way.

When your system tries to resolve a domain name to an IP address, it generally uses DNS, an outside service. What's in hosts is looked at before DNS is used, and if the domain is found, there is no DNS search. Your own machine is always referenceable as IP address 127.0.0.1.

Exanples from my own hosts file:

127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.net
127.0.0.1 google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1 google-analytics.net
127.0.0.1 www.doubleclick.com
127.0.0.1 www.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 doubleclick.com
127.0.0.1 doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 www.doubleclick.de
127.0.0.1 doubleclick.de
127.0.0.1 hotcleaner.com
127.0.0.1 www.hotcleaner.com
127.0.0.1 coinhive.com

If, for example, a site tries to use Google Analytics on your browsing, nothing happens, because your machine has nothing to provide.

What about googletagservices and googletagmanager?

I use hosts, also NoScript in Firefox. I miss some content, but don't allow a lot of things to run when I don't know what they are.

[Dave Siciliano]

Some of the sites I use require cookies to use them. I’ll look at your suggestions when I get back home.