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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: I DONT STOP ()
Date: November 16, 2011 04:26AM

The Realities of Social Media Data Mining

by William Laurent, William Laurent, Inc.
Monday, March 14, 2011

The data mining of social media activity is now commonplace in business intelligence circles. Over the course of the last 18 months, this stream of BI has experienced a startling rate of growth and reached lofty levels of sophistication. Just a few short years ago, consumer-oriented businesses were stuck in the world of static “focus groups” and paper-based surveys. But not even the most forward-looking of these organizations could have dreamed of the present-day scenario, where newly forged nuggets of data about consumer behavior and preferences wait to be mined by state-of-the-art BI computing infrastructure. Even the U.S Government, which is usually late to any technology trend, is looking to get in on the action as well. The Obama administration has expressed a keen interest in performing data mining against content posted on the White House’s Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter pages.

Anything and everything on the Internet is fair game for extreme data mining practices. Once something is pushed out to the World Wide Web, it will forever be fodder for a business intelligence or data mining application somewhere in the cyberspace universe. But despite our best judgment about the pictures we upload to Facebook or the posts we make on MySpace and YouTube, in the heat of the moment our prudence often fails us. This is because social networking is, to a large part, about vanity: We want all of our friends and colleagues to see how cool and fulfilling our life is: what we had for dinner; what fancy places we have visited; how our dogs made a mess on the living room carpet. Vanity (and electronically enabled narcissism) will forever take the form of impulsiveness, which is not a good character trait when posting under one’s own name, especially when one’s post may wind up being in the public domain for a long time.

For many social media sites, the Terms of Service (TOS) are explicitly clear and to the point: If you post content to the site you essentially grant the site permission to use the content for any purpose they deem appropriate. While each site is different in their irrevocable and perpetual right to reproduce the information found in your posts, it is wise to err on the side of caution. No matter how private you deem the content, privacy controls usually only go so far - the demarcation between private and public information remains fuzzy at best. In some cases, once you submit content it may instantaneously become the intellectual property of social networking site, even if you delete or purge the submission in its entirety. Speaking from personal experience, the array of privacy options on my favorite social media sites is quite robust; nevertheless, these privacy controls never fail to confuse me every time I tinker with them, leaving me unsure about how my sensitive information and opinions will be used.

Users of the world’s most popular social networking site remain unaware that Facebook recently launched an extremely controversial Instant Personalization feature that essentially “transfers” a registered member’s profile data from Facebook to external third-party websites. What is alarming is that Facebook lends out this data without any sort of opt-in permission on the part of the member. When the member visits one of Facebook’s partner sites (such as Yelp), the site will automatically reveal (at the bottom of the page) which of the member’s Facebook friends have reviewed a similar business in their geographical area. I was startled the first time I stumbled on this. And when the initial shock wore off, I was more than a little offended and less trustful of Facebook. Not only was my information going to third-party affiliate sites, my list of friends and publically available information about those friends was tagging along for the ride. After some detective work, I discovered that there is a way to opt-out of this personalization feature, thank goodness! But what irks me is that Facebook does precious little to make their members aware of this feature (and how to turn it off) in the first place.

Taking this functionality further, a user of Facebook may have their posts show up in advertisements that are customized and targeted to their friends as part of a “Sponsored Story.” This story feature gives advertisers the authority to republish and repackage a user’s post that references the advertiser’s products or services. For example: If a friend “checks into” a store or becomes a fan of a brand’s Facebook page, this information can appear on the right side of a user’s Facebook pages as a virtual billboard, for which an advertiser will, no doubt, pay handsomely. (Thankfully, the Sponsored Stories do not show up in a user’s main news feed; however there is currently there is no way for users to turn off this feature and keep their tastes and preferences compartmentalized and the viewership of these more controlled).

The purpose of these social media cautionary tales is not to single out and beat up on Facebook; however, its unparalleled financial impact (1.5 billion dollars in advertising revenue) and size make it the most relevant example. (As of this writing there are over 500 million registered users of Facebook, giving it a population larger than almost every country in the world.) In the social networking world and in the Web 3.0 paradigm in general, innovation often comes at a cost to privacy. This bodes well for BI companies that are focused on data mining the information on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, My Space, etc, although it is confounding for those of us that use social networks on a regular basis and live by the mantra: “What happens in the Network, stays in the Network.”

While the staying power of business intelligence and consumer data prospecting has been tested year in and year out for decades now (BI’s importance and utility increases with each passing year); the long term viability of some of the world’s most popular social media sites is not a sure thing. As more and more social networking sites come online the competition for registered (and active) users will escalate. Not only will social networks need to do more to procure new users and retain current ones, they will have to create new and novel ways to monetize their websites. For better or worse, supplying content created by a social network’s users to outside websites, advertisers, and affiliates for data mining purposes is a sure fire way to generate revenue for the foreseeable future. It will remain an important component of the social networking business model, as data mining methodologies progress far beyond traditional demographic profiling into interpolation and statistical modeling based on swarms and cluster groups. So powerful and lucrative is social media data mining that governments around the globe have begun to carefully scrutinize the need for regulation in this space, especially with respect to protecting the privacy of their citizen’s that post data to these networks. While some regulation is probably needed, what concerns me is when the legislators of the free world start demanding social networks involuntarily hand over their user-generated content in order to better enable central governments to carry out their own “citizen intelligence” and data mining programs. That day may be closer than any of us care to realize.

About the Author
William Laurent is one of the world's leading experts in information strategy and governance. For 20 years, he has advised numerous businesses and governments on technology strategy, performance management, and best practices—across all market sectors. William currently runs an independent consulting company that bears his name. In addition, he frequently teaches classes, publishes books and magazine articles, and lectures on various technology and business topics worldwide.. As a Senior Contributing Author for Dashboard Insight, he would enjoy your comments at wlaurent@williamlaurent.com

Copyright 2011 - Dashboard Insight - All Rights Reserved.

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: get help ()
Date: November 16, 2011 04:27AM

l DONT STOP Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> JK I KILLED MY WIFE AND CURRENTLY MOLESTING OUR
> KIDS


u need a life. kill urself

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: I DONT STOP ()
Date: November 16, 2011 04:30AM

Data Mining: How Companies Now Know Everything About You By Joel Stein, Time.com

March 13th, 2011 · No Comments


Thursday, Mar. 10, 2011

Three hours after I gave my name and e-mail address to Michael Fertik, the CEO of Reputation.com, he called me back and read my Social Security number to me. “We had it a couple of hours ago,” he said. “I was just too busy to call.”

In the past few months, I have been told many more-interesting facts about myself than my Social Security number. I’ve gathered a bit of the vast amount of data that’s being collected both online and off by companies in stealth — taken from the websites I look at, the stuff I buy, my Facebook photos, my warranty cards, my customer-reward cards, the songs I listen to online, surveys I was guilted into filling out and magazines I subscribe to. (See pictures of a Facebook server farm.) Google’s Ads Preferences believes I’m a guy interested in politics, Asian food, perfume, celebrity gossip, animated movies and crime but who doesn’t care about “books & literature” or “people & society.” (So not true.)

Yahoo! has me down as a 36-to-45-year-old male who uses a Mac computer and likes hockey, rap, rock, parenting, recipes, clothes and beauty products; it also thinks I live in New York, even though I moved to Los Angeles more than six years ago. Alliance Data, an enormous data-marketing firm in Texas, knows that I’m a 39-year-old college-educated Jewish male who takes in at least $125,000 a year, makes most of his purchases online and spends an average of only $25 per item. Specifically, it knows that on Jan. 24, 2004, I spent $46 on “low-ticket gifts and merchandise” and that on Oct. 10, 2010, I spent $180 on intimate apparel. It knows about more than 100 purchases in between. Alliance also knows I owe $854,000 on a house built in 1939 that — get this — it thinks has stucco walls. They’re mostly wood siding with a little stucco on the bottom! Idiots.

EXelate, a Manhattan company that acts as an exchange for the buying and selling of people’s data, thinks I have a high net worth and dig green living and travel within the U.S. BlueKai, one of eXelate’s competitors in Bellevue, Wash., believes I’m a “collegiate-minded” senior executive with a high net worth who rents sports cars (note to Time Inc. accounting: it’s wrong unless the Toyota Yaris is a sports car). At one point BlueKai also believed, probably based on my $180 splurge for my wife Cassandra on HerRoom.com, that I was an 18-to-19-year-old woman.

RapLeaf, a data-mining company that was recently banned by Facebook because it mined people’s user IDs, has me down as a 35-to-44-year-old married male with a graduate degree living in L.A. But RapLeaf thinks I have no kids, work as a medical professional and drive a truck. RapLeaf clearly does not read my column in TIME. (See 25 websites you can’t live without.) Intellidyn, a company that buys and sells data, searched its file on me, which says I’m a writer at Time Inc. and a “highly assimilated” Jew. It knows that Cassandra and I like gardening, fashion, home decorating and exercise, though in my case the word like means “am forced to be involved in.” We are pretty unlikely to buy car insurance by mail but extremely likely to go on a European river cruise, despite the fact that we are totally not going to go on a European river cruise. There are tons of other companies I could have called to learn more about myself, but in a result no one could have predicted, I got bored.

Each of these pieces of information (and misinformation) about me is sold for about two-fifths of a cent to advertisers, which then deliver me an Internet ad, send me a catalog or mail me a credit-card offer. This data is collected in lots of ways, such as tracking devices (like cookies) on websites that allow a company to identify you as you travel around the Web and apps you download on your cell that look at your contact list and location. You know how everything has seemed free for the past few years? It wasn’t. It’s just that no one told you that instead of using money, you were paying with your personal information. See how college-admissions departments stalk Facebook. See how one teacher’s viral blog post sparked an angry debate.

The Creep Factor

There is now an enormous multibillion-dollar industry based on the collection and sale of this personal and behavioral data, an industry that Senator John Kerry, chair of the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, is hoping to rein in. Kerry is about to introduce a bill that would require companies to make sure all the stuff they know about you is secured from hackers and to let you inspect everything they have on you, correct any mistakes and opt out of being tracked. He is doing this because, he argues, “There’s no code of conduct. There’s no standard. There’s nothing that safeguards privacy and establishes rules of the road.” At Senate hearings on privacy beginning March 16, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will be weighing in on how to protect consumers. It has already issued a report that calls upon the major browsers to come up with a do-not-track mechanism that allows people to choose not to have their information collected by companies they aren’t directly doing business with. Under any such plan, it would likely still be O.K. for Amazon to remember your past orders and make purchase suggestions or for American Express to figure your card was stolen because a recent purchase doesn’t fit your precise buying patterns. But it wouldn’t be cool if they gave another company that information without your permission.

Taking your information without asking and then profiting from it isn’t new: it’s the idea behind the phone book, junk mail and telemarketing. Worrying about it is just as old: in 1890, Louis Brandeis argued that printing a photograph without the subject’s permission inflicts “mental pain and distress, far greater than could be inflicted by mere bodily harm.” Once again, new technology is making us weigh what we’re sacrificing in privacy against what we’re gaining in instant access to information. Some facts about you were always public — the price of your home, some divorce papers, your criminal records, your political donations — but they were held in different buildings, accessible only by those who filled out annoying forms; now they can be clicked on. Other information was not possible to compile pre-Internet because it would have required sending a person to follow each of us around the mall, listen to our conversations and watch what we read in the newspaper. Now all of those activities happen online — and can be tracked instantaneously.

Part of the problem people have with data mining is that it seems so creepy. Right after I e-mailed a friend in Texas that I might be coming to town, a suggestion for a restaurant in Houston popped up as a one-line all-text ad above my Gmail inbox. But it’s not a barbecue-pit master stalking me, which would indeed be creepy; it’s an algorithm designed to give me more useful, specific ads. And while that doesn’t sound like all that good a deal in exchange for my private data, if it means that I get to learn when the next Paul Thomas Anderson movie is coming out, when Wilco is playing near my house and when Tom Colicchio is opening a restaurant close by, maybe that’s not such a bad return.

Since targeted ads are so much more effective than nontargeted ones, websites can charge much more for them. This is why — compared with the old banners and pop-ups — online ads have become smaller and less invasive, and why websites have been able to provide better content and still be free. Besides, the fact that I’m going to Houston is bundled with the information that 999 other people are Houston-bound and is auctioned by a computer; no actual person looks at my name or my Houston-boundness. Advertisers are interested only in tiny chunks of information about my behavior, not my whole profile, which is one of the reasons M. Ryan Calo, a Stanford Law School professor who is director of the school’s Consumer Privacy Project, argues that data mining does no actual damage. (See “How Facebook Is Redefining Privacy.”) “We have this feeling of being dogged that’s uncomfortable,” Calo says, “but the risk of privacy harm isn’t necessarily harmful. Let’s get serious and talk about what harm really is.”

The real problem with data mining, Calo and others believe, arises when the data is wrong. “It’s one thing to see bad ads because of bad information about you. It’s another thing if you’re not getting a credit card or a job because of bad information,” says Justin Brookman, the former chief of the Internet bureau of the New York attorney general’s office, who is now the director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit group in Washington. (Comment on this story.) Russell Glass, the CEO of Bizo — which mines the fact that people are business executives and sells that info to hundreds of advertisers such as American Express, Monster.com, Citibank, Sprint and Google — says the newness of his industry is what scares people. “It’s the monster-under-the-bed syndrome,” Glass says. “People are afraid of what they really don’t understand. They don’t understand that companies like us have no idea who they are. And we really don’t give a s — -. I just want a little information that will help me sell you an ad.” Not many people, he notes, seem to be creeped out by all the junk mail they still get from direct-marketing campaigns, which buy the same information from data-mining companies. “I have a 2-year-old daughter who is getting mail at my home address,” he says. “That freaks me out.” See pictures of Facebook’s headquarters. See “Google’s War Against Rotten Search Results.” Why That Ad Is Following You Junk mail is a familiar evil that’s barely changed over the decades. Data mining and the advertising it supports get more refined every month.

The latest trick to freak people out is retargeting — when you look at an item in an online store and then an ad for that item follows you around to other sites. Last year, Zappos was the most prominent company in the U.S. to go all out in behavioral retargeting. And people got pissed off. One of the company’s mistakes was running ads too frequently and coming off as an annoying, persistent salesman. “We took that brick-and-mortar pet peeve and implied it online,” says Darrin Shamo, Zappos’ director of direct marketing. Shamo learned, the hard way, that people get upset when their computer shows lingerie ads, even if they had been recently shopping for G-strings, since people share computers and use them in front of their kids. He also learned that ads that reveal potential Christmas gifts are bad for business. (See a brief history of online shopping.) Since then, Zappos has been experimenting with new ads that people will see no more than five times and for no longer than eight days. Zappos has also dumbed the ads down, showing items that aren’t the ones you considered buying but are sort of close, which people greatly prefer. And much like Amazon’s “Customers who bought 1984 also bought Brave New World”–style recommendation engine, the new ads tell people what Zappos knows about them and how they got that information (“a company called Criteo helps Zappos to create these kinds of personalized ads”). It also tells them how they can opt out of seeing them (“Some people prefer rainbows. And others prefer unicorns. If you prefer not to see personalized ads, we totally get it”). If that calms the angry 15% of the people who saw these ads, Zappos will stick with them. Otherwise, it plans on quitting the retargeting business. Shamo thinks he’ll just need to wait until the newness wears off and people are used to ads tailored for them. “Sometimes things don’t move as fast as you think,” he says. (Read about Shoefitr, a service that helps shoppers buy shoes online.) They’re not even moving that much faster with the generation that grew up with the Internet.

While young people expect more of their data to be mined and used, that doesn’t mean they don’t care about privacy. “In my research, I found that teenagers live with this underlying anxiety of not knowing the rules of who can look at their information on the Internet. They think schools look at it, they think the government looks at it, they think colleges can look at it, they think employers can look at it, they think Facebook can see everything,” says Sherry Turkle, a professor at MIT who is the director of the Initiative on Technology and Self and the author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Each Other. “It’s the opposite of the mental state I grew up in. My grandmother took me down to the mailbox in Brooklyn every morning, and she would say, ‘It’s a federal offense for anyone to look at your mail. That’s what makes this country great.’ In the old country they’d open your mail, and that’s how they knew about you.” (Comment on this story.)

Data mining, Turkle argues, is a panopticon: the circular prison invented by 18th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham where you can’t tell if you’re being observed, so you assume that you always are. “The practical concern is loss of control and loss of identity,” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “It’s a little abstract, but that’s part of what’s taking place.” See “Automated Theft Machines.” See “Is Your Facebook Account a Gold Mine for Identity Thieves?” The Facebook and Google Troves Our identities, however, were never completely within our control: our friends keep letters we’ve forgotten writing, our enemies tell stories about us we remember differently, our yearbook photos are in way too many people’s houses. Opting out of all those interactions is opting out of society.

Which is why Facebook is such a confusing privacy hub point. Many data-mining companies made this argument to me: How can I complain about having my Houston trip data-mined when I’m posting photos of myself with a giant mullet and a gold chain on Facebook and writing columns about how I want a second kid and my wife doesn’t? Because, unlike when my data is secretly mined, I get to control what I share. Even narcissists want privacy. “It’s the difference between sharing and tracking,” says Bret Taylor, Facebook’s chief technology officer. To get into the Facebook office in Palo Alto, Calif., I have to sign a piece of physical paper: a Single-Party Non-Disclosure Agreement, which legally prevents me from writing the last paragraph. But your privacy on Facebook — that’s up to you. You choose what to share and what circle of friends gets to see it, and you can untag yourself from any photos of you that other people put up. However, from a miner’s point of view, Facebook has the most valuable trove of data ever assembled: not only have you told it everything you like, but it also knows what your friends like, which is an amazing predictor of what you’ll like. (See “Your Thoughts About Facebook.”)

Facebook doesn’t sell any of your data, partly because it doesn’t have to — 23.1% of all online ads not on search engines, video or e-mail run on Facebook. But data-mining companies are “scraping” all your personal data that’s not set to private and selling it to any outside party that’s interested. So that information is being bought and sold unless you squeeze your Facebook privacy settings tight, which keeps you from a lot of the social interaction that drew you to the site in the first place.

The only company that might have an even better dossier on you than Facebook is Google. In a conference room on the Google campus, I sit through a long privacy-policy PowerPoint presentation. Summary: Google cares! Specifically, Google keeps the data it has about you from various parts of its company separate. One category is the personally identifiable account data it can attach to your name, age, gender, e-mail address and ZIP code when you signed up for services like Gmail, YouTube, Blogger, Picasa, iGoogle, Google Voice or Calendar. The other is log data associated with your computer, which it “anonymizes” after nine months: your search history, Chrome browser data, Google Maps requests and all the info its myriad data trackers and ad agencies (DoubleClick, AdSense, AdMob) collect when you’re on other sites and Android phone apps. You can change your settings on the former at Google Dashboard and the latter at Google Ads Preferences — where you can opt out of having your data mined or change the company’s guesses about what you’re into. Nicole Wong, deputy general counsel at Google, says the company created these tools to try to reassure people who have no idea how all this information is being collected and used.

“When I go to TIME.com as a user, I think only TIME.com is collecting my data. What I don’t realize is that for every ad on that page, a company is also dropping a code and collecting my data. It’s a black box — and we’ve tried to open up the box. Sometimes you’re not even sure who the advertisers are. It’s just a bunch of jumping monkeys or something.” Google really does want to protect your privacy, but it’s got issues. First, it’s profit-driven and it’s huge.

But those aren’t the main reasons privacy advocates get so upset about Google. They get upset because the company’s guiding philosophy conflicts with the notion of privacy. As the PowerPoint says right up top: “Google’s mission: to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Which is awesome, except for the fact that my information is part of the world’s information. (See “Quilting for Data: How Google Gets Information from Inside People’s Heads.”) Tracking the Trackers To see just what information is being gathered about me, I downloaded Ghostery, a browser extension that lets you watch the watchers watching you. Each time you go to a new website, up pops a little bubble that lists all the data trackers checking you out.

This is what I discovered: the very few companies that actually charge you for services tend not to data mine much. When you visit TIME.com, several dozen tracking companies, with names such as Eyeblaster, Bluestreak, DoubleClick and Factor TG, could be collecting data at any given time. If you’re reading this in print as a subscriber, TIME has probably “rented” your name and address many times to various companies for a one-time use. This is also true if you subscribe to Vanity Fair, Cosmopolitan or just about any other publication. (Comment on this story.)

This being America, I don’t have to wait for the government to give me an opt-out option; I can pay for one right now. Michael Fertik, the CEO and founder of Reputation.com, who nabbed my Social Security number, will do it for me for just $8.25 a month. His company will also, for a lot more money, make Google searches of your name come up with more flattering results — because when everyone is famous, everyone needs a public relations department. Fertik, who clerked for the chief judge of the Sixth Circuit after graduating from Harvard Law School, believes that if data mining isn’t regulated, everyone will soon be assigned scores for attractiveness and a social-prowess index and a complainer index, so companies can avoid serving you — just as you now have a credit score that they can easily check before deciding to do business with you.

“What happens when those data sets are used for life transactions: health insurance, employment, dating and education? It’s inevitable that all of these decisions will be made based on machine conclusions. Your FICO score is already an all-but-decisional fact about you. ABD, dude! All but decisional,” says Fertik. See how Apple and Google became the two most admired companies in the world. See how social media is helping old media.

Even if I were to use the services of Reputation.com, there’s still all the public information about me that I can’t suppress. Last year, thousands of people sent their friends a Facebook message telling them to opt out of being listed on Spokeo.com, which they described as the creepiest paparazzo of all, giving out your age, profession, address and a photo of your house. Spokeo, a tiny company in Pasadena, Calif., is run by 28-year-old Stanford grad Harrison Tang. He was surprised at the outcry. “Some people don’t know what Google Street View is, so they think this is magic,” Tang says of the photos of people’s homes that his site shows. The info on Spokeo isn’t even all that revealing — he purposely leaves off criminal records and previous marriages — but Tang thinks society is still learning about data mining and will soon become inured to it.

“Back in the 1990s, if you said, ‘I’m going to put pictures on the Internet for everyone to see,’ it would have been hard to believe. Now everyone does it. The Internet is becoming more and more open. This world will become more connected, and the distance between you and me will be a lot closer. If everybody is a walled garden, there won’t be an Internet.” I deeply believe that, but it’s still too easy to find our gardens. Your political donations, home value and address have always been public, but you used to have to actually go to all these different places — courthouses, libraries, property-tax assessors’ offices — and request documents. “You were private by default and public by effort. Nowadays, you’re public by default and private by effort,” says Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group for digital rights.

“There are all sorts of inferences that can be made about you from the websites you visit, what you buy, who you talk to. What if your employer had access to information about you that shows you have a particular kind of health condition or a woman is pregnant or thinking about it?” Tien worries that political dissidents in other countries, battered women and other groups that need anonymity are vulnerable to data mining. At the very least, he argues, we’re responsible to protect special groups, just as Google Street View allows users to request that a particular location, like an abused-women’s shelter, not be photographed. (See the top 10 Twitter moments of 2010.) Other democratic countries have taken much stronger stands than the U.S. has on regulating data mining. Google Street View has been banned by the Czech Republic. Germany — after protests and much debate — decided at the end of last year to allow it but to let people request that their houses not be shown, which nearly 250,000 people had done as of last November. E.U. Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding is about to present a proposal to allow people to correct and erase information about themselves on the Web. “Everyone should have the right to be forgotten,” she says. “Due to their painful history in the 20th century, Europeans are naturally more sensitive to the collection and use of their data by public authorities.”

After 9/11, not many Americans protested when concerns about security seemed to trump privacy. Now that privacy issues are being pushed in Congress, companies are making last-ditch efforts to become more transparent. New tools released in February for Firefox and Google Chrome browsers let users block data collecting, though Firefox and Chrome depend on the data miners to respect the users’ request, which won’t stop unscrupulous companies. In addition to the new browser options, an increasing number of ads have a little i (an Advertising Option Icon), which you can click on to find out exactly which companies are tracking you and what they do. The technology behind the icon is managed by Evidon, the company that provides the Ghostery download. Evidon has gotten more than 500 data-collecting companies to provide their info. It takes a lot of work to find out about this tiny little i and even more to click on it and read the information. But it also took people a while to learn what the recycling symbol meant. And reading the info behind the i icon isn’t necessarily the point, says Evidon CEO Scott Meyer, who used to be CEO of About.com and managed the New York Times’ website. “Do I look at nutritional labeling? No. But would I buy a food product that didn’t have one? Absolutely not. I would be really concerned. It’s accountability.” (See “Google Street View Goes Off-Roading.”) FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz has been pleased by how effective he’s been at using the threat of legislation to scare companies into taking action and dropping their excuse that they don’t know anything about you personally, just data associated with your computer. “We used to have a distinction 10 years ago between personally identifiable information and non-PII. Now those distinctions have broken down.” In November, Leibowitz hired Edward Felten, the Princeton computer-science professor famous for uncovering weaknesses in electronic-voting machines and digital-music protection, to serve as the FTC’s chief technologist for the next year. Felten has found that the online-advertising industry is as eager as the government is for improved privacy protections. “There’s a lot of fear that holds people back from doing things they would otherwise do online. This is part of the cost of privacy uncertainty. People are a little wary of trying out some new site or service if they’re worried about giving their information,” Felten says. He’s right: oddly, the more I learned about data mining, the less concerned I was. Sure, I was surprised that all these companies are actually keeping permanent files on me. But I don’t think they will do anything with them that does me any harm. There should be protections for vulnerable groups, and a government-enforced opt-out mechanism would be great for accountability.

But I’m pretty sure that, like me, most people won’t use that option. Of the people who actually find the Ads Preferences page — and these must be people pretty into privacy — only 1 in 8 asks to opt out of being tracked. The rest, apparently, just like to read privacy rules. (Comment on this story.) We’re quickly figuring out how to navigate our trail of data — don’t say anything private on a Facebook wall, keep your secrets out of e-mail, use cash for illicit purchases. The vast majority of it, though, is worthless to us and a pretty good exchange for frequent-flier miles, better search results, a fast system to qualify for credit, finding out if our babysitter has a criminal record and ads we find more useful than annoying. Especially because no human being ever reads your files. As I learned by trying to find out all my data, we’re not all that interesting. — With reporting by Eben Harrell / London

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2058114,00.html

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: I DONT STOP ()
Date: November 16, 2011 04:31AM

Orwellian Data Mining.


by Mark Dice on Friday, July 29, 2011 at 1:08pm

Data Mining

(Excerpt from Big Brother: The Orwellian Nightmare Come True by Mark Dice)



Data mining is the process of searching for patterns in massive amounts of data. There are several major companies that compile enormous amounts of data on people and sell this information to advertisers and marketers. It is truly staggering to learn the amount of data these companies have on people, and what that data is used for. Many of these databases have records of people’s marital status, ages of their children, income, value of their home and cars, as well as their occupation, religion, ethnicity, and even social security numbers and medical information. These lists have been sold to marketers and advertisers for decades so they can target specific types of people for their products, but after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the government began using commercial databases like ChoicePoint, LexusNexus, Acxiom, and others to search for links between suspected terrorists.

To give you an idea of just how large these data mining companies are, in February 2008, ChoicePoint was purchased by Reed Elsevier in a cash deal for $3.6 billion dollars. ChoicePoint has more than 17 billion records of individuals and businesses, which it sells to an estimated 100,000 different clients, including 7,000 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.[1] When one learns that these companies do more than simply maintain a database of details about people, it can be truly worrisome what their systems are capable of doing.

ChoicePoint has a system they call NORA (Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness) that can find relationships between people in ways you couldn’t imagine. In 1994 the MGM casino in Las Vegas started using the NORA system to find out whether or not any high-rollers had ties to the dealers or employees that could be used in cheating or otherwise scamming the casino. The system could also detect whether people kicked out of the casino for card counting or cheating had any personal ties to employees who may have been in on the scam.

The NORA system can display a chart or list of people’s relationships to others that are not noticeable on the surface. For example, if a dealer at the casino had a brother who was roommates with someone who won big at that dealer’s table, the system would know and the dealer would be suspected of helping that person win and be in on the scam. The system can determine whether people frequently go to the same restaurant, attend the same church, have mutual friends, etc.

The Direct Marketing List Source is a document consisting of 1600 pages that contains information such as people’s names, ages, addresses, what books they buy, magazines they subscribe to, what they buy online, etc. It also has a list called the Gay America Megafile with almost 700,000 names of people that the database has identified as being homosexual. The list is considered the Bible of mailing lists.

Data mines can calculate how much a bachelor usually spends on a weekend out, and where, and can determine whether or not he enters into a relationship or if he has gotten married. Marketers then know what other products they can market to him due to his changing lifestyle.

A company called Elensys obtained prescription records from pharmacies and then sent out material to those customers targeting them depending on what ailments they had or what medication they were taking. After this was made public, CVS pharmacy purchased full page ads in major newspapers apologizing for selling their customer’s private information.[2]

Another major company in this field, Axciom, has a service they call InfoBase TeleSource, which is a system that companies with toll free telephone numbers use to identify the names and other information about people who call in. Even people who block their caller ID or people who have unlisted numbers are still identified by this system.[3] If someone calls in to an 800 number asking about a particular product, the person answering the phone has information pop up on their screen such as the person’s name, address, and even what kind of home they live in, the cars the person owns, and whether they are a member of a health club or a gym.

A special airing originally in 2006 on CNBC called Big Brother, Big Business showed a fancy restaurant in New York using a similar system to identify people when they called in to make reservations, and allows the staff to create profiles for customers that include information such as when their birthday is, or if they were a “difficult” customer in the past.

In 1998, a company called Image Data began purchasing drivers license pictures from the DMV and using them in the private sector. They designed a system for retail stores that would display people’s pictures on a screen when they swiped their credit card so the clerk could confirm that it was the person, and not someone else using the card.[4] Image Data had received $1.5 million dollars from the Secret Service to develop the project.[5] When it was discovered that the DMV offices were selling people’s pictures and personal information to a private company, some DMVs were pressured to stop this practice.

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the government started its own data mining operation they called the MATRIX, [Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange Program] that used a variety of commercial and government databases to search for links between suspects or to identify any unusual behavior such as strange purchases or money transfers. The MATRIX system could do a search for all the people who have blond hair, are six feet tall, drive a black convertible, who work as an accountant, and who live in a particular zip code. The MATRIX program was shut down in June 2005 after funding was cut, largely as a result of concerns over privacy, but it is likely the technology was absorbed into other government agencies.

Another element used by casinos to maximize their profits is a system called a “Total Rewards” card used by Harrah’s casinos that track players’ winnings and losses. The casino has calculated a “pain point” that they determine is the maximum amount a person is willing to lose which may leave them with a negative feeling about the casino causing them never to return. If a player’s pain point is approaching because their losses are mounting, then that person will be approached by a staff member and offered a free dinner to make them feel better about their experience at the casino, causing them to likely return and not leave feeling like they had wasted all of their money. The people offered the free dinner have no idea they are specifically chosen for this reason, and just think the casino gives away random dinners to anyone.

Through data mining, the Canadian Tire company has determined that people who purchase carbon-monoxide detectors, birdseed, and pads for the bottom of chair legs rarely miss a payment on a credit card. “If you show us what you buy, we can tell you who you are, maybe even better than you know yourself,” said a former Canadian Tire executive.[6] Cable and satellite TV companies know what shows are watched in your home, and digital recording services like Ti-Vo and AT&T’s U-verse know what shows you record. If your name is on the cable bill, then you are linked in a database to the shows that are watched and recorded. What you watch on television on a regular basis says a lot about you, and marketing companies like to know these things.

If you choose to use mainly cash for your day to day purchases of food, clothes, gas, etc, are these artificially intelligent systems and complex algorithms going to flag you for being suspicious? The government doesn’t like people who pay cash, since they are more difficult to monitor, so this alone could flag you for closer analysis.

The system will know you use cash for most purchases, because it will see a lack of purchases using a debit card or credit card. It may not know what you spend that cash on, but it surely notices if you cash your paychecks or withdraw large amounts of cash from your account on a regular basis, and this is seen as suspicious.

If a person is a political activist or a journalist who is causing trouble for the establishment or a particular president, could that person then be flagged for an audit in attempts to disrupt or discourage his activity? Could he be listed as a trouble maker so the next time he is pulled over for going five miles an hour over the speed limit, the officer will see that he is a “troublemaker” and give him the ticket instead of let him off with a warning?

Could these systems falsely list you as dangerous because of your political affiliations so when a future potential employer does a background check on you, the report lists you as a subversive person or an “extremist?” What if the employer disagrees with your political views or activism that shows up listed in your background check and chooses not to hire you because of this? You would have no way of knowing why they actually decided to hire someone else. If you return too many items to stores in order to get a refund, you may be identified as a “returnaholic,” and may be flagged as someone who buys a product to use it for a while and then returns it.[7]

Did you purchase a blow up doll as a joke for a friend’s bachelor party? Your name might then be added to certain mailing lists and you could now start receiving junk mail from sex shops or escort services.

There are numerous publicly available websites that disclose all kinds of information about people, sometimes for free, and others for only a small fee. These services offer people’s address, phone numbers, birthdates, criminal history, and much more. One service has a slogan saying they are “not your grandma’s phone book.” Some available features include an e-mail lookup which allows you to enter in someone’s e-mail address and then the website searches through a massive list of websites to see if any accounts were opened from that e-mail, and then lists them. A person’s Facebook page, and even Amazon.com and other online retailers such as Target.com can show up as having accounts linked to a person’s e-mail address.

If you pay a small monthly fee on some of these services you can get photos of the people as well and see what they’ve been posting online and get other information such as their income and credit score. Most of these services also offer what is called a reverse telephone directory, which allows you to enter in a person’s phone number and it will then reveal the name and address of the person who has that number.

A Michigan University academic named Arthur R. Miller published a book back in 1971 titled The Assault on Privacy where he wrote, “The new information technologies seem to have given birth to a new social virus—‘data-mania.’ We must begin to realize what it means to live in a society that treats information as an economically desirable commodity and a source of power.”

During a special interview on CNBC titled “Inside the Mind of Google,” the company’s CEO Eric Schmidt was asked about privacy concerns involving the information age and Google’s domination of the Internet, to which he answered, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

[1] http://epic.org/privacy/choicepoint/

[2] The Washington Post “CVS Also Cuts Ties to Marketing Service” (February 19, 1998)

[3] The Washington Post “Unlisted Numbers not Protected from Marketers” (December 19,1999) by Robert O’Harrow, Jr.

[4] The Washington Post “Posing a Privacy Problem? Driver’s-License Photos used in Anti-Fraud Database” (January 22, 1999) Robert O’Harrow, Jr.

[5] The Washington Post “U.S. Helped Fund Photo Database of Driver Ids” (Feb 18,1999) Robert O’Harrow, Jr

[6] Newser.com “Your Credit Card is Spying on You” (April 7, 2010) by Kevin Spak

[7] Economizer “Returnaholics cost retailers billions of dollars a year” (May 18, 2010) by Mitch Lipka

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: XXX6x ()
Date: November 16, 2011 04:32AM

ur too slow

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: I DONT STOP ()
Date: November 16, 2011 04:33AM

Data mining pushes marketing to a new level





TEXT OF STORY

Kai Ryssdal: Almost everything you do, short of taking a long, lonely walk in the woods or something, leaves little bits of electronic data behind. Every time you search the Internet, you punch something into your mobile phone or you write on someone's Facebook wall, there's a giant industry right behind you sucking up all that data and using it to figure out how to sell you something. Toothpaste to life insurance. The data mining business, as it's known, is growing 10 percent a year, and as you might have guessed, the amount of data we produce is booming.

So today and tomorrow on the program, Marketplace's Stacey Vanek Smith is going to explore the $100 billion data-mining industry, and what, exactly, it knows about us.

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Stacey Vanek Smith: I'm grocery shopping at Albertsons, and, when I check out, I hand over my member ID card.


Vanek Smith to cashier: Can I give you my card?

I get a discount on my groceries, and Albertsons gets information on everything I just bought. Along with my receipt, the computer spits out a coupon for a dollar off Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches, which I buy all the time. And Us Weekly, which, well, I'm just trying to stay well-informed.


Vanek Smith: Thank you.

Those smart coupons are just the tip of the $100 billion data mining industry. Every time you search for something online, swipe your credit card or pull up directions on your cell phone, that action creates a little module of data about you. Data compilers collect that information and sell it -- usually millions of records at a time to marketers who use it to target consumers.

Robert Grossman heads the National Center for Data Mining.


Robert Grossman: This allows better targeting with less effort that can be more widely used by more companies and hopefully increase their margins.

Collecting data is just the beginning, then someone needs to make sense of it. Someone like data analyst Peter Harvey, CEO of Intellidyn. A travel company, which was looking to sell high-end vacation packages to Asia, recently came to Harvey with data on millions of potential customers.


Peter Harvey: We pass 5,000 data elements across them and figure out which of them are most likely to travel.

The attributes of the Asian traveler?


Sound Montage: Wedding march, farmers, soldiers shouting, man singing "when I'm 64"

Turns out, if you're married, a farmer, ex-military and over 65, you want to go to Asia! Harvey says data mining can double or triple the response to an ad. And companies will be able to hone in on potential customers even more precisely as data gets more individualized. Sites like Google, Facebook and Foursquare track what you're buying, what you're looking to buy and where you are.

Andreas Weigend teaches data mining at Stanford.


Andreas Weigend: Traditionally, companies knew transaction data. They knew how many latte macchiatos were sold at this location. They didn't really know who they were sold to.

And now?


Weigend: The company could very well know who the person is based, for instance on his mobile phone's ID, and could have the coffee ready before the customer even orders it.

Virtually every large companies mines its data -- it's how Amazon and Netflix come up with those recommendations that entice you to buy another book, another movie. It's how iTunes knows that if you like this song...


"Slow Life" by Grizzly Bear (with Victoria Legrand)

It should try to sell you this song?

"Gold digger" by Kanye West

Intellidyn's Peter Harvey says our data is pushing advertising to a whole new level.


Peter Harvey: Marketing will move from static to dynamic. And then within dynamic, it will be the rate of change in how fast you can do it.

More like how fast you can make sense of it. Demand is booming for analysts who build the computer models that can synthesize all this data for marketers. Eventually, most of the ads you see will be tailored to you. Which sounds great, but what about our privacy? Andreas Weigend says we lost that the minute we logged on.


Weigend: Maybe privacy was just a blip in history. It started when people moved to cities, where they had places to hide, and it ended with the Internet, when basically, there was no place to hide left.

My privacy in exchange for a dollar off ice cream sandwiches... Well, I guess it's a fair trade.

In Los Angeles, I'm Stacey Vanek Smith for Marketplace.

Kai Ryssdal: Tomorrow, Stacey makes that trade. She takes us on a tour of getting her own data mined. It's a good one; you're going to want to listen.


About the author
Stacey Vanek-Smith is a senior reporter for Marketplace, where she covers banking, consumer finance, housing and advertising.

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: I DONT STOP ()
Date: November 16, 2011 04:36AM

How Companies Are Using Your Social Media Data

Companies are mining the social web to build dossiers on you. Information posted publicly on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, forums and other sites is fair game. It is yet another reminder that people need to be aware of what they are posting on social networking sites and to whom they’re connected.

Jules Polonetsky, director and co-chair of the Future of Privacy Forum, said online users have no clue that a comment they made on a blog is being added to a database for some unknown use.

“I don’t think users expect that,” he said, and if consumers think idle chatter and casual conversation can be used against them by institutions, it’s almost certain to create a backlash, according to Polonetsky. He said the Federal Trade Commission is right now re-examining the current privacy structure in the U.S.

But at the same time, he said consumers are always very comfortable with Amazon using data to recommend books they might like. “When users are in control of it, it’s a win-win — if they feel empowered.”

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How Data is Being Used

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Polonetsky said aggregators like Rapleaf Inc. will collate information about individuals and sell it to companies that want to learn about those customers and what they do online.

Personal finance reporter Erica Sandberg, who covered the issue of social media datamining in a story for CreditCards.com, said that if a data mining company turns your chatter and network into a behavioral pattern, and if they can prove it has some worth, then it’s valuable to companies. Sandberg said this is just more information anyone can use to help them make a decision.

“I don’t think there’s anything scary about it,” she said. “Why wouldn’t they look at it? It’s public.” She said she is not aware of any specific examples of those who have been negatively impacted because of it.

Entities such as airlines, politicians, and even non-profits can use this data for finding new customers or targeting products to existing ones. Financial services companies such as banks and lenders are also using the same datamining services for marketing purposes and to make lending decisions. For instance, certain types of credit products, which fit your personality, could be marketed specifically to you.

“It’s a helpful tool to identify the right customers, the best customers,” Sandberg said.

She said the immediate fear is the misconception that it affects your credit report. She stressed that companies that do social media datamining do not have access to your credit report, and the act of collecting the publicly available data has no effect on your credit score.

However, she said, “it can affect the credit you’re offered, and the credit you receive.”

Social media contacts play a role in behavioral profiles as well. “I think what’s most interesting is how those in your network have an impact,” she said.

Do you know if your Facebook friends have good credit histories? Likely not, but if you associate with people who are a good credit risk, than you’ll probably be a good credit risk, according to Sandberg. “The whole idea [is] like follows like,” she said.

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Learning About Customers to Tailor Experience

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According to a counter on their website, Rapleaf Inc. has mined social data about more than 389 million customers. They do that by crawling the Internet just like Google or Bing does, said CEO Auren Hoffman, but that they only crawl sites such as forums, social networks, review sites, newsgroups, and blogs — where information is publicly available.

He said clients they work with include car companies, airlines, hotels, banks, retailers, non-profits and politicians. If they can learn more about their customer, then they can personalize an experience for that customer, according to Hoffman. He said consumers are already expecting this high level of service, and that it’s all about the product, service, and experience that you would prefer.

“The power to personalize things is much greater,” he said.

Rapleaf’s blog links to a SmartMoney story about how banks and financial services firms limit their use of social media data to marketing departments, and not those “charged with making credit and lending decisions,” according to the post.

Sandberg said it’s up to businesses to use the information from datamining companies as they please. “This is public information. They can use it any way they want.”

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Social Data Helps to Prevent Fraud

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Lending Club, a peer-to-peer lending service that matches borrowers with investors, has been using a variety of tools and software to help them gather social media information for six months, according to Rob Garcia, the company’s senior director.

He said Lending Club uses social media data for marketing and operational purposes and stressed that Lending Club does not use any social media data for credit decisions and that it does not affect whether an applicant can get a loan. “We use this information to benefit our customers — to prevent fraud,” he said.

For operational purposes, Lending Club makes sure the user’s information checks out to try to protect his or her identity, according to Garcia. So they will compare application information from a credit file against information that’s publicly available. He said that if there’s a mismatch, it gives them more reason to go to more strict identification procedures.

“We have found a way to use this information in a positive way,” he said.

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Credit Card Companies Turn to Social Media

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Consumers might soon be seeing more credit card offers in their mailboxes. In the last quarter of 2009, the number of credit card offers mailed were up 46% from the third quarter of 2009, according to a news release on the direct mail tracking service Synovate Mail Monitor.

Anuj Shahani, director of competitive tracking services for Synovate’s Financial Services Group, told me that the number of credit card mailings is still down 40% from the fourth quarter of 2008. He said the CARD Act, which is a new federal law aimed at better disclosure and banning unfair rate hikes, and the economy were reasons for the decrease in mailings of credit card offers.

He said that because of the CARD Act, there are restrictions on spending for credit card companies. Credit card companies will have to come up with targeting models, and data companies can help them figure out those models, according to Shahani.

“Issuers will have to come up with smarter ways to target the right audience because it is so much more expensive to extend credit,” he said. “I think one of them will be social media.”

Credit card companies are already using social media to launch new products. Shahani pointed out that the CitiForward credit card launched in March 2009 on MySpace. He said that in December 2009, American Express launched its new Zync card on social media sites.

Shahani said the credit card issuer’s goal is to find the right audience and go to the right people and that’s where he expects social media would come in.

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Social Media Usage Tips

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Here are some tips from Erica Sandberg on the types of content to avoid posting on the social web and handling network connections.

1. Determine whether you want to go public or private with your social media profiles. If the profiles are set to be public, then be consistent with information you are posting. “The caution lies in what you say. Be truthful,” she said. For example, don’t post a status update joking that you’re filing for bankruptcy when you’re not. “It’s the off-the-cuff remarks you’re going to want to be aware of,” she warned.

2. Eliminate people and sites from your social networks that you don’t need. “Make sure people who are around you are reflective of you as a wonderful person,” Sandberg said.

3. Pay attention to your friend, invite, and connection requests. “You don’t want random associations,” she said. Sandberg recommends first checking out that person’s profile before accepting it. “I get flooded with friend requests of people I don’t know,” she said. “You have no idea who these people are. It’s a risky thing to do.”

What if opting out of being on social media is not an option? Sandberg said she’s on there for business purposes and can’t really go private. In that case, be careful what you write. “It underscores the importance of being honest and projecting yourself in a positive way,” she said.

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: I DONT STOP ()
Date: November 16, 2011 04:39AM

Supreme Court to hear Drug Data Mining Case.


by North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology (NC JOLT) on Sunday, March 13, 2011 at 7:21pm
.



In April, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments the Second Circuit data mining case IMS Health v. Sorrell. IMS Health is a data mining company that brought suit, along with similar companies, to challenge a state law aimed at restricting the sale or transmission of certain medical prescription information known as prescriber-identifiable data. Specifically, data mining companies challenge the Vermont law as an unconstitutional violation of free speech rights under the First Amendment. The sale of prescriber-identifiable data implicates state concerns about protecting public health, lowering healthcare costs, and guarding physician privacy. However, such concerns must be balanced against the need to protect economic free speech rights.


State and federal law protects the privacy of patient information through laws like HIPAA, but physician information can generally be bought and sold. When a patient goes to the pharmacy to fill a prescription, their pharmacy gathers basic information, such as the patient name, physician name, drug name, quantity and dosage requirements. This data can then be stripped of information that identifies the patient specifically and sold to data mining companies. Typically, data mining companies will use computer software programs to compile databases that reveal a physicians whole prescribing history within a region. Many physicians feel this is an invasion of professional privacy.



The sale of prescriber-identifiable data implicates state concerns about protecting public health, lowering healthcare costs, and guarding physician privacy. However, such concerns must be balanced against the need to protect economic free speech rights.


Data mining companies, such as IMS Health, sell the information to pharmaceutical manufacturers who, in turn, give the prescriber-identifiable data to drug sales representatives or “detailers.” Detailing is the practice of using prescriber-identifiable data to market certain drugs directly to physicians through one-on-one meetings. In these meetings, physicians are often confronted with their prescribing history and offered gifts and free samples. Detailing is usually used to promote high-cost, brand name drugs. These practices are effective and, therefore, contribute to increasing healthcare costs. Three states (Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine) have passed legislation aimed at curbing detailing practices. The laws function by prohibiting or restricting the sale of prescriber-identifiable data by pharmacies and data mining companies.


IMS Health and other data mining companies have challenged all three laws in federal court. They claim that such laws are an unconstitutional restriction on protected commercial speech under the First Amendment. The First Circuit upheld the laws, finding that they did not regulate protected speech, but rather conduct, in IMS Health v. Ayotte and IMS Health v. Mills. The First Circuit further held that even if the laws do regulate protected speech, they pass constitutional muster because the states have a legitimate interest in reigning in healthcare costs. The Second Circuit disagreed. In analyzing the Vermont law, the Second Circuit found that the law implicated protected speech and could not survive intermediate scrutiny, the standard used to analyze commercial speech under existing Supreme Court jurisprudence, even with a legitimate state interest in public health and healthcare costs. The Supreme Court has granted certiorari to hear the Vermont case, likely to give guidance in wake of the circuit split. This case presents a chance for the Supreme Court to further clarify its doctrine on commercial speech, which doesn’t typically generate the same headlines as other free speech cases but may have important implications for all businesses that buy and sell information.


It is not clear how the Supreme Court will resolve this issue. First, they must decide whether the law regulates conduct or speech. In their primary holding in both Mills and Ayotte, the First Circuit found that the laws of New Hampshire and Maine were a permissible regulation of conduct, as opposed to speech. Under this holding, the court need not address the commercial free speech doctrine. However, the First Circuit did address free speech doctrine in an alternate holding, implying that they may believe the Supreme Court would lean towards calling it a regulation of speech rather than a regulation of conduct. The Second Circuit found the statute at issue to be a regulation of speech, not conduct. If the threshold question of whether or not the statute regulates speech is answered affirmatively, the second issue is whether or not it the statute regulates protected free speech under the First Amendment. This inquiry involves a balancing test developed in the Supreme Court case Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corporation v. Public Service Commission of New York, which requires that the state have substantial interest(s) and a reasonable and direct way of achieving that interest. In this case, the decision will likely come down to how much deference the Supreme Court is willing to grant the state legislature.

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: I DONT STOP ()
Date: November 16, 2011 04:42AM

Data Mining: How Companies Now Know Everything About You

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qwe

22-03-2011, 22:06

Three hours after I gave my name and e-mail address to Michael Fertik, the CEO of Reputation.com, he called me back and read my Social Security number to me. "We had it a couple of hours ago," he said. "I was just too busy to call."

In the past few months, I have been told many more-interesting facts about myself than my Social Security number. I've gathered a bit of the vast amount of data that's being collected both online and off by companies in stealth — taken from the websites I look at, the stuff I buy, my Facebook photos, my warranty cards, my customer-reward cards, the songs I listen to online, surveys I was guilted into filling out and magazines I subscribe to. (See pictures of a Facebook server farm.)

Google's Ads Preferences believes I'm a guy interested in politics, Asian food, perfume, celebrity gossip, animated movies and crime but who doesn't care about "books & literature" or "people & society." (So not true.) Yahoo! has me down as a 36-to-45-year-old male who uses a Mac computer and likes hockey, rap, rock, parenting, recipes, clothes and beauty products; it also thinks I live in New York, even though I moved to Los Angeles more than six years ago. Alliance Data, an enormous data-marketing firm in Texas, knows that I'm a 39-year-old college-educated Jewish male who takes in at least $125,000 a year, makes most of his purchases online and spends an average of only $25 per item. Specifically, it knows that on Jan. 24, 2004, I spent $46 on "low-ticket gifts and merchandise" and that on Oct. 10, 2010, I spent $180 on intimate apparel. It knows about more than 100 purchases in between. Alliance also knows I owe $854,000 on a house built in 1939 that — get this — it thinks has stucco walls. They're mostly wood siding with a little stucco on the bottom! Idiots.

EXelate, a Manhattan company that acts as an exchange for the buying and selling of people's data, thinks I have a high net worth and dig green living and travel within the U.S. BlueKai, one of eXelate's competitors in Bellevue, Wash., believes I'm a "collegiate-minded" senior executive with a high net worth who rents sports cars (note to Time Inc. accounting: it's wrong unless the Toyota Yaris is a sports car). At one point BlueKai also believed, probably based on my $180 splurge for my wife Cassandra on HerRoom.com, that I was an 18-to-19-year-old woman.

RapLeaf, a data-mining company that was recently banned by Facebook because it mined people's user IDs, has me down as a 35-to-44-year-old married male with a graduate degree living in L.A. But RapLeaf thinks I have no kids, work as a medical professional and drive a truck. RapLeaf clearly does not read my column in TIME.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2058114,00.html#ixzz1HMQdDm6P

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GenericMind

22-03-2011, 22:14

Data Mining is definitely an interesting topic. It feels like something I should be offended by or worried about, but to be honest I think it's kind of neat. =D

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Akoto

23-03-2011, 00:14

This is why I don't use chrome

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Limpet_Chicken

23-03-2011, 12:22

I mistrust google, no, that is understating it.

I am downright paranoid about them, more so than I am about micro$oft, microsoft has a huge business to run, and profits to worry about, a bunch of snakes, to be sure...but at least with your average snake one knows it is likely to bite you.

Google? more like a sea snake....calmer, fishermen feel safe enough around them to pick them up and leave them to slither about in the boats while they ready themselves to return the lot to the wild, but behind the scenes, most virulent little bastards, they just don't give themselves a reputation.

I refuse to use any google-owned/developed software, like that google toolbar, that bugger gets my goat, of course with the chance not to install it, but it gets packaged with everything these days, I recently reinstalled a bittorrent client after having to do a full re-install of the my OS, antivirus, firewall, rootkit scanner, on boot/on shutdown program that automatically DOD-wipes any windows OS, IE/firefox/opera traces, as well as those of third party software of various kinds, make all my custom registry tweaks, the lot, and it kept nagging me to install the toolbar.

I clicked the obvious 'cancel' button, after the bittorrent client appeared to have installed, and the next menu was 'do you want to proceed with installation of the google toolbar, set google to your homepage, and it actually cancelled the entire damn thing. Had to manually click this, that and the other to avoid all the bundled bullshit.

Hell, I log out of my gmail as soon as I read/reply to my mail, before I search or access anything else.

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addictivepersona

23-03-2011, 18:53

Akoto and Limpet, thanks for convincing me to go back to Firefox. I've been using Chrome and some of the topics discussed here have convinced me to not use it anymore... At least until Firefox starts not allowing me on BL again...

Firefox 4 has an option to browse anonymously... Not sure if that's old news or not, but figured I'd pass it along.

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NeighborhoodThreat

23-03-2011, 18:56

I'm viewing this page in Chrome.

This is downright scary. I was aware of data-mining but I wasn't aware it was that extensive.

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kaywholed

23-03-2011, 19:06

This is downright scary. I was aware of data-mining but I wasn't aware it was that extensive.

The creepy thing is that this is not limited to the online world.

Stores like walmart are on the forefront of consumer data mining.

Imagine walking into a walmart. Security cameras are rolling, and your are identified by the "system" and it begins logging information about what you do in store.

What sections you browse in. If you stop and watch a movie for a minute in the entertainment section. It knows if you went to the bathroom or stopped at the instore McDonalds. It knows that you walked around with a large coke. It knows when you pick up an item from the shelf and put it back.

Then you go to check out. They get your zip code to know where you live, plus your cerdit/debit card so they match up all that data they got from you instore, to your fanacial info.

they know who you are, what you do, what you buy, your interests...

and it is all sitting in a computer, bought and sold to increase marketing effeciency, waiting for hackers to plaunder that data and rob your digital wealth.

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Limpet_Chicken

23-03-2011, 22:06

I use opera myself.

Same goes for store loyalty cards...you didn't actually think they were being generous, did you?

I only pay in cash while I'm shopping, do have loyalty cards, but given I am paying cash, there is nothing to match it up to...glad they don't know WHAT I do in their bathrooms though, it generally involves the bottles of J.collis browne's mixture that I just bought from every pharmacy in the town=D

The newer internet explorers also have an option for anonymous browsing....but I trust it as far as I can piss in a hard vacuum, anonymous...doesn't save traces....bollocks it doesn't, its micro$oft, its going to be up to no good somewhere.

I reccomend 'absoluteshield internet eraser', its freeware, I use it, have it set to do a multiple-pass overwrite of opera/IE caches, history, etc, windows pagefiles, file/run history, and a whole load of other windows components and third party app traces, all that lot gets guttman-wiped on bootup and shutdown automatically.

And handy too, is the ability to do a multiple pass overwrite of the free space on a hard drive, every so often I defrag my drives then wipe the blank space to get rid of any lurking fragments of stuff.

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kaywholed

25-03-2011, 17:06

I use opera myself.

Same goes for store loyalty cards...you didn't actually think they were being generous, did you?

I only pay in cash while I'm shopping, do have loyalty cards, but given I am paying cash, there is nothing to match it up to...glad they don't know WHAT I do in their bathrooms though, it generally involves the bottles of J.collis browne's mixture that I just bought from every pharmacy in the town=D



if you pay cash, and use loyalty cards, that purchase is still recorded and logged to your record in "the database"

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MySecret

26-03-2011, 09:18

The creepy thing is that this is not limited to the online world.

Stores like walmart are on the forefront of consumer data mining.

Imagine walking into a walmart. Security cameras are rolling, and your are identified by the "system" and it begins logging information about what you do in store.

What sections you browse in. If you stop and watch a movie for a minute in the entertainment section. It knows if you went to the bathroom or stopped at the instore McDonalds. It knows that you walked around with a large coke. It knows when you pick up an item from the shelf and put it back.

Then you go to check out. They get your zip code to know where you live, plus your cerdit/debit card so they match up all that data they got from you instore, to your fanacial info.

they know who you are, what you do, what you buy, your interests...

and it is all sitting in a computer, bought and sold to increase marketing effeciency, waiting for hackers to plaunder that data and rob your digital wealth.

This would be bad news for someone who has been banned from Wal-Mart for shoplifting in the past... correct? I go to Wal-Mart all the time, even the one that I was banned from for shoplifting, 6 years ago. Haven't been caught, YET.

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panic in paradise

26-03-2011, 13:05

"Texas, knows - Specifically, it knows It knows - Alliance knows!"

*speaks keywords aloud///

*stares ominously at the fingerprint 'password' scanner on computer//

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Zulkifar

27-03-2011, 01:34

This is downright scary. I was aware of data-mining but I wasn't aware it was that extensive.

Beat me to it. Something I knew but this is a different scale entirely. I didn't know info was available to so many people.

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panic in paradise

27-03-2011, 01:41

^its been proven here to be true, but, the information sold though sounds like w/e fills in the blanks with what ever sounds best...

i do not doubt much more factual pertanent information is gathered by the feds, though.

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donkeyPUNCH

29-03-2011, 16:11

I have no money, assets, stocks, credit, homes, cars, or legitimate jobs. if someone is mining my data for sale, the joke is on them. cause it's probably not worth much. :\

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kaywholed

29-03-2011, 17:38

I have no money, assets, stocks, credit, homes, cars, or legitimate jobs. if someone is mining my data for sale, the joke is on them. cause it's probably not worth much. :\

Unless your a high value individual (amex blackcard) yeah your not worth alot.

But, here is the thing DP.

Your data, is added to 999,999 other people and then sold as a bundle.

That bundle is sold to others, it is split and resold, it is repackaged with other data and sold.... soon everyone (in the financial data community) knows all about you... you are a number in a database, used to send spam, junk mail, tax collectors and free lube samples to.

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qwe

29-03-2011, 22:20

somewhat related to data mining... everyone is resigning over stupid texts, emails, etc. we need to recognize that we all write stupid shit sometimes, especially if it feels like we're writing in private.

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GenericMind

29-03-2011, 22:32

I don't really understand that either. I sure as hell wouldn't resign over some stupid personal email unless it was really bad. It seems like anything slightly embarrassing means an immediate resignation among public figures.

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IamMe90

30-03-2011, 02:10

all this really made me want to know is qwe's real age and intersts haha

Options: ReplyQuote
Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: I DONT STOP ()
Date: November 16, 2011 04:46AM

Data Mining: Twitter, Facebook and Beyond

Data Mining: How Companies Now Know Everything About You
Time; Business and Tech ^ | Thursday, Mar. 10, 2011 | Joel Stein

Posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:01:59 PM by LucyT

Three hours after I gave my name and e-mail address to Michael Fertik, the CEO of Reputation.com, he called me back and read my Social Security number to me.



[snip]



In the past few months, I have been told many more-interesting facts about myself than my Social Security number.



I've gathered a bit of the vast amount of data that's being collected both online and off by companies in stealth — taken from the websites I look at, the stuff I buy, my Facebook photos, my warranty cards, my customer-reward cards, the songs I listen to online, surveys I was guilted into filling out and magazines I subscribe to.



Google's Ads Preferences believes I'm . . . . . . . ."


(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...

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TOPICS: Business/Economy; Computers/Internet
KEYWORDS: hackers; noprivacy; snooping; ssnumber
Facebook and Google Troves


There is now an enormous multibillion-dollar industry based on the collection and sale of this personal and behavioral data,



[snip]



"There's no code of conduct. There's no standard. There's nothing that safeguards privacy and establishes rules of the road."


1 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:02:03 PM by LucyT

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To: LucyT


Which gives rise to a simple statement:

ONLY IDIOTS HAVE A FACEBOOK AND/OR MYSPACE PAGE IN HIS/HER R/L NAME!!!!

Anyone who needs or wants to contact me already knows how to do so. I have no interest in figments of years gone by.


2 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:06:26 PM by freedumb2003 (Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats. /P. J. O'Rourke, 1991)

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To: LucyT


Anyone who thinks anything they put on any web site has privacy is a fool.


3 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:08:03 PM by svcw (You will never understand Grace until you understand you do not deserve it)

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To: LucyT


I have the perfect idea for a company that would make lots of money and provide everyone privacy they want. It’s called Disinformation Inc.

Basically it fills up the Internet with tons of crap about you, randomly browses the web from your PC, posts thousands of photos with your name, puts all kinds of fake random postings on different blogs under your name, so Google and the data-miners won’t know if you’re a turnip farmer or a mercenary.

It’d be like that leprechaun that tied a yellow ribbon around every tree in the forest to prevent that guy from finding the right one with the treasure.


4 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:08:17 PM by MNDude (so that's what they meant by Carter's second term)

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To: freedumb2003


“Anyone who needs or wants to contact me already knows how to do so. I have no interest in figments of years gone by.”

I’ve thought about joining Facebook but then my years in IT overrode my nostalgia and said NO!


5 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:09:50 PM by dljordan ("His father's sword he hath girded on, And his wild harp slung behind him")

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To: freedumb2003; svcw


More from the article:

“Google’s Ads Preferences believes I’m a guy interested in politics, Asian food, perfume, celebrity gossip, animated movies and crime but who doesn’t care about “books & literature” or “people & society.” (So not true.)

“Yahoo! has me down as a 36-to-45-year-old male who uses a Mac computer and likes hockey, rap, rock, parenting, recipes, clothes and beauty products; it also thinks I live in New York, even though I moved to Los Angeles more than six years ago.

“Alliance Data, an enormous data-marketing firm in Texas, knows that I’m a 39-year-old college-educated Jewish male who takes in at least $125,000 a year, makes most of his purchases online and spends an average of only $25 per item.

“Specifically, it knows that on Jan. 24, 2004, I spent $46 on “low-ticket gifts and merchandise” and that on Oct. 10, 2010, I spent $180 on intimate apparel. It knows about more than 100 purchases in between. Alliance also knows I owe $854,000 on a house built in 1939...”


6 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:12:45 PM by LucyT

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To: LucyT


OK — messing with data is a lot of fun, but it is a lot of work.

I keep trying to convince data collection robots I am really a cute lesbian Asian chick but for some reason that hasn’t “stuck.”


7 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:16:16 PM by freedumb2003 (Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats. /P. J. O'Rourke, 1991)

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To: dljordan


>>I’ve thought about joining Facebook but then my years in IT overrode my nostalgia and said NO!<<

That is what is interesting — people more mature into IT avoid it, whereas kids who think programming in C++ for a few months makes him/her an IT expert jump into it.


8 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:18:37 PM by freedumb2003 (Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats. /P. J. O'Rourke, 1991)

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To: LucyT; a fool in paradise; JoeProBono; Slings and Arrows

That's What I Are!


9 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:19:44 PM by Revolting cat! (Let us prey!)

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To: svcw

Anyone who thinks anything they put on any web site has privacy is a fool.
I know a website where they denigrate you if you do not use your real name as your on-screen name. Explaining Identity Theft to them is like talking to liberals: they don't want to hear it and they don't believe it will happen to them.


10 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:20:19 PM by jeffc (Prayer. It's freedom of speech.)

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To: freedumb2003

ONLY IDIOTS HAVE A FACEBOOK AND/OR MYSPACE PAGE IN HIS/HER R/L NAME!!!!
Interestingly, I do have a FaceBook account in my real name.

On occasion, I do Google searches on myself. I have never found my FaceBook listed there. However, there is a woman with my name in another state who has a fairly active MySpace account.

I also find, via Google, that I have donated to various honor societies and scholarship funds. I can also find where I currently live, and the towns I have lived in for the past 20 years. That kind of information concerns me far more than what may be on FaceBook. Unlike FaceBook, which knows little about me beyond my name, I have no control over the rest of the information being published on the internet.


11 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:25:57 PM by exDemMom (Now that I've finally accepted that I'm living a bad hair life, I'm more at peace with the world.)

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To: LucyT


Don’t use Gmail!


12 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:33:14 PM by Paleo Conservative

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To: exDemMom


>>I have no control over the rest of the information being published on the internet.<<

*shrug* sure you do. DON’T HAVE A FACEBOOK PAGE!!


13 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:35:50 PM by freedumb2003 (Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats. /P. J. O'Rourke, 1991)

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To: LucyT


Absolutely nothing new here. This started 30+ years ago with grocery store “bonus” cards. The “bonus” wasn’t exactly as advertised......


14 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:36:03 PM by Thermalseeker (The theft being perpetrated by Congress and the Fed makes Bernie Maddoff look like a pickpocket.)

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To: jeffc


>>Explaining Identity Theft to them is like talking to liberals: they don’t want to hear it and they don’t believe it will happen to them.<<

For the record, I am a cure lesbian Asian from the ‘hood named Laquanna Kaneisha Lee.


15 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:38:12 PM by freedumb2003 (Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats. /P. J. O'Rourke, 1991)

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To: freedumb2003


Should I have no patents? Those put one’s name all over the internet.


16 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:40:07 PM by loungitude ( The truth hurts.)

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To: freedumb2003


Nothing interesting about me, they are welcome to it...just don’t search for any outstanding warrents....:O)


17 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:44:00 PM by goat granny

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To: loungitude


>>Should I have no patents? Those put one’s name all over the internet.<<

Public records are public records. We can’t control them. But we should not add to the public database of information about us.

I know if someone were to mine the thousands of FR posts I have provided they could get a HINT of who I might be. But I am careful to ensure there is no overlayable data in my few RL Internet presence to link that person to FD2003.

Some have suggested that it is even better to have a different handle on different sites (not a bad idea). But, when it comes to opinions, I want to be consistent and known for what I think.

But I guard my RL information closely.


18 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:45:59 PM by freedumb2003 (Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats. /P. J. O'Rourke, 1991)

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To: exDemMom


>>However, there is a woman with my name in another state who has a fairly active MySpace account.<<

Is she hot and does she put out?

;)


19 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 7:48:49 PM by freedumb2003 (Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats. /P. J. O'Rourke, 1991)

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To: LucyT


I was buying a bottle of wine at Target and they asked for my ID (even tho I am 37 with a beard). I showed them my DL in my wallet. They asked me to take it out. I did. Then they got ready to swipe it in their magnetic scanner. I said .. “Woe! Hold on there!!” I explained that they were not going to swipe my DL into their computer. A 16 yo bagboy told me the computer doesn’t store any information it just reads your birthdate.

to which I replied.. “Go get your manager, right now.”


20 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 8:11:31 PM by douginthearmy (out of the army. now a soldier of misfortune.)

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To: dljordan

"I’ve thought about joining Facebook but then my years in IT overrode my nostalgia and said NO!"
Same here! I guess when you work with the technology, you know what it's capable of. I have tied my 'real name' to NOTHING online. I've always remained 'unplugged' when it comes to social networking sites and all the rest. I can type my name into some of the various 'people finding' search engines, and there are NO results that lead to me. On the other hand, my wife is into the whole social networking thing, and I CAN be found though searching for HER, so I've been compromised anyway, on some level....


21 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 8:15:39 PM by KoRn (Department of Homeland Security, Certified - "Right Wing Extremist")

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To: freedumb2003


I must be the only 20-something year-old I know who does not have a Facebook. Do people think I’m weird? Sure, they do. But every time a new Facebook privacy scandal hits the news I am so glad I am not them. Funny, the generation that claims to be so against “conformity” cannot seem to tolerate a little bit of independent thought. My friends even thought about setting up a Facebook account for me!


22 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 8:32:38 PM by SoCal SoCon (Conservatism =/= Corporatism.)

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To: jeffc


Was this website a liberal website? If so, I’ve been there too and the people on that site can get really bi*chy.


23 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 8:34:47 PM by SoCal SoCon (Conservatism =/= Corporatism.)

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To: SoCal SoCon

Was this website a liberal website? If so, I’ve been there too and the people on that site can get really bi*chy
No, it has to do with racing games (I think it is based in Europe).


24 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 8:46:58 PM by jeffc (Prayer. It's freedom of speech.)

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To: douginthearmy


to which I replied.. “Go get your manager, right now.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Then what happened?


25 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 9:21:00 PM by loungitude ( The truth hurts.)

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To: freedumb2003


Understood. My comment was mostly aimed at those who say “If you let your name get on the internet, then you are an idiot.”


26 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 9:23:47 PM by loungitude ( The truth hurts.)

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To: MNDude


You know those little pop up surverys? I take them.....and not one bit of the information I provide is true. lol
I also give fake info for darn near everything I have to fill out online.


27 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 10:04:11 PM by sheana

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To: freedumb2003

*shrug* sure you do. DON’T HAVE A FACEBOOK PAGE!!
Um, no. The information about my addresses, present and past, and the places I donate money to did not come from FaceBook. FaceBook has my name and email address, nothing else. Since no information is posted on FaceBook and since I don't actually use it, there is no way all the info about me that is currently on the web came from FaceBook.


28 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 10:17:44 PM by exDemMom (Now that I've finally accepted that I'm living a bad hair life, I'm more at peace with the world.)

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To: freedumb2003

I keep trying to convince data collection robots I am really a cute lesbian Asian chick but for some reason that hasn’t “stuck.”
Aw crap. I thought this was you. Now I'll have to keep looking.






29 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 10:18:44 PM by Bloody Sam Roberts (Tyrants flourish only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.)

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To: MNDude


That is a freaking excellent idea.
Of course, people can do that individually, on their own.


30 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 10:22:13 PM by Lancey Howard

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To: loungitude


The manager promptly rang me up without swiping my card. I expressed my disgust at the whole system. I have not bought alcohol from them since but I assume they still have a magnetic swipe policy. I also assume that 99.9999999% of the lemmings gleefully hand over their identities. I didn’t try to get the kid fired or anything like that, he wasn’t rude. But anyone who thinks they don’t store your information is an absolute idiot.

I know they already have a lot of info with my credit card, but having the driver’s license info gives them the full monty.


31 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 10:23:07 PM by douginthearmy (out of the army. now a soldier of misfortune.)

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To: LucyT


It is outright illegal for these companies to traffic in your social security number. Line them up against the wall and begin the trial phase now.

Oh wait, they bought our legislature 45 years ago when they first started getting blowback over marketing scams.


32 posted on Thursday, March 10, 2011 10:47:56 PM by a fool in paradise (The biggest waste of brainpower is to want to change something that's not changeable. -Albert Brooks)

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To: jeffc


Weird. How do they know what your real name actually is? People have some pretty strange names.


33 posted on Friday, March 11, 2011 10:16:14 AM by svcw (You will never understand Grace until you understand you do not deserve it)

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To: freedumb2003


For years and years any suggestion of using computerized data for physician’s offices was met with a quick, vocal and winning protest about privacy issues. I have been amazed at the ease and lack of protest that has accompanied this current extortion( physicians will pay a penalty if medical records are not kept digitally). I am not a conspiracy freak or a black helicopter believer but be aware that the ultimate goal is to have real time oversight of your medical care and you can not do that without a central data bank. Data security on that massive level is and will be a joke.

Options: ReplyQuote
Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: I DONT STOP ()
Date: November 16, 2011 04:48AM

Data Mining the Constitution*

4 comments



March 1, 2011 at 3:12 pm

Kevin Outterson




* Disclaimer: I served as counsel of record to amici The New England Journal of Medicine, the Massachusetts Medical Society, the National Physicians Alliance, and the American Medical Students Association, all in support of Vermont. Read our brief here.

The Vermont data mining case (Sorrell v. IMS Health) is being briefed before the Supreme Court this month, in preparation for oral arguments on April 26, 2011. (SCOTUS blog here; Nature.com blog here)

Pharmacies sell your prescription records to data mining companies, who aggregate the information and sell it to drug companies for billions of dollars per year. Drug companies use it to sell drugs. Lots of drugs.

Vermont physicians were appalled, and the state passed a law in 2007 extending privacy protections to prescription records that identified the physician. Maine and New Hampshire passed similar laws, ultimately resulting in a decision by the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston that these laws were constitutional.

Vermont won at the Federal District Court, but the appeal went to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City. A divided panel voted 2-1 to reverse, saying that Vermont’s law violated the First Amendment rights of data miners and drug companies. The Supreme Court accepted the appeal on January 7, 2011.

To the drug companies & data miners, this could be the most important commercial speech case in a decade; a counterpart to Citizens United. The states and physicians opposed to data mining insist this case is really about medical privacy, and will be the most important Supreme Court decision on medical privacy in a generation.

Who owns this “prescriber-identifiable” information? If it’s private and confidential – like HIPAA protected medical records – then taking it without the consent of the patients and doctors violates the law and the First Amendment doesn’t apply. The First Amendment isn’t a defense to data theft. I can’t steal trade secrets from a company or medical records from a hospital and expect to get off just because I publish or sell the information. This is the core argument by Vermont and its amici.

But if this information is already public, the data miners can collect and sell it to whomever they please. Including drug companies.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE:

36 states and the District of Columbia filed an amicus brief yesterday supporting Vermont.

The federal government also filed a good brief supporting Vermont. Nice to have support from the DoJ (and, indirectly, the FDA). The one problem with the US brief was the final section, that unnecessarily tried to distinguish HIPAA.

Public Citizen and AARP each filed briefs supporting Vermont, as did the Yale Rudd Center and EPIC.

One of my favorite briefs supporting Vermont is from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The opening paragraph:


“This case presents no novel First Amendment issues. Instead, the Court of Appeals misunderstood the legal background of this case in a critical aspect: it wrongly asserted that the medical records at issue here are public. This error led the Court of Appeals to ignore the privacy interests at stake. Amicus therefore focuses on how the Vermont law at issue here protects patient privacy and how upholding the decision below could jeopardize much federal privacy law.”

Briefs from the data miners, drug companies and their amici will be filed in the coming weeks.

Options: ReplyQuote
Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: I DONT STOP ()
Date: November 16, 2011 04:50AM


Options: ReplyQuote
Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: I DONT STOP ()
Date: November 16, 2011 04:54AM

Electronic health information and privacy


« Privacy commissioner probes storage of medical records | Main | Experiment Reveals The Risk Of ID Theft With Selling Second Hand Mobiles Says Life Assistance Company »

March 14, 2011


Data Mining: How Companies Now Know Everything About You



Three hours after I gave my name and e-mail address to Michael Fertik, the CEO of Reputation.com, he called me back and read my Social Security number to me.

I've gathered a bit of the vast amount of data that's being collected both online and off by companies in stealth --- taken from the websites I look at, the stuff I buy, my Facebook photos, my warranty cards, my customer-reward cards, the songs I listen to online, surveys I was guilted into filling out and magazines I subscribe to.

Google's Ads Preferences believes I'm a guy interested in politics, Asian food, perfume, celebrity gossip, animated movies and crime but who doesn't care about "books & literature" or "people & society."

Alliance Data, an enormous data-marketing firm in Texas, knows that I'm a 39-year-old college-educated Jewish male who takes in at least $125,000 a year, makes most of his purchases online and spends an average of only $25 per item.

Each of these pieces of information (and misinformation) about me is sold for about two-fifths of a cent to advertisers, which then deliver me an Internet ad, send me a catalog or mail me a credit-card offer.

The Creep Factor There is now an enormous multibillion-dollar industry based on the collection and sale of this personal and behavioral data, an industry that Senator John Kerry, chair of the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, is hoping to rein in.

It has already issued a report that calls upon the major browsers to come up with a do-not-track mechanism that allows people to choose not to have their information collected by companies they aren't directly doing business with.

Under any such plan, it would likely still be O.K. for Amazon to remember your past orders and make purchase suggestions or for American Express to figure your card was stolen because a recent purchase doesn't fit your precise buying patterns.

Right after I e-mailed a friend in Texas that I might be coming to town, a suggestion for a restaurant in Houston popped up as a one-line all-text ad above my Gmail inbox.

Russell Glass, the CEO of Bizo --- which mines the fact that people are business executives and sells that info to hundreds of advertisers such as American Express, Monster.com, Citibank, Sprint and Google --- says the newness of his industry is what scares people.

I just want a little information that will help me sell you an ad." Not many people, he notes, seem to be creeped out by all the junk mail they still get from direct-marketing campaigns, which buy the same information from data-mining companies.

The latest trick to freak people out is retargeting --- when you look at an item in an online store and then an ad for that item follows you around to other sites.

Last year, Zappos was the most prominent company in the U.S. to go all out in behavioral retargeting.

"We took that brick-and-mortar pet peeve and implied it online," says Darrin Shamo, Zappos' director of direct marketing.

The Facebook and Google Troves Our identities, however, were never completely within our control: our friends keep letters we've forgotten writing, our enemies tell stories about us we remember differently, our yearbook photos are in way too many people's houses.

To get into the Facebook office in Palo Alto, Calif., I have to sign a piece of physical paper: a Single-Party Non-Disclosure Agreement, which legally prevents me from writing the last paragraph.

But your privacy on Facebook --- that's up to you.

You choose what to share and what circle of friends gets to see it, and you can untag yourself from any photos of you that other people put up.

However, from a miner's point of view, Facebook has the most valuable trove of data ever assembled: not only have you told it everything you like, but it also knows what your friends like, which is an amazing predictor of what you'll like.

Facebook doesn't sell any of your data, partly because it doesn't have to --- 23.1% of all online ads not on search engines, video or e-mail run on Facebook.

But data-mining companies are "scraping" all your personal data that's not set to private and selling it to any outside party that's interested.

So that information is being bought and sold unless you squeeze your Facebook privacy settings tight, which keeps you from a lot of the social interaction that drew you to the site in the first place.

The only company that might have an even better dossier on you than Facebook is Google.

Specifically, Google keeps the data it has about you from various parts of its company separate.

One category is the personally identifiable account data it can attach to your name, age, gender, e-mail address and ZIP code when you signed up for services like Gmail, YouTube, Blogger, Picasa, iGoogle, Google Voice or Calendar.

The other is log data associated with your computer, which it "anonymizes" after nine months: your search history, Chrome browser data, Google Maps requests and all the info its myriad data trackers and ad agencies (DoubleClick, AdSense, AdMob) collect when you're on other sites and Android phone apps.

You can change your settings on the former at Google Dashboard and the latter at Google Ads Preferences --- where you can opt out of having your data mined or change the company's guesses about what you're into.

Fertik, who clerked for the chief judge of the Sixth Circuit after graduating from Harvard Law School, believes that if data mining isn't regulated, everyone will soon be assigned scores for attractiveness and a social-prowess index and a complainer index, so companies can avoid serving you --- just as you now have a credit score that they can easily check before deciding to do business with you.

New tools released in February for Firefox and Google Chrome browsers let users block data collecting, though Firefox and Chrome depend on the data miners to respect the users' request, which won't stop unscrupulous companies.

In addition to the new browser options, an increasing number of ads have a little i (an Advertising Option Icon), which you can click on to find out exactly which companies are tracking you and what they do.

The technology behind the icon is managed by Evidon, the company that provides the Ghostery download.

But it also took people a while to learn what the recycling symbol meant.

And reading the info behind the i icon isn't necessarily the point, says Evidon CEO Scott Meyer, who used to be CEO of About.com and managed the New York Times' website.

Felten has found that the online-advertising industry is as eager as the government is for improved privacy protections.

There should be protections for vulnerable groups, and a government-enforced opt-out mechanism would be great for accountability.

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: I DONT STOP ()
Date: November 16, 2011 04:57AM

Facebook becoming a phonebook by data mining your personal life, warn experts

Submitted by Dave Masko on 2011-04-28

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EUGENE, Ore. – A popular coffee shop near the University of Oregon in Eugene is warning it’s java-sipping laptop customers to “beware of Facebook” if you want your privacy protected; meanwhile Facebook is testing a service called “Deals” that data mines yet more personal information from the popular social networking site that features more than 600 million users.


“Facebook is planning to make users' addresses and mobile phone numbers available to apps that people use on the site,” reports national and worldwide media that are also sharing Facebook’s “Big Brother” intent to capture more personal shopping information from users. “Facebook is the slowly-warming pot of water and we, my friends, are the frog. By the time we noticed our peeling skin, another hunk of our privacy is long gone,” writes MSNBC’s Helen Popkin in a response to Facebook’s latest plans to data mine yet more personal information from its 600 million users.

Popkin’s comments were also widely reported in England by the London based “Guardian” newspaper and other media at a time when personal security is being tested in the wake of Friday’s Royal Wedding and new terrorism security threats. Also, U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., warns that “Facebook needs to protect the personal information of its users to ensure that Facebook doesn’t become Phonebook.”

Facebook viewed as too powerful as it becomes Big Brother

Facebook’s “Big Brother” image is common at the University of Oregon and other universities were students are referencing George Orwell’s 1949 dystopian novel about a “collectivist society where Big Brother demands social networking surveillance” so it can “manipulate and control the actions of humanity.” While such views may seem far-fetched, many students here in Eugene – along with Popkin and Congressman Markey -- have real concerns about the power of Facebook as it grows with more than 600 million users worldwide.

“Just as there is rebellion against Big Brother in Orwell’s novel 1984, so too is it difficult for me to manage my craft business without Facebook,” worries Eugene student and entrepreneur Meredith Lidstrom.

In turn, Congressman Markey wrote: "That’s why I am requesting responses to these questions to better understand Facebook’s practices regarding possible access to users’ personal information by third parties. This is sensitive data and needs to be protected.”

Moreover, "Facebook will be moving forward with a controversial plan to give third-party developers and external web sites the ability to access users' home addresses and cell phone numbers in the face of criticism from privacy experts, users, and even congressmen," the Wall Street Journal reported.

"It is very good for companies to actually be making privacy policies easier to understand," Nicole Ozer, a policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California told the Wall Street Journal recently. "But users should be looking for privacy policies that are not only readable, but actually protect their privacy."

Facebook launches “Deals” that will data mine more personal information for the machine

According to news service reports, Facebook began testing a serviced called “Deals” this week in five cities with a service its marketing to help users save money on “discounted deals,” while “sharing users shopping expeditions with friends on the site.”

Privacy advocates here in Eugene and other parts of the country are worried that this “sharing” of user likes and dislikes.”

“I’m not so sure that revealing my personal shopping interests should be part of Mark Zuckerberg’s (Facebook’s CEO) vision of making social networking worldwide,” quips Eugene entrepreneur Meredith Lidstrom. “What people are asking Facebook is can you guarantee that the IRS, the cops and others do not have access to what I do on Facebook. We know that answer, and it’s more than a bit scary.”

Facebook digging deeper into user interests

According to reports in the New York Daily News, “Facebook is entering a market that has been led by Groupon Inc. and Living-Social, which have become two of the world’s fastest growing businesses swerving up coupons to consumers.”

"It's a huge win for Facebook and its advertisers, because people will flock to the opportunity of purchasing things that their friends get," Emily White, Facebook's director of local ventures, wrote on the company's site.

At the same time, the New York Daily News reports that “the new venture was greeted cautiously by some Facebook users online, as well as some experts.”
Facebook is meanwhile experimenting with a new privacy policy that would be more like a guide to how personal information is used, rather than a long legal document.

Data mining technology is a fire that’s burning user privacy rights, say experts

“I’m not a big fan of kids being on Facebook. It’s not something they need,” explained First Lady Michelle Obama during a “Today Show” interview last month; at the same time, many other Americans are expressing concern over exposing themselves and their children to user “data mining” that companies and government agencies collect via cell phone and Internet use that contains highly personal and private information.

The issue of “data mining” was raised by a recent Senate hearing on privacy rights for Americans who expose both themselves and their children to social media web sites that create easy pickings for those who mine personal information for Internet marketing and other uses.

In fact, Congress has put forward legislation that if enacted could create the first government limitations on the use of data mining technology that’s running out of control in cyberspace today.

Here in high-tech business centers in Eugene, and at the University of Oregon, much is discussed about how to make simple cell phone calls and Internet searches safe from those who would “mine” people’s personal information for both business and illegal purposes.

Privacy rights don't mean much to Big Brother aka Facebook

“I’d compare today’s data mining in this digital age to a fire that’s burning user privacy rights to the ground. If you had a fire going, you’d put it out. Yet, we’re letting this fire burn out of control,” says Eugene computer security expert Chuck DeSousa.

In fact, recent revelations about Facebook security and privacy issues are just “a tip of the iceberg,” adds DeSousa, who consults with the University of Oregon and other local information technology hubs that view data mining as a clear and present danger for anyone on line.

Moreover, DeSousa notes that the worries users have about the collection of personal data now extends to any “analytic capabilities that are applied to data.”

He also notes that data mining is a “growth industry” here in Eugene and other major cities where “computer users are viewed like cattle” that are observed and then mined of their personal information.

Today’s high-tech data mining tools help both good and bad computer experts “mine” personal information by identifying patterns among customers. “Once we put the spotlight on your cell phone or Internet patterns, we respond with appropriate advertising. For law enforcement, they take a look at what you’re saying on your Facebook page and who you’re connecting to,” DeSousa warns.

Facebook setting the pace for data mining

According to a Facebook advertising promotion, members can “look forward” to hitting a “like” button to see if there’s something they need along the lines of searching for items on eBay. At the same time, those user wants will be featured on a “friends” Facebook homepage.

“We’re taking what is happening in your News Feed and finding a new way to distribute it so it’s easy for your friends to see. It’s another way for friends to tell friends what they recommend,” explains Facebook’s marketing official Brandon McCormick during recent media briefings.

At the same time, those Facebook users who are concerned about privacy simply “don’t want my wish lists shared with people on Facebook,” says University of Oregon student Jim Koch who adds “I get enough prompting to buy junk here in Eugene without Facebook swamping me with yet more things my girl friend may want.”

A new European Union Information Society and Media report shows how such strategy to milk more ad money out of social networking sites is on the rise.

“Given that the Internet is integrated into much of everyday life, it raises critical issues about privacy when a social networking site saturates its users with
advertisements,” stated the EU report that’s critical of “holding Internet users hostage to unwanted advertisements” that are increasing as the Net grows and grows.

With Facebook having about 600 million members, it’s clear that more ads that both link and use the users as marketing and advertising tools is a money maker, but users may wonder at what cost?

Big Brother's goal is to think for its users

“It’s like Facebook thinks for us. It’s now telling us what I want to buy and then relaying that to my family and friends on our Facebook pages without any real input or approval from us. That’s not cool,” says Koch who’s thinking of cooling it when it comes to sharing his wants on Facebook.

Up north in Canada, this privacy issue has produced a critical evaluation of data mining that was recently released to the public by Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian.

The report, dubbed “Data Mining: Staking a Claim on Your Privacy,” states that today’s massive use of cell phones and the Internet has resulted in “little or no real privacy for anyone on line,” and this may be “the most fundamental challenge that privacy advocates will face in the next decade.”

Still, most Americans “get down on both knees to worship technology without questioning where all their personal information is going, or how it’s being used. If you’re on line and not fearful, than you should be,” adds DeSousa.

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: I DONT STOP ()
Date: November 16, 2011 05:01AM

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Digital Privacy, Data Mining, and the Future

Granted, that's a cryptic title...but sometimes privacy in the digital age is a cryptic subject. What are the real threats? How do we quantify them? Or is it all just paranoia - and we should give ourselves up to the Matrix that is Facebook, Google, and all the rest?

None of these questions are easy to answer. But, I do have some thoughts, and I do want to share with you two really comprehensive recent articles, one from MSNBC, and the other in TIME magazine, tackling the larger subject of digital privacy and data mining.

I want to largely provide key pieces of those articles, rather than get overly wordy myself. But, let me open with a few thoughts (yes, I realize I have said these things before), and then we'll get to the articles.


First, just what is "behavioral marketing" - because that's what this is really all about. I've found the description by the Center for Digital Democracy particularly useful:


Perhaps the most powerful - but largely invisible - force shaping our digital media reality is the role of interactive advertising and marketing. Much of our online experience, from websites to search engines to social networks, is being shaped to better serve advertisers. Increasingly, individuals are being electronically "shadowed" online, our actions and behaviors observed, collected, and analyzed so that we can be "micro-targeted." Now a $24 billion a year industry [2008 estimates] in the U.S., with expected dramatic growth to $80 billion or more by 2011, the goal of interactive marketing is to use the awesome power of new media to deeply engage you in what is being sold: whether it's a car, a vacation, a politician or a belief. An explosion of digital technologies, such as behavioral targeting and retargeting, "immersive" rich media, and virtual reality, are being utilized to drive the market goals of the largest brand advertisers and many others.

A major infrastructure has emerged to expand and promote the interests of this sector, including online advertising networks, digital marketing specialists, and trade lobbying groups.
•The role which online marketing and advertising plays in shaping our new media world, including at the global level, will help determine what kind of society we will create.
•Will online advertising evolve so that everyone's privacy is truly protected?
•Will there be only a few gatekeepers determining what editorial content should be supported in order to better serve the interests of advertising, or will we see a vibrant commercial and non-commercial marketplace for news, information, and other content necessary for a civil society?
•Who will hold the online advertising industry accountable to the public, making its decisions transparent and part of the policy debate?
•Will the more harmful aspects of interactive marketing - such as threats to public health - be effectively addressed?
To give you an idea how important this whole issue is, just last year privacy advocates - including Center for Digital Democracy, U.S. PIRG, and the World Privacy Forum - filed a complaint with federal regulators against tracking and profiling practices used by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and other Internet companies to auction off ads targeted at individual consumers in the fractions of a second before a Web page loads.


The charge was that a "massive and stealth data collection apparatus threatens user privacy," and asks regulators to compel companies to obtain express consent from consumers before serving up "behavioral" ads based on their online history.

For instance, internet companies would be asked to acknowledge that the data they collect about a person's online movements through software "cookies" embedded in a Web browser allows advertisers to know details about them, even if those cookies don't have a person's name attached.

Privacy advocates have long argued that when enabled to protect their privacy and control their data people will do so. BUT, not if it’s made difficult, confusing, or time consuming. And this is why new rules, laws are so desperately needed for cyberspace...we need "systems" that will allow users to control their information in an easy, logical, and practical way.

More generally, particularly on the issue of privacy on the internet, as I have written here before, the fact that we have next to no privacy standards as related to these technological innovations and trends is disturbing, and more than enough of a reason for some of the bills being offered here.

This leads to a number of important questions, like: What kind of control should we have over our own data? And, what kind of tools should be available for us to protect it? What about ownership of our data? Should we be compensated for the billions of dollars being made by corporations from their tracking of us? And of course, what of the government's access to this new world of data storage?

The argument by some, such as Mark Zuckerberg, is that all information should be public, and as time goes on we'll only be sharing more of it. In addition, we all will benefit from this communal sharing of private information in ways yet to even be discovered. Already, from this sharing, we forge more online friendships and connections, old friends are reconnected, distant parents see pictures of their kids' day-to-day activities, jobs might be more easily found due to our profiles being more public, internet services improve as companies like Facebook and Google learn about peoples' Web browsing histories, sites are able to tailor content to the user, and so on, and so forth.

What concerns me, and some of these concerns are mentioned in both articles I'm going to feature today, is what are the side effects of living in a society without privacy?


I don't think its by accident that we are told by the same interests that profit off our information that privacy is dead, and people don't care about it anymore. Well, that's easy to say when you are the ones developing the complicated and difficult to find privacy settings consumers have to deal with.


On that note, let's get to some of the key sections of the article by Bob Sullivan of MSNBC entitled "Why should I care about digital privacy?":


Welcome to the world of privacy experts like Larry Ponemon and Alessandro Acquisti. Their chosen field of work is an area where research can be pretty depressing. Consumer behavior shows, repeatedly, that people just don't care about privacy, no matter how much lip service they might give to the topic. Ponemon's research shows that most U.S. adults — 60 percent —claim they care about privacy but will barely lift a finger in an effort to preserve it. They don't alter Facebook privacy settings, they don't complain when supermarkets demand their phone numbers and they certainly don't insist on encrypted e-mail. LosHuertos' experiment underscores this point well. Even people who have experienced a "privacy mugging" often don't change their behavior.

...

The usual way to do grab attention to the topic is to trot out privacy nightmares, such as the secret dossiers that hundreds of companies keep on you (they do), the man who was accused of arson because his grocery store records showed he purchased fire starters (he was), or the idea that a potential employer may one day pass on you because your musical tastes suggest you will be late to work three time per week (they could). But privacy nightmares are beginning to feel a bit like the boy who cried wolf. Cyber experts have warned about both a Digital Pearl Harbor and an information Three Mile Island for more than a decade now; doesn't the absence of that kind of disaster show that perhaps privacy is no big deal?

...

For many, he thinks, there is a sense of learned helplessness — the feeling that their privacy is lost anyway, so why go through the hassle of faking a supermarket loyalty card application? For others, the decision tree is so complex that it's no surprise they usually take the easier option.

"There are so many mental steps we have to go through," he said. "Do I even know there is a potential privacy risk? If I do, do I know I there are alternative strategies, such as adjusting privacy settings? Do I know, or at least feel, that these will be effective, or are they a waste of time? And then, if they are effective, are they too costly in terms of time or effect? After all that, I may very well decide not to take those steps."
...

For starters, people almost always engage in "hyperbolic discounting" when faced with a privacy choice — they overvalue present benefits and undervalue future costs. You probably do that every day when you convince yourself that an extra cookie or scoop of ice cream is worth the bargain with your waistline. In the realm of privacy, judging such bargains can be impossible. What's the future cost of sharing your phone number with a grocery store? It could be nothing. It could be annoying phone calls or junk mail. It could be intense profiling by a marketer. It could ultimately be an increase to your health premium, as a medical insurance company one day decides you buy too much ice cream every month.

Despite recent rhetoric to the contrary, long ago America decided that there are realms where it's not OK to let consumers make decisions that guaranteed to cause self-harm. We don't let people eat in restaurants that fail health inspections; we don't let people buy buildings that aren't earthquake proof near fault lines; we don't let them buy cars without seat belts — even if all these options were cheaper, or somehow more enjoyable. Why? It's impossible for consumers to really understand the consequences of such actions at the time of the choice. We wouldn't expect every San Francisco home buyer to become an expert seismologist, or every eater to become a biologist. Even if you care nothing for personal safety, it would be a terribly inefficient way to run an economy.

Acquisti thinks it's time that society erected some strict safety rules around privacy issues, and end the charade of 27-page end user license agreements that no one — not even Acquisti — reads. The right answer for the majority of Americans who care about privacy but don't know what to do about it is for leaders to make some tough choices.

There are some efforts under way in that direction. There are no fewer than seven pieces of privacy-related legislation that have either been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, or soon will be. The most significant involves creation of the Do Not Track legislation, which would authorize the Federal Trade Commission to create a regime that forced companies to allow users to opt out of various data collection efforts. It would also give consumers a "right of access" to personal information stored by any company — a right Europeans have enjoyed for years. While the law is meant to evoke the very popular Do Not Call list, critics worry that few consumers would take the time required to opt out.

The Financial Information Privacy Act of 2011 would prevent banks from sharing customer information with third parties unless consumers opt-in, a significant step further along in privacy protection. Banks would then have to sell people on the idea of information sharing. (A detailed look at these proposals.)

Timid as they are, virtually all these bills have run up against ferocious industry lobbying. Facebook, among many other firms, has told the FTC it's worried that the Do Not Track initiative would stifle innovation.

...

Ponemon doesn't see Facebook as a panopticon — yet. But it doesn't have to go that far to put a serious dent in the American dream, he worries. People no longer expect to keep secrets, Ponemon said, which means that every stupid thing you do in high school will follow you around for the rest of your life. He is scared about the implications of that.

"The end of privacy is the end of second chances," Ponemon said. "Some people may think I'm just being a cranky old guy ... but the thing about what made this country great is our ancestors came with nothing. They didn't have a reputation, positive or negative. They could, like my dad, go to Arizona and become a dentist, something he couldn't do in his home country. The ability to reinvent ourselves has made great fortunes. The ability to do that today is significantly diminished because of all the information that is attached to us. Could we have another Thomas Edison now, who dropped out of elementary school in his first year (at age 7)? Maybe not."

Acquisti isn't just worried about the American way of life; he's worried about humanity itself.

"What I fear is the normalization of privacy invasions in a world where we become so adjusted to being public in everything that it is normal," he said. "I fear that world will be a world where we will be less human. Part of being human is having a private sphere and things you only share with special people, or with no one. I fear for the future of that world."

Acquisti, despite his exhaustive research on the subject, said he has no desire to persuade others to change their privacy-related behaviors. People make rational choices every day to share themselves with others, and to great benefit — they form relationships, find work and in extreme cases use social networking tools to fight for freedom, he said. People who want to share everything with everyone have the freedom to do so.


But it's freedom he's most interested in preserving — the freedom of some people to keep their lives private in a world while the costs of doing so are increasingly rising.

"It will become increasingly costly not to be on a social network, just as not having a mobile phone now is," he said. "It will dramatically cut people off from professional and personal life opportunities. The more people who join the social networks, the more costly it becomes for others to be loyal to their views."

In economics, it's called an "externality" — the costs of your choices go up because of factors that have nothing to do with you. On the Internet, it's called the network effect. In reality, it means that someone who has no interest in being on Facebook is now the last to know about last-minute parties, new romances, even weddings and funerals. (We've all heard at least once: "Didn't you see my Facebook post?")

As the network effect deepens, and the majority speeds down its road toward a completely open second life in the virtual world, society must work to preserve the right of the minority's desire to stay private in the first life — not unlike efforts we make today to preserve rights of other minority groups, such as the handicapped, Acquisti said.

"Freedom means making sure people have the option to stay off the grid; the more people surrender, the deeper the network effect, the more the punishment for being disconnected," Acquisti says.


Click here for more...and be sure to read the parts about things you can do to protect your privacy!

Now let's get to the Time magazine piece by Joel Stein entitled Data Mining: How Companies Now Know Everything About You, which goes into more detail about HOW your data is mined and by whom:



The Creep Factor
There is now an enormous multibillion-dollar industry based on the collection and sale of this personal and behavioral data, an industry that Senator John Kerry, chair of the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, is hoping to rein in. Kerry is about to introduce a bill that would require companies to make sure all the stuff they know about you is secured from hackers and to let you inspect everything they have on you, correct any mistakes and opt out of being tracked. He is doing this because, he argues, "There's no code of conduct. There's no standard. There's nothing that safeguards privacy and establishes rules of the road."


At Senate hearings on privacy beginning March 16, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will be weighing in on how to protect consumers. It has already issued a report that calls upon the major browsers to come up with a do-not-track mechanism that allows people to choose not to have their information collected by companies they aren't directly doing business with. Under any such plan, it would likely still be O.K. for Amazon to remember your past orders and make purchase suggestions or for American Express to figure your card was stolen because a recent purchase doesn't fit your precise buying patterns. But it wouldn't be cool if they gave another company that information without your permission. (See "Will FTC's 'Do Not Track' Go Even Further than Expected?")


Taking your information without asking and then profiting from it isn't new: it's the idea behind the phone book, junk mail and telemarketing. Worrying about it is just as old: in 1890, Louis Brandeis argued that printing a photograph without the subject's permission inflicts "mental pain and distress, far greater than could be inflicted by mere bodily harm." Once again, new technology is making us weigh what we're sacrificing in privacy against what we're gaining in instant access to information. Some facts about you were always public — the price of your home, some divorce papers, your criminal records, your political donations — but they were held in different buildings, accessible only by those who filled out annoying forms; now they can be clicked on. Other information was not possible to compile pre-Internet because it would have required sending a person to follow each of us around the mall, listen to our conversations and watch what we read in the newspaper. Now all of those activities happen online — and can be tracked instantaneously.


Part of the problem people have with data mining is that it seems so creepy. Right after I e-mailed a friend in Texas that I might be coming to town, a suggestion for a restaurant in Houston popped up as a one-line all-text ad above my Gmail inbox. But it's not a barbecue-pit master stalking me, which would indeed be creepy; it's an algorithm designed to give me more useful, specific ads. And while that doesn't sound like all that good a deal in exchange for my private data, if it means that I get to learn when the next Paul Thomas Anderson movie is coming out, when Wilco is playing near my house and when Tom Colicchio is opening a restaurant close by, maybe that's not such a bad return.


I deeply believe that, but it's still too easy to find our gardens. Your political donations, home value and address have always been public, but you used to have to actually go to all these different places — courthouses, libraries, property-tax assessors' offices — and request documents. "You were private by default and public by effort. Nowadays, you're public by default and private by effort," says Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group for digital rights. "There are all sorts of inferences that can be made about you from the websites you visit, what you buy, who you talk to. What if your employer had access to information about you that shows you have a particular kind of health condition or a woman is pregnant or thinking about it?" Tien worries that political dissidents in other countries, battered women and other groups that need anonymity are vulnerable to data mining. At the very least, he argues, we're responsible to protect special groups, just as Google Street View allows users to request that a particular location, like an abused-women's shelter, not be photographed. (See the top 10 Twitter moments of 2010.)


Other democratic countries have taken much stronger stands than the U.S. has on regulating data mining. Google Street View has been banned by the Czech Republic. Germany — after protests and much debate — decided at the end of last year to allow it but to let people request that their houses not be shown, which nearly 250,000 people had done as of last November. E.U. Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding is about to present a proposal to allow people to correct and erase information about themselves on the Web. "Everyone should have the right to be forgotten," she says. "Due to their painful history in the 20th century, Europeans are naturally more sensitive to the collection and use of their data by public authorities."


After 9/11, not many Americans protested when concerns about security seemed to trump privacy. Now that privacy issues are being pushed in Congress, companies are making last-ditch efforts to become more transparent. New tools released in February for Firefox and Google Chrome browsers let users block data collecting, though Firefox and Chrome depend on the data miners to respect the users' request, which won't stop unscrupulous companies. In addition to the new browser options, an increasing number of ads have a little i (an Advertising Option Icon), which you can click on to find out exactly which companies are tracking you and what they do. The technology behind the icon is managed by Evidon, the company that provides the Ghostery download. Evidon has gotten more than 500 data-collecting companies to provide their info.


They're not even moving that much faster with the generation that grew up with the Internet. While young people expect more of their data to be mined and used, that doesn't mean they don't care about privacy. "In my research, I found that teenagers live with this underlying anxiety of not knowing the rules of who can look at their information on the Internet. They think schools look at it, they think the government looks at it, they think colleges can look at it, they think employers can look at it, they think Facebook can see everything," says Sherry Turkle, a professor at MIT who is the director of the Initiative on Technology and Self and the author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Each Other. "It's the opposite of the mental state I grew up in. My grandmother took me down to the mailbox in Brooklyn every morning, and she would say, 'It's a federal offense for anyone to look at your mail. That's what makes this country great.' In the old country they'd open your mail, and that's how they knew about you." (Comment on this story.)

Data mining, Turkle argues, is a panopticon: the circular prison invented by 18th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham where you can't tell if you're being observed, so you assume that you always are. "The practical concern is loss of control and loss of identity," says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "It's a little abstract, but that's part of what's taking place."


The Facebook and Google Troves
Our identities, however, were never completely within our control: our friends keep letters we've forgotten writing, our enemies tell stories about us we remember differently, our yearbook photos are in way too many people's houses. Opting out of all those interactions is opting out of society. Which is why Facebook is such a confusing privacy hub point. Many data-mining companies made this argument to me: How can I complain about having my Houston trip data-mined when I'm posting photos of myself with a giant mullet and a gold chain on Facebook and writing columns about how I want a second kid and my wife doesn't? Because, unlike when my data is secretly mined, I get to control what I share. Even narcissists want privacy. "It's the difference between sharing and tracking," says Bret Taylor, Facebook's chief technology officer.


Since targeted ads are so much more effective than nontargeted ones, websites can charge much more for them. This is why — compared with the old banners and pop-ups — online ads have become smaller and less invasive, and why websites have been able to provide better content and still be free. Besides, the fact that I'm going to Houston is bundled with the information that 999 other people are Houston-bound and is auctioned by a computer; no actual person looks at my name or my Houston-boundness. Advertisers are interested only in tiny chunks of information about my behavior, not my whole profile, which is one of the reasons M. Ryan Calo, a Stanford Law School professor who is director of the school's Consumer Privacy Project, argues that data mining does no actual damage. (See "How Facebook Is Redefining Privacy.")


"We have this feeling of being dogged that's uncomfortable," Calo says, "but the risk of privacy harm isn't necessarily harmful. Let's get serious and talk about what harm really is." The real problem with data mining, Calo and others believe, arises when the data is wrong. "It's one thing to see bad ads because of bad information about you. It's another thing if you're not getting a credit card or a job because of bad information," says Justin Brookman, the former chief of the Internet bureau of the New York attorney general's office, who is now the director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit group in Washington. (Comment on this story.)


...


In 1989 I augmented some technology at a major financial services company that would track offers made to prospects to become customers, and I remained involved in this industry for 16 more years. I can tell you that most activity of this kind is innocuous and for the most part designed to send targeted advertising offers that will make people happy. However, there definitely are darksides. Identity theft. Social Security numbers are not supposed to be released except for bonafide activities such as evaluating credit risk. I have to think it's a violation of law if a financial services company has released your credit card number to a marketing company. Track down the source of your social security number residing at a marketing company and I believe you will find a violator. In addition, marketing companies have no real business seeking your social security number so that should be outlawed.

Politics. Companies like Acxiom supply consolidated personal data to political campaigns so that politicians can craft targeted messages to various demographic groups. Since there are no 'truth in politics' laws, messages that are crafted lies are another misuse of this data.

Consoildated personal data is also used by the FBI. This can be bad or good depending the FBI's intentions.

I think you get the gist...check out the whole piece here.

While much of this kind of data mining is innocuous, and won't do any specific damage, I would still argue its important to give people more control, or better, force companies to get our permission (i.e. opt-in) before our information is bought and sold. I'd also point out, that by definition, the larger the amount of information about us is stored, the easier it will be to get stolen or accessed by those we don't want to. And finally, because this has been a mammoth post as it is, I worry, again, about the very meaning of privacy, and what the ramifications are of it dissolving completely.

As Bruce Schneier noted, “…lack of privacy shifts power from people to businesses or governments that control their information. If you give an individual privacy, he gets more power…laws protecting digital data that is routinely gathered about people are needed. The only lever that works is the legal lever...Privacy is a basic human need…The real choice then is liberty versus control.”

Posted by CFC at Thursday, March 17, 2011

Issues Corporate Accountability, Data Protection, Government Surveillance, Identity Theft, Records Privacy, Social Security Numbers
Attachments:
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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: I DONT STOP ()
Date: November 16, 2011 05:06AM

TIME:

Browser Beware: Washington Weighs Online Consumer Privacy
By Steven Gray Wednesday, Mar. 16, 2011

For nearly a year starting in April 2007, Sears ran My SHC Community, an online feature that invited consumers to download software onto their computers that, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), asked them to "journal your shopping and purchasing behavior." The tracking software ran constantly, even when users left Sears' website, and it collected an astonishing trove of information: details about bank accounts, medical prescriptions and library loans, as well as portions of e-mails and instant messages. Sears paid users $10 to join the community. But the only way you'd know about the scope of the data mining was if you bothered to read deep into the fine print, all the way to the 75th line. Last June, the FTC declared Sears' practice "deceptive" and ordered the data destroyed.

The Sears case may be indicative of a larger trend. A growing share of our time is spent online. In fact, more of us now get our news from the Internet than from newspapers, according to Pew Research Center data. More than half of U.S. consumers buy products online. That level of participation is driving a massive $26 billion online-advertising industry, and a key part of it is a largely unregulated data-collection business. On Foursquare, we "check into" the gym. And at the supermarket, we casually swipe plastic cards bearing our home address and increasingly permanent cell-phone numbers, which are often linked to online identifiers like frequent-flyer accounts, enabling companies to build powerful profiles of who we are, and of our tastes in cheese, beer and soap. We are, often unknowingly, giving companies precious raw material they can sell to prospective employers who may seek, for example, to exclude women who "like" Charlie Sheen on Facebook. Insurance companies may buy that data to deny coverage to people who frequently purchase supersize bags of Doritos. "We're building this surveillance superstate online that government could never dream of, and people aren't nearly aware how pervasive this is," says Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington.
(See TIME's cover story on data mining.)

The issue isn't going unnoticed. On Wednesday, the Senate Commerce Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on the state of online consumer privacy. Senator John Kerry, a Democrat from Massachusetts, is expected to introduce legislation to set stringent rules on how companies collect data from us. Democratic Representative Jackie Speier has already introduced a bill to force companies to give consumers the choice of having their online activity tracked. Some may find her advocacy surprising considering that Speier is from the San Francisco Bay Area, home to several Internet behemoths, including Google, Facebook and Twitter. "They all want to talk to me and explain why I'm misguided," Speier says. But she's not deterred. "I don't think privacy is negotiable," she says, "and you have to just do what's right."

Several states have stepped into the evolving Internet-privacy debate. Minnesota, for example, requires Internet service providers to get consumers' permission before disclosing information about their online activity. In California, businesses must tell consumers what personal information is being collected from them online and what companies they plan to share it with.
(See 25 websites you can't live without.)

Rules are beginning to evolve at the federal level as well. Last summer, the FTC charged that Twitter had failed to protect consumers from hackers that retrieved tweets believed to be private, as well as so-called direct messages, or private notes between users. In December, the agency offered a framework for dealing with the burgeoning issue, suggesting that companies begin to offer a do-not-track option. FTC officials also recommended that companies set up their own regulatory standards. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), a Washington trade group of advertisers, newspaper and magazine properties, has signed more than 100 companies onto a project that would standardize a clickable icon that gives consumers the choice to opt out of having their online movements tracked across many sites. "We agree that you should empower consumers not to have data collected and used for advertising purposes if you don't want it to be," says Michael Zaneis, the IAB's general counsel. "But we have to be careful in shaping these policies." The increased scrutiny sparked by Internet-privacy concerns has become a challenge for many Web companies, like Facebook, that have only recently established a lobbying presence in Washington.

The question of where regulatory intervention turns from protection to burden has long been a matter of political debate. Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonpartisan Washington think tank, points out that many aspects of our lives — how we buy cars, how we buy health insurance — are fiercely regulated. That's not so for our Internet usage. We think of Gmail, Twitter and Facebook as free services. "But the cost," Coney says, "is our privacy."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2059237,00.html#ixzz1drTKRRSM
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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: I DONT STOP ()
Date: November 16, 2011 05:13AM

Why Data Mining Is the Next Frontier for Social Media Marketing

February 25, 2011 by Chris Boorman

Chris Boorman is the chief marketing officer and senior vice president of education & enablement at Informatica. He is responsible for Informatica’s global voice to the market, which includes corporate, partner and field marketing.

The thinking about social media in corporate marketing departments is rapidly evolving. Initially, social media was seen as yet another broadcast opportunity for pushing messages out into the world, and for many companies that view persists. A social media consultant recently said that even today, when he approaches potential clients for the first time, they typically refer him to their PR agency, because “they handle Facebook for us.”

There’s nothing wrong with using social media as a tool for disseminating marketing messages or trying to establish deeper relationships with current or potential customers. However, there is another use of social media which may prove to be more powerful over the long term: listening to the voice of the customer by data mining social networks.

Currently, CRM systems create customer profiles to help with marketing decisions using a combination of demographics and prior behavior, primarily historical buying patterns. These systems essentially enable companies to see their customers in the rearview mirror.

The customer data available via online communities like Facebook is both richer and more forward looking. A financial organization with access to such data would not only know that a customer had a checking account, savings account, two CDs and a mortgage, but also that the same customer was interested in golf or gourmet cooking — information that could be useful in planning future marketing initiatives. Every minute of every day, Facebook, Twitter and other online communities generate enormous amounts of this data. If it could be tapped, it could function like a real-time CRM system, continually revealing new trends and opportunities. Here’s how.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tapping Social Media Data


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The good news is that with today’s technology, this data can be tapped. But the process is not without its challenges. The data stream is a prime example of “Big Data.” Dealing with data sets measured in petabytes is a challenge in itself, and there is a serious problem with the signal-to-noise ratio. At my company, we estimate that at best, only 20% of the social media data stream contains relevant information. But before this problem even arises, companies face the issue of identifying their customers among the millions of participants in any given online community.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Problem of Customer Identity


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Most companies approach the problem of finding customers on social sites through the slow, arduous and expensive process of participating themselves. On Facebook, for example, businesses can gain access to the profiles of anyone who clicks the “Like” button on the company’s business site (depending on each customer’s privacy settings). With the right pitch, offer or game, companies can gradually gain an enhanced understanding of a subset of their social customer base.

With new matching technology that’s now available, the process is faster and more comprehensive. For example, matching technology uses artificial intelligence to figure out whether a given “John Smith” in a company’s customer database is the same individual as a particular John Smith on Facebook. The algorithms that accomplish this are extremely sophisticated, and they work. In fact, matching technology has been successfully used by law enforcement agencies to locate criminals.

If a company has one or two key pieces of information about its customers — e-mail address is often the most important — that company can accurately identify them on a social site and extract a substantial amount of data, including both profile data and transactional data that can reveal relationships important for marketing purposes. (Again, the amount of data available for any given customer depends on that customer’s personal privacy settings.)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Putting Data to Work


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The second problem with social media is transforming data that is potentially useful into data that is actually useful. Social media data is generated by an entirely different technology stack than the transactional data that typically feeds CRM systems. Accordingly, it is stored in entirely different formats. That data can be transformed into a useful format with Master Data Management (MDM) technology.

MDM is the process of managing business-critical data, also known as master data (about customers, products, employees, suppliers, etc.) on an ongoing basis, creating and maintaining it as the system of record for the enterprise. MDM is implemented in order to ensure that the master data is validated as correct, consistent, and complete.

MDM has been used for more than a decade by companies that want to integrate disparate databases for a 360 degree view of their customers (or product portfolios, for that matter). It is equally effective in integrating social media data into existing CRM systems, and filtering that data for relevance.

What this all means is that companies can achieve important process improvements with bottom-line significance. For example, they can:
Obtain behavioral data that will allow them to more appropriately target segments for better marketing results.
Obtain data on personal preferences and interests to move closer to a true one-to-one relationship with their customers.

The disciplined use of demographic and historical customer data has enabled large numbers of companies to substantially increase the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. Social media data will enable marketers to take targeting to the next level. It’s Big Data, but today’s technology can handle it.

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: I DONT STOP ()
Date: November 16, 2011 05:29AM

IS YOUR DATA BEING MINED? 04/15/2011


How do you know if your data is being mined? With the Internet evolving as technology improves, there is more room for more information. But don’t be scared of data mining. It’s not that bad. There are all sorts of places on the Internet that collect your personal information but majority is protected.
WHAT IS DATA MINING?
Data Mining isn’t as creepy as you might think. Yes, it is collected by stealth by the websites you browse, stuff you buy, Facebook profile information, customer rewards cards, and so on. It has been done with different mediums for a long time. Phone books, direct mailers, even surveys can be considered data mining. This is how it works. All data collected runs through an algorithm that finds patterns in a general data set. These patterns need to be validated. Sometimes the algorithms find patterns from the training set that aren’t in the general data set. If the patterns meet the desired standards, then companies can interpret it and turn that data into useful knowledge. Companies really don’t care who you are; they just want the patterns in your behavior so they can sell you an ad. The bare bones of data mining is to uncover hidden patterns in behavior, which is sometimes used against us in a barrage of personalized ads but that isn’t always the case.
SO WHAT INFORMATION IS BEING COLLECTED WHILE I SURF THE WEB?
Anything really. 99.9% of the time, companies turn to data mining to specifically target a certain kind of audience. For example, they use an age range, social class, purchasing habits, pet lovers, car enthusiasts, etc. Amazon’s suggestions for you is collected and sorted by things you have previously purchased or even browsed. Most data mining companies sell each piece of information for about two-fifths of a cent to advertisers, who then deliver personalized Internet ads, catalogs, or credit card offers. Ever wonder how the right sidebar on Facebook has personalized ads on your profile? That comes from information you allow people to see, sites you visit, links you click on, even some of your profile information and your friends profile information can add to this. I get targeted ads about snowboarding, movies, books, and clothing with the occasional baby ad (because I’m married and female with friends that are similar in age with children).
ISN’T DATA MINING STEALING PERSONAL INFORMATION?
Many people think data mining means someone in the Internet abyss is stealing your identity. However, there are safeguards and regulations that legitimate websites put in place to protect sensitive information like personal email, login, password and credit card info. Not to worry, the FTC is also stepping in and evaluating how to better protect users (Read more here). Data mining is really used to collect snippets of information in order to sell you a product. And most information about you like your house, marriage, criminal record and education is public anyway. It is just become easier and quicker to search for a collect.

Google even has protected data from your personally identifiable account information when you sign up for services like Gmail, Blogger, Google Calendar, etc. Information can be gained from your browser data and your search history. Google really does care about its users. Things like Google Ad preferences allows you to change your setting and even opt out of having your data mined. You can even go in and correct mistakes.
HOW DO I KNOW IF MY INTERNET HABITS ARE BEING MINED?
There is browser extension software that allows you to track your trackers called Ghostery, found here. Each time you visit a site, a bubble pops up and lists all the information data trackers are checking. There are ways to op-out of data mining, but it is a paid service. Reputation.com will do it for around $8.25/month. Inevitably, information collected from data mining could affect things like health insurance, credit scores, dating and education.
LEARN MORE
In this article by Joel Stein, he explains his experience with data mining and outlines how much information is really being taken from us. He mentions that some companies are only looking small bits of information like anyone who looks at artwork, or who buys coke products, or whoever buys ink and toner. Sometimes the data collected can be off because they have stitched together pieces of data collected from various sources. If you want to learn more about how data mining works or read about Joel Stein, this is an awesome article to read.
Attachments:
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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: you stopped ()
Date: November 16, 2011 05:47AM

fucken loser

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: I DONT STOP ()
Date: November 16, 2011 05:50AM

Should data-mining be used by insurance companies to predict longevity?


ADAM HENDRICKS wrote:
.
Data mining is not good for producing general rules. Data mining is good for reducing a proverbial needle in a haystack situation to a needle in an armful of straw. For example, if you're looking for a trait that exists in 1 person in 50,000 when selecting a group of people at random, data mining may help you develop filtering rules that yield a set of data in which only 1 person in 300 are in the filtered data set and 80 % of the people who have the trait you're looking for are in the data set. The gain from data mining is that you have less data to sift through when looking for events that require research that is not cost effective with dealing with a 1 in 50,000 situation but is cost effective when dealing with a 1 in 300 situation. But even a very successful data mining project may yield a set of people in which over 99% don't have the trait you're looking for.

Putting data mining tools in the hands of people who don't understand them can lead to really bad outcomes and bad policy.
.
Stephen Markovich wrote:
.
Data mining works, it will be used.

..
William McKibbin wrote:
.

Data-mining is the future not only for insurance underwriting, but for recruitment, retention, and essentially all the life science and human resource disciplines -- the good news is that malingerers and other low performers will likely be purged from the rolls via effective identification through data-mining -- the fact is that data-mining works...



Glenn Sears wrote:
.

In case you are wondering, they are already doing this and the scary part is that I am sure they will want to do genetic coding and some people with that information may never be able to get insurance. I do not think that they need to have that type of information.

..
lawrence nilssen replied:
.
The reason they will never be able to get "insurance", Glenn, is that if certainty is introduced, then it is no longer "insurance." It is something else. It is cost transfer - someone else paying your bills.

..
Paul Stelt replied:
.

Maybe I'll publish a pamphlet entitled "Faking Your DNA Profile." Of course, "Faking Your DNA Profile for Dummies" will follow in short order.

..
lawrence nilssen replied:
.

Insurance Companies have no doubt already thought about that - like saying you don't smoke when you do - fake your DNA, and your coverage will also be fake! The only dummies will be the ones who buy your book.

..
Jack Alfred wrote:
.

Two polls are clearly needed: one for those within the industry, and one for those subject to the industry.


..
Edward Randolph replied:
.

What do you think the difference would be?
Right now 6:07am 11/19/10 the vote is nearly tied at 44% yes, to 56% no.

What other industries do you think would be negatively impacted if they too didn't pick up this practice, or didn't perform as well?

..
Greg Lopp wrote:
.

So by writing a data generator, we could get great insurance...

..
Edward Randolph replied:
.


@Greg Lopp
Great thought!
Let's start a business before the taxes & regulations kill the opportunity!

..
Edward Randolph wrote:
.

This isn't even a question.
The pertinent questions are:
How soon will this and other types of data usages greatly improve?
How soon will the barriers to entry begin to come down?
How soon will these types of data uses be easily available to individual and small business users? Think YouTube, Xtranomal, Word & Excel.

And, how soon will "privacy advocates" and trial lawyers in their infinite wisdom, start harassing these new industries, killing even more jobs and continuing to wreck our economy?
How soon after that, will our government cave in to the shakedown, start taxing and regulating these new industries, killing even more jobs and continuing to wreck our economy?
Shortly after that, our electorate will re-elect those politicians for “looking out for the little guys.”
Then, in the next election cycle there will be a grass-roots revolt!
Sigh, I’m tired already…

..
Ryan Shells wrote:
.

The objective of life insurance is to spread risk, not to target specific dates of death. They shouldn't be able to say to one person, you have a low rate, and to another you have a high rate because of where they shop and what they subscribe to. Factors should only include:

Chronic conditions, and HIV/STD's, smoking, alcohol and drug consumption, and general physical conditions that exist at the time of application. That's it. Where you shop is getting too invasive and specific. The Feds need to be all over this to protect the consumer.

..
Gil Russell wrote:
.

Incredible that not one response over invasion of privacy issues has posted...,

..
Glenn Sears replied:
.

You have a real valid point over an invasion of privacy issue, which would be yet a bigger reason for them to not have this data or access to the data. Yet you wonder how much information they already have. We know they already have information on what we purchase via credit cards, debit cards, easily trace this and grocery saver cards, though primarily marketing companies drive this process.

However, if they could gain access to this information, as well the information of data records that are being mined through hospital stays and medication that are submitted through our insurance claims. This information could be cross-referenced with what we purchase and could give insurance companies likely trends of longevity by behavior and tendencies of what we purchase and by a basis of our health.

The only piece that they do not have is genetic codes. This could very well be a nail in the coffin for some people on how they could be denied insurance. Insurance company could not only view the make up of genetic markers people have, but then correspond it with the information that already exists. Therefore, with this information then they could see that you have poor health to start with and you with your poor purchasing habits that can be a cause for more health related risks. Thus, you could be denied, because of a pre existing condition.

Do not be fooled, they already data mine your health statistics….you just do not know it. These purchasing habits just have not been crossed referenced with that information. It would also be a hurdle to get your genetic make up …. Unless they are collecting it when they take your blood samples….seriously doubt it….but it gives you something to ponder.


..
Bill Bunting replied:
.

Glen you make some very good observations and I too believe the insurance companies know much more about our life style and then we know about. I also believe that they collect genetic information when they order the blood workup directly. If a person applies to the insurance company for let’s say a term policy the applicant must go thought very extensive test that extend well beyond what a doctor will ask for. Not only more extensive blood work but tricky questions that go back 10 years or more into the persons live. Mush of this people just cannot recall and that is not received well by the underwriter.

If a doctor issued the scrip for a blood test there is less likely hood that the insurance companies have access to the results because of the privacy laws, but if the insurance company orders the blood work I am not so sure that our privacy is not intruded upon.

I am not so sure that the insurance companies can or will be able to predict the numerical age of death however they will narrow the age group size for pricing. I still leave it to the higher power to know exactly when death will occur.

This, in my opinion, is just the first retort to Obama Care by insurance companies. The new law removes the preexisting condition reason for denial, First preexisting condition removal for children and later for everyone so if insurance companies narrow the age grouping and come closer to predicting those in the group that may be a prospect with a preexisting condition they can price the more narrow age range to recover the added cost.

In the extension of credit business this is referred to as finding within the good score ranges those that are referred to as adverse selection. They look good but are not as good as the FICO score calculates. If they cannot be sorted out from the good credits then higher losses are incurred that predicted and the result of course is less overall profit for this score bank group.

There is nothing that I am aware of in Obama Care that forbids this practice and Obama Care will bring about more assaults by the insurance companies to recover the cost and make their profits. They like to collect policy premiums but paying off they dislike.

The unintended consequences that are always overlooked by government as they continue to intruded into lives. There will more to come for our social workers in DC that called themselves elected officials just cannot resist any opportunity to tell us how to live our lives and then their way puts in the cross hairs of the likes of the insurance companies , our cost rises and our lives don’t get better.

..
Bob Braddock wrote:
.

Misintrepreting the results would obviously be a risk - do you visit diabetes web sites because you have diabetes, or because your favorite brother-in-law does? As someone mentioned above, gaming the system would become an industry in itself. The bad PR, the lawsuits, constantly trying to adjust to the influx of new types of indicator data - it just seems like something that the insurers are unlikely to embrace any time soon.

..
Paul Stelt wrote:
.

Insurance companies will and should be able to do whatever is in their interest. But, if they violate the law, especially medical privacy rules, they should be run out of town on a rail. How about consumers with similar lifestyles and philosphies forming their own non-profit insurance companies?

..
Bill Bunting wrote:
.

Been done for years to set group rates so maybe this is a newer method but it not new to the industry. I don't if banks can use credit scores to segment the country into groups that are defined by date bases as good credits and not so good I guess the insurance complies have the same right.

..
Ryan Shells replied:
.

There is a big difference between whether you can pay your bills and personal information about where you shop and what you buy. If life insurance companies want to segment based on credit scores, I'm fine with that, but they shouldn't follow me around the internet to find out what I purchase.

You buy insurance to spread your risk out. By trying to peg an exact timeframe of when you are going to die, they are not accurately spreading out the risk, it comes back around to you and your own risk, so why buy the insurance if the insurance company is going to just make the risk attributable to you and no one else? People who are only expected to live to age 65 should get the same rate as those expected to live to age 95. You are insuring against the possibility of something tragic happening resulting in an early death.


..
rob lit wrote:
.

It's free country....seems to make sense to me.....

..
Harlan Nelson replied:
.

It is not a free country if the law requires we buy insurance. In that case the insurance companies are supported by laws not free enterprise

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: I DONT STOP ()
Date: November 16, 2011 05:51AM

You asked for this...

Do you want me to keep going until 6 PM?

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: I DONT STOP ()
Date: November 16, 2011 05:58AM

I've got to go help 1 of my kids but I will be back.
Let me know if you want me to continue until 6 PM?
You asked for this...

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: get it to 2000 ()
Date: November 16, 2011 06:02AM

get it to 2000 views by 630 and u will have proved me wrong then u can stop and i will bow down to you/apologize

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: u stopped. u failed ()
Date: November 16, 2011 06:42AM

well u failed. i had fun watching u spaz out but u failed to meet the dealine

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: i can help u out seth & dina ()
Date: November 16, 2011 07:25AM

badass-lawyer-e1320278879791.jpg

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: ......... ()
Date: November 16, 2011 08:35AM

.

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: bump ()
Date: November 16, 2011 08:45AM

to the top

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Date: November 16, 2011 09:03AM

Great attorney want ad.

-----------------------------------------------

"...your suffering will be legendary even in Hell!"

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: Woah00 ()
Date: November 16, 2011 10:27AM

This is truely sad. I know Dina and she would never do that to herself. Dina ignore those people, their the same ones who go on fairfaxunderground and make fun of the dead. Let god handel them.

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: DAniel Webster ()
Date: November 16, 2011 10:55AM

Woah00 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> This is truely sad. I know Dina and she would
> never do that to herself. Dina ignore those
> people, their the same ones who go on
> fairfaxunderground and make fun of the dead. Let
> god handel them.


Spelling and grammar checkers are your friends!

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: Yow! ()
Date: November 16, 2011 11:06AM

This is the best thread evar!

Forget child protective services...call the SPELLING POLICE

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: BB*X ()
Date: November 16, 2011 11:19AM

"IM MOLESTING MY KIDS"

You need to use the updated term for this.

"I'm sanduskying my kids" is the proper English.

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: ChadIsFat ()
Date: November 16, 2011 11:45AM

I think this is all being written/posted by the same person

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: bumpin ()
Date: November 16, 2011 04:13PM

to the top

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: to Pinhead the Cenobite ()
Date: November 16, 2011 04:18PM

Pinhead the Cenobite Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Great attorney want ad.


thanks cracker

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: PLEASE STOP ()
Date: November 16, 2011 04:57PM

dina passed away this morning please stop posting here

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Date: November 16, 2011 07:32PM

all these things are tl;dr

all we need to know is that there is some fat skank spreading hep c. she's more useless then those people who stand there with signs. Not the ones that spin them, the ones that just stand there.

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Date: November 16, 2011 10:28PM

yuck

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: bump ()
Date: November 17, 2011 03:44PM

bummp

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: Andrew Ryan ()
Date: November 17, 2011 04:09PM

How do you misspell "truly?"

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: FAKED DEATH ()
Date: November 17, 2011 07:01PM

Dina Ackmad is back on facebook

http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=593392764


Phone number
703 222 0581

address
12707 Heron Ridge Drive
Fairfax, VA

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: postpoppunk ()
Date: November 17, 2011 10:32PM

I am looking forward to when this hits "Off-Topic"...should add some more flavor and zest.

A Minor Threat

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: dina is back on fb ()
Date: November 18, 2011 02:21AM

bump

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: 3000 views ()
Date: November 18, 2011 02:22AM

3000 views in 3 days..that's a FFU record!!!!!!!!!!

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: Dina works at Alexandre de Paris ()
Date: November 18, 2011 02:29AM

find dina @
Alexandre de Paris

in fairlakes

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: Ralph Pootawn ()
Date: November 18, 2011 01:41PM

victum Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Dina ahmad is a fairfax local 22 year old female,
> she infected me with Hepatitis C, after that she
> stoped talking to me cmpletly and of course
> denying it...so on that note I have no problem
> puting the rest of her corrupt shit on here..
>
> dina ahmad has 2 children one is 2 and the other 3
> years old, she does cocaine around them and would
> fuck me in the same room as them.
>
> dina has had 2 abortions aside from her 2 kids she
> currently has, but her mom is in the process of
> trying to take custody.
>
> dinas brother sherrif ahmad is a drug dealer who
> lives with her and her 2 children omar and maggie,
> and he has punched dina in the face infront of
> these kids on more then 1 occasion
>
> dinas phone number is 703 222 0581 feel free to
> call her for any questions or complaints


Dem titties
Attachments:
Dat_ass.jpg

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: ytrf ()
Date: November 18, 2011 03:51PM

bumpit

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: Realistic Ol Guy ()
Date: November 18, 2011 04:49PM

Just when I thought the TLC posts were insane, this makes them look kinda normal.

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: chILLadelphia ()
Date: November 18, 2011 05:12PM

WHY IS THIS A TOPIC??? NoVA can't be this fucking boring shit all you motherfuckers sound like children

but damn Gonads and Strife is crackin me up right now that shyt is funny

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: melvin ()
Date: November 20, 2011 12:54AM

DAMNNNN what a f'd up chick, don't know how shes going to show her face at any pta meetings, abortions n drugs yikes!

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: R.I.P. Seth ()
Date: November 20, 2011 04:25AM

R.I.P. Seth was murderd today
Attachments:
1111.jpg

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: rofl seth dead ()
Date: November 20, 2011 04:27AM

lol no way. by who? i heard it was a suicide

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: MyMomHasRabies ()
Date: November 20, 2011 05:25AM

This election hurls corn.

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: TheNorthman ()
Date: November 20, 2011 07:07AM

I missed the JBass DJ Magic Mark classic until it was more or less over. I havent had time to read through this one yet but I have a feeling it could be a good one.

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: fegr ()
Date: November 20, 2011 07:08AM

its a great one

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: eboni ()
Date: November 22, 2011 07:54AM

Ummmm someone should like report this to child protective services..

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: No One Will Do Anything ()
Date: November 22, 2011 08:24AM

eboni Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Ummmm someone should like report this to child
> protective services..

No one will report this to Child Protective Services, because it's illegal to knowingly file a false report of child abuse or neglect, and if you do it more than once, it's a felony (a bargain-basement felony, but still a felony)!
§ 63.2-1513. Knowingly making false reports; penalties.

A. Any person fourteen years of age or older who makes or causes to be made a report of child abuse or neglect pursuant to this chapter that he knows to be false shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor. Any person fourteen years of age or older who has been previously convicted under this subsection and who is subsequently convicted under this subsection shall be guilty of a Class 6 felony.

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: andy f ()
Date: November 22, 2011 08:45AM

Fairfax County's Child Protective Services Hotline 703-324-7400 TTY 703-222-9452 Your call is confidential.

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: aliveandwell ()
Date: November 22, 2011 06:37PM

any updates on the diseased and criminally insane posse?

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: Forever Alone ()
Date: November 22, 2011 06:39PM

All dead

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: hepcsource.com ()
Date: November 22, 2011 06:59PM

.>
Attachments:
Hepatitis_C_Patients-3.jpg

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: Forever Alone ()
Date: November 22, 2011 07:01PM

OMFG

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: rrrrrrrrrr ()
Date: November 23, 2011 10:59AM

wow....

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: xerxes ()
Date: November 23, 2011 11:10AM

i heard she killed herself after all this shit

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: Forever Alone ()
Date: November 23, 2011 11:12AM

She's still alive

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: c'mon mannnnnn ()
Date: November 24, 2011 12:52AM

Forever Alone Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> She's still alive


is seth still on her nuts?
is he in jail?
what happened to the charges against him?
does she have the "C"?
has CPS taken the kids away?
has fucking jerry springer called yet?

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: all over ()
Date: November 24, 2011 12:55AM

yes
no
nothing
no
no
yes
the
end

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: WTF ()
Date: December 02, 2011 04:48PM

I had a dream I met her

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: iknowher ()
Date: December 02, 2011 10:25PM

i saw her on an episode of Maury!!!!

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: crow ()
Date: December 14, 2011 10:17AM

Dina works at the wristband stand at tysons now lol I had so much trouble holding a straight face when I was talking to her not saying anything about ffu..

But shes defenitly a big girl in person

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: Andrew Ryan ()
Date: December 14, 2011 10:49AM


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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: Taylor ()
Date: December 14, 2011 10:52AM

Are her titties ok? That's my major concern. Just please, whatever cold, cruel karma rules this world, if I never ask you for anything again, I ask you for this now.

Please, please.......... just let her big, beautiful titties be ok. :'(

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: beavis and Butt-head ()
Date: December 14, 2011 05:41PM

This chick is gross. i don't want to score with it.

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: Stones ()
Date: December 14, 2011 07:06PM

This is way too much to read. Could someone just post the cliff notes version please. Preferably with pictures.

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: ribs ()
Date: December 14, 2011 07:21PM

I would suggest you read the dina ahmad spreading hep c thread in the off topic section instead way more epic and funny

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: question12388 ()
Date: December 15, 2011 08:52AM

is this the same whore that use to live in Burke a long time ago ?

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: Teeny ()
Date: December 16, 2011 05:42PM

more like Hepatitis double Ds!

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: larz ()
Date: January 12, 2012 07:42PM

LMAO!

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: More Complete ()
Date: February 10, 2012 02:29PM

So did she end up dying or what?

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: yes ()
Date: February 11, 2012 01:00AM

frisky went to her viewing

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: Assman ()
Date: February 11, 2012 04:03AM

Do you think Seth ever snorted lines of coke off of her big titties?

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: D1NA ()
Date: February 12, 2012 11:15PM

No guys I'm workin at forever 21 in Springfield mall

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Date: February 13, 2012 08:47AM

Way tl/dr Dina still has hep c /thread

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: Protip ()
Date: February 13, 2012 10:26AM

HCV is spread primarily by blood-to-blood contact associated with intravenous drug use, poorly sterilized medical equipment and transfusions. An estimated 130–170 million people worldwide are infected with hepatitis C. The existence of hepatitis C (originally "non-A non-B hepatitis") was postulated in the 1970s and proven in 1989.[2] It is not known to cause disease in other animals.

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: Al Bundy ()
Date: February 13, 2012 10:36AM

I love Big 'Uns. We need more pics of these big old boobs

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: thatd00d ()
Date: February 14, 2012 03:26PM

Truest shit ever said.

Mainly though I just wanted to keep this fun thread alive

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: thatd00d ()
Date: February 15, 2012 09:17AM

Bizump.

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: Continue ()
Date: February 15, 2012 08:18PM

Keep it going

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: TigBits ()
Date: February 16, 2012 11:22AM

Love me some tig ole bitties

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: More Complete ()
Date: February 23, 2012 04:06PM

I heard she's clean now.

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: Ben Roflzburger ()
Date: February 23, 2012 06:30PM


Attachments:
phpypRNiX

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: Mo Zo Incerdibowl ()
Date: July 01, 2012 04:36PM

She gives a bad name to the Egyptian people, Dont let just one whore like this taint your judment of a whole race or community!

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: King Tut ()
Date: July 01, 2012 06:35PM

Mo Zo Incerdibowl Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> She gives a bad name to the Egyptian people, Dont
> let just one whore like this taint your judment of
> a whole race or community!


Right! The Egyptian people are perfectly capable of ruining the world's opinion of that country without her help.

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: Hi C ()
Date: July 01, 2012 06:40PM

Has anyone heard her band, Dina Ahhmad and the Hep C's?

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The business
Posted by: Profound thinker ()
Date: July 02, 2012 02:56PM

I farted.

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: Varion Haylock ()
Date: September 02, 2014 04:20AM

Seth Comstock CEO/Founder/Owner at Squish Clothing

https://www.facebook.com/SquishStuff

https://www.SquishStuff.com

Squish Stuff

Squish Clothing

Squish
Attachments:
SethComstock.jpg

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: Gaygaygo ()
Date: September 02, 2014 07:02AM

Seth Comstock and his gay lover.
Attachments:
image.jpg

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: Where is she now ()
Date: March 23, 2016 05:13PM

Any Updates?

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: Rajeswar Anurad ()
Date: March 31, 2016 09:45PM

what happened?

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Re: Dina Ahmad spreading Hepatitis C in our community
Posted by: OP SETH COMSTOCK ()
Date: September 03, 2016 06:26PM

Rajeswar Anurad Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> what happened?


Seth is in jail for being a pedo

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