Did this post-dated the EU's "Right to be forgotten" law** from about 5 years ago where (in the EU at least), you could legally force the likes of Google to not show up specific hits and articles when googling? I seem to recall a lot of people wanted articles concerning them going to court for sex offenses and other criminality to be wiped from search results.
As far as I know what these firms do is basically act as personal investigators in order to find all the dirt on you. Where in the past this might be a case of looking at media archives, the way the internet works, they can use algorithms do quickly flag things up that might be liked with you, including things that other people might have said about you. It is sometimes an advantage to have a common name like John Smith than something a lot rarer.
Depending on if they work for you or someone else, they will either flag up the bad posts and advise you to delete them*** or provide the dirt to the client who will use it for whatever purposes. In terms of the former, they might be able to send the letters threatening legal action if a website doesn't take articles down.
Should also be noted that even if you have never said anything controversial, employers could still find objectionable things. A common one is if your facebook shows you regularly going out drinking and partying at the weekend. Some employers may judge you a risk of calling in sick on Mondays due to hangovers even if you only drink relatively moderate on a Saturday. Ditto if you are a guy who is seen with a different girl on your arms most weekends as this may mark you down as a wominiser. And this is ignoring those who say on Buzzfeed etc that they would never hire someone who might have voted Trump (as proven by the lack of the person posting a picture of them with a "I'm voting Hillary" flag) who might well discriminate based on who they think they might have voted.
** directive or whatever the exact legal instrument was
*** nothing is truely deleted on the internet. Somebody somewhere has taken a screenshot for archiving.
Did you not read snowden lol.
All of your phone, email and social media content is legally stored for a period.
The nsa and security services have access to all facebook and google data without restriction.
Lancs has said how access to the data is legally requested.
The category we are talking about is where social media companies make their money. They sell data lists to companies wanting your data for commercial means. There is little or no vetting as to who has this access.
You pay for access via webservices to specific data sets. Once you have access anything you can read can be used.
The EU have recently fined facebook around €240m for not keeping a lid on your data and are going after other actors.
You are correct that the data protection act and right to be forgotten should be used but social media by default assumes you give permission to do whatever they like with your data.
This could easily be corrected by making it illegal for social media data to be shared or sold and for the legal default for all data sharing to be 'no' and you would need to opt in not out.
Working in pharma where the laws are strict and enforced you need to make sure that all data protection laws etc are stringently controlled and that pharma data throughout the lifecycle is kept for either 7, 18 or virtually forever for traceability and regulatory inspection. Failure to comply could and sometimes does end up with a company being fined heavily or losing a production or research licence.
It is our governments fault that we have these issues.
Somehow I managed to delete the post that you quoted. You must have have been writing when I tried to edit it :D
Actually I was actually making a different point and was referring more to Mark's citing there was someone on Dragon's Den offering "we will scrub your history" services.
In terms of what you wrote, it is a very long way of agreeing with my final comment of:
"nothing is truely deleted on the internet. Somebody somewhere has taken a screenshot for archiving. "
Not forgetting DVLA .
I think the state has always been able to do what it wants to an individual if it wants to enough and is prepared to accept/ignore the costs. This is not a hundred miles away from all of us being able to do likewise to each other, although the costs are higher for individuals going after other people and far more likely to have to be paid.
For a while, we could take comfort in the huge expansion of information about us being useless simply because of retrieval problems. Search techniques and pattern tracing have changed that, but resource allocation decisions regarding what to follow up still remain a challenge.
I wonder what the expansion of information does to the crap to quality ratio? I assume that it increases hugely, not least because of the way information about stuff grows into information about information about stuff and so on. Perhaps the spectacle of the all-knowing state is more important than the extent to which the all-knowing state is actually the case.
I'm not too bothered about the state knowing stuff about me. This is based in part on trusting the authorities, in part on believing that even an untrustworthy authority has better things to do than make my life miserable, and partly because -back to the top- it's always been the case that once the state decides to go after you, it can.
Yep. That's why I've given in and changed my mind. We might as well have identity cards. I bet even Buddha has his virual every movement traced. Almost impossible to take part in modern society without all and sundry being able to track you.A few years ago I flew to the USA with a female colleague. At the exit door of the plane she was arrested by Homeland Security and interrogated for nearly an hour. Reason? In England, two years or so previously, she had lost her passport and had to get a replacement. And Homeland Security had information about this and decided to check her out.
We ALL have a file on us and I bet the powers that be know that one of my (many) sins is being a Gills guy through and through and a member of this forum. I fully expect one day to be taken to one side on entry to the USA and told " from your Forum post we see that you think the Gills should have sold Tucker in the last window. Don't you think Dempsey would have been a better choice? And while we're at it is that girl in the photo really your girlfriend? And what are your connections to Russia?"
And all because I have a passport, car, licence, NHS number, tax code, bank account, store loyalty cards. F#$k it they even know what my favourite take out coffee is!
Yep. That's why I've given in and changed my mind. We might as well have identity cards. I bet even Buddha has his virual every movement traced. Almost impossible to take part in modern society without all and sundry being able to track you.
Jerry, what do you think? Genuine question.