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Picture this:
- You type on Google “laptop won’t turn on”
- Google now knows you have a broken laptop and can estimate how desperate you are to fix it.
- Because it knows how desperate you are, it can increase shop prices proportionally.
You are going to pay the maximum they get you to pay.
That’s algorithmic pricing.
The more companies know about you, the more they can predict and sell how desperate you are to other stores out there.
An internet-connected car knows much more about you than you realize. A smart TV also knows what you like. Your Alexa knows if there is a problem in the home.
Privacy is much more than just sensitive data.
It’s about not giving leverage away.
Because algorithms will use it against you.
Be safe out there.
Here’s the one that convinced my dad that connecting everything is bad:
Your smart fridge knows what’s inside and knows you just added a 12 pack of soda and donuts to the shopping list. They sell that data to a bunch of companies, including your insurance company. They know you have diabetes.
Your insurance rates just went up for the fifth time this year because your insurance company knows what you’re eating.
And it’s a good thing you don’t drink beer or your car insurance would have gone up ‘due to increased risk factors.’ too bad you wanted to buy a new car this year.
Not only can you not afford it now, the price went up because they know you want a car. I’m sure they would make a payment deal with you though.
And every company will know all about the deal, the beer, the donuts, and all it took was sending money to whatever company had the information, and they were more than happy to sell it.
The more we allow companies to freely operate like this without regulation and without proper punishment for breaking the rules, we will continue sliding toward the hellscape of Ferenginar. For the non trekkies, it’s a hyper-capitalist species of profit-driven assholes.
The best thing is these companies will say it’s not violation of your privacy because they sell the data without a direct link to your name or address. But guess what? They bundle it with all kinds of other identifiers like age, sex, weight, approximate location, whatever else you give them. The insurance company then takes that and modifies the category that is specifically this age bracket, approximate location, weight, age, beer and donuts in the fridge. And surprise! You fit all these “anonymous” identifiers.
But no harm done, your identity is safe 👍it would seem like someone’s name is the least useful data point
That’s the whole thing about browser fingerprinting too. Take the set of internet users who have a particular version of a particular operating system, a particular version of a particular browser, having a particular set of typefaces installed, having a particular language preference, and you’ll find yourself in the intersection of all of them.
Remember, kids, it only takes 32 bits to uniquely identify any person on the planet. That’s 32 yes or no questions. Of course, they have to be perfectly crafted questions, but identifying power of fingerprinting must not be underestimated.
Clearly we all need to upgrade our personalities to a new 64-bit architecture.
Actually I think the world population is such that you need to add one or two bits.
Ok, fine, 33 bits 😂 Wikipedia says the world population is 8 billion, and python tells me that
math.log2(8e9)is 32.897.
To add to this.
Here’s a website to help you check your own trackability:
https://coveryourtracks.eff.org
It can also help give you advice on how to improve your privacy.
Things that help: (tldr use adblockers but otherwise it’s really about blending into the crowd)
- using a browser that respects privacy (e.g. not Chrome)
- using a “popular” browser (using something weird can help narrow it down to you because not many people are using that)
- (Firefox is a good browser choice. Safari is fine, Edge is probably ok. Avoid Chrome).
- using an ad blocker
- using a VPN can sometimes help but can also sometimes hurt because, again, it helps narrow you down.
- using a popular device can make it harder to track
Hard to track: uses Firefox with uBlock origin. Maybe using a popular VPN. Uses an iPhone or a popular model of Android like the Pixel (although Google owning Android/Pixel might mean they get your data anyway…)
Actually very easy to track: uses a niche Chromium-based browser you got from GitHub with niche GitHub project as blockers and a little/known VPN. Uses a niche brand of smartphone with a niche non-Android based OS on it.
That was interesting.
Is there an add-on that changes the header information from an HTTP request to show bogus but common identifying information?
That is crowdsource the most common configurations and set that as the default in the add-on, so now you look like just another face in the crowd.
It’s more than just the header information. The graphics and audio checksum can give away details of what your device is, even if those details don’t match what header information you are sending. That mismatch is itself information they can use.
Brave is the only browser I can actually get a decent score with, too bad it has crypto brainrot
Names actually have a really high collision rate, so for collecting information they’re not good. You don’t want all the different John Smiths’ data clumped together. They’re useful once you start sending personalized stuff in though.
Well said and a core concept people need to understand to appreciate data privacy/sovereignty. Simply calling it data overlooks what it often is: your behavior over time. We don’t call it PII but few things are more personally identifying.
when google gave away those google assistant spheres some years ago for free, i ordered one just to have one less of those fucking things out in the world. it went straight in the trash
It’s like Ron Swanson and the vegan bacon
I hope you also advised to only use cash. When you use a credit card, not only does Kroger or Walmart know your dietary habits, but many merchants share level 2 transaction data with your credit card company, so they know individual items in your receipt as well.
And if you enroll in those “apples/samsung/etc” pay services on your phone, those services also gain access to your purchase history, even if you never use the service.
I was surprised by a recent, popular comment here on lemmy where someone advised against using cash because of missing out on rewards. A majority of people don’t appreciate the tradeoffs here. By default, banks and private companies have more info on us than we have on ourselves. To think that they’re going to do anything that benefits us more than them is naive. While not everything is zero sum, we are talking about extractive, profit seeking industries.
Cash seems like the best defense on this front. I recent switched back to cash, and continue to track my own finances; Bank sees $500 withdrawal; I see $34.45 at grocery store, $19.20 at hardware store, etc.
Pro tip: try random but memorable phone numbers at checkout. Now you can enjoy the savings, and salt/contaminate the data extraction of others. The more randomness (where and when you shop, what you buy, which numbers you use) the better.
That’s a great tip to use someone else’s phone number! I use my mother-in-law’s phone number. I will never convince her not to use these reward programs, so may as well pile them on.
And the health apps know when you’re sleeping, they know your heartrate throughout the day, your o2 sats. They can take all this mortality risk data to factor in things, advertise drugs to you, advertise foods they know you’ll eat even though it’s bad, manipulate how your insurance pays out for your next treatment because it would have been preventable if you hadn’t eaten those donuts. The phone manufacturers know you run apps, how long, what you do (yes, even Apple, especially Apple, they hide behind “privacy” so you feel ok with what they do to you) what web pages you open, how long you view them.
They could biometrically paint a picture of your day, your movement, there’s an entire profile of data available on many humans. I wouldn’t be surprised if they aren’t already tying heart rate data to viewership of media and advertising.
This only sounds bad for people with a love of beer and donuts.
Admittedly, I am included within that group. But if I wasn’t, I could see supporting such variable rates.
People can’t keep sacrificing what they like just to survive. There’s no point if you don’t get to live
Do you think you are disagreeing with me?
First they came for the beer and soda drinkers, and I did not speak out—because I did not drink beer and soda.
So, FUD, then?
Protip: Before buying a laptop, google “homeless shelters in Detroit”.
Even better: get homeless; log in from shelter WiFi. Actually from experience, it doesn’t matter. You are a consumer. Being homeless doesn’t exclude you from the marketplace. I got a free “obamaphone” while in a shelter. That shit is infested with popups.
Surely if you’re homeless and buying a laptop, then you’re DESPERATE for a laptop. Jerks can use that against you.
In a past life I wrote the software that did this.
It’s not just about charging more when you’re desperate. It’s also things like charging you less to keep you addicted, or getting you hooked. Exploiting your emotions and behaviour to make it effective. A small loss on you now could be a long time gain for them.
Some more scenarios:
- you’ve decided to quit alcohol. Your social media accounts are used to identify you’re looking for advice. They advertise more, and send you heavy, heavy discounts a few days in to keep you on the wagon.
- Your cars insurance tracker has picked up your erratic driving. Your phone has tracked more forceful interactions, your works email provider has revealed you’ve been in a minimum of three meetings all day; You’re having a shit, stressful, day. They can’t give you discounts on your cigarettes but they do know they can get you to buy two packs instead of one by serving you ads that suggest stock levels are low. You buy two and chain smoke all day, your daily average goes from 0.5 to 0.7 packs a day.
- You go to a chain restaurant often. They know they can get you to buy more in the long run if they increase the volume you eat gradually. Every visit they goad you into buying more. Didn’t do it last time? Steeper discounts next time. Until one day you buy the extra side. That’s now your new baseline. A few weeks of that and back onto the stair climb. A little by little. You’re spending more and more.
- you’re on holiday. everyone knows you’re not coming back anytime soon so they charge full price. But move to a new city? Everyone has discounts for you to get you in the door.
The data available back then was pretty minimal, effectively only the data we generated. But it was still enough to prey on your lizard brain. With data brokerage I’ve got no idea what level of evils we could have done.
Thanks for ‘coming out’ about it. Without doxing yourself too heavily, would you mind to share more about the industry in particular or measurement of these practises? Dip you know if it was common (and when was this?)
I know for sure that we can’t trust companies to act in our best interests (if anything, its a hostile relationship), but I guess I’m curious about your inside perspective. Has that jaded you much at all?
Social/Mobile games. So an already predatory industry. Let’s get people addicted to a game, and then suck as much money from them as possible.
In the industry, we definitely weren’t the only ones doing it. And really we were only doing basic stuff (it was all in house developed middleware, so effort vs reward didn’t make much sense to go hard) I wouldn’t be surprised if others were going deep.
- the hardest part is getting someone to part with their money. But once they’ve done it once, even for the smallest amount, the second purchase will be easier.
- conversions that stopped playing got emails with discounts.
- whales got freebies when they lost to keep them happy.
- everything else was just finding the customers perfect price.
- ultimately we were selling noting. So any sale is better than no sale. You can’t make a loss on a number in a database.
Everything was broken down into campaigns (we’d have multiple running at any one time) targeting different segments. Then we’d track the conversion, sale, and retention numbers of those campaigns against each other. Sometimes one campaign might flop for one segment but not another, so we’d retarget with a new one.
I don’t think it’s used much in other markets. I know Twilio has Segment, that could be used to do segmented pricing but I’ve never really seen it done in other industries.
I wouldn’t say it’s jaded me. It has made me conscious of my data footprint. I don’t play mobile or f2p games. But I am weary. The COVID greed-flation showed the mindset of businesses. It might not be long until targeted pricing becomes worthwhile to make number go up (still), and hidden under the guise of “lowering prices”.
Okay so fast-forward
tentwo more years beyond that (it doesn’t matter how much - all of this is already in the past anyway:-P): virtually everyone (from your area) has an internet presence. But for you, all “they” see is a tiny stream of encrypted traffic to servers outside of your home country. Or maybe a large stream, whatever - are you downloading child pornography perhaps? Or are you a terrorist, trying to evade detection by the “legitimate” establishment, who is simply trying to “help” you to set the price for fixing your laptop?Bam, they charge you the maximum amount for the repair anyway, then tack on a fee for the extra effort involved in having to investigate you further, making the final price double what it would have been. And this happens for every single item you buy, plus you cannot get a job b/c you don’t have a FacedInLinkThread account. The best sheeples get the best pricing structures…
This isn’t something that individuals can fight easily, without a rather extreme amount of effort involved. Hence we should fight it together.
Fast food joints already offer lower prices in their apps than at the drive through. You pay the difference through all the data they harvest.
Yes I have an order ready for a “None-ya”, is there a “None-ya” here? Is anyone here named “None-ya bidness”?
It’s a damnable choice, that’s for sure. Let them see literally everything that you do - in the sense of every single app that you have installed on that same machine - or else pay the extra price. Ngl, depending on how often I visit each place, I’ve gone both ways on this. Also, rather than recall a unique password for every site that is accessible from your mobile and potentially synched with a desktop, if you log in using a Play/Google or App/Apple account, then they have that link too - it’s just so convenient though!
It used to be email addresses. Now that still happens, but the ratchet has moved up to include phones. This is why I refuse to put banking apps onto any mobile devices - they are not “computers”, nor are they “yours”, most often even when rooted & with the OS replaced, b/c of the corruption that Google has introduced into the core Android OS.
But… what else can we do, other than choose which manner of payment we will offer the wolves? Even if that is only in terms of our efforts, time, and attention spans (and possibly the cost of a 2nd phone or at least SIM:-P) - they manage to define so many of our actions even if only in the negative sense of what we rail against. That part is inevitable, so the only question remaining is how much do we give in.
I’ve only ever seen higher prices in apps
Look at me moneybags over here, having so much money his algorithmic pricing goes up
I think something got lost in translation, this isn’t literally about google raising your prices but about dynamic pricing + corporations having all your data. Google is just for the example.
Also incorrect. Carry on.
Can you please explain what you read it as? Are you saying it was literal and that Dell/HP/Lenovo are raising their prices immediately from the data Google obtained by you searching for a computer repair? I was under the impression it was just an example of how info can be exploited like the person you replied to. It seems like it would lose more sales than gain if that were real, as all vendors and resellers would have to raise across the board. Like Amazon couldn’t all the sudden be cheaper than you, or they’d take your sale from the manufacturers website
Google “I have way too many laptops and they all work great.”
Google aggressively reduces prices on laptops to tempt you to buy more of them anyway.
You buy 3 more to go with your ever increasing pile
Who would potential reselling business idea
“I have a compulsion to buy laptops but only when they’re less than $100”
Stonks
I came here to get the fuck away from reddit yo…
I invest all my money into laptops. When China invades taiwan and TSMC factories self destructs, I will resell them for a modest profit in the demand-heavy market. Literally can’t go tits up.
I think one of the largest Intel fabs is in Israel for god’s sake. We really do excels as a species don’t we.
Is that why I see all those “I have too many ThinkPads, I just bought three more.” Posts, or is that just what part of the Internet I’m hanging out in?
this is why everyone should stop using google
This is a pretty great point. I never looked at privacy through this window.
Looks like I’m going to migrate in been considering proton for some time now anyway.
keep in mind nothing is immune to enshittification. assume that everything you do online, even with proton or other “privacy first” companies, exists online. forever. and even if a company stays true to their “privacy first” policy, inevitably, they’ll be breached, and it’ll all be out in the world anyway
Proton, at least, is now bound by law to act in the best interest of its customers, due to being a Swiss non-profit.
All the metadata perhaps (still very valuable), but client-side, zero-access encryption means it’s encrypted before it hits the servers. So while a data leak might, for example, show who, when, and how much you’re emailing, it wouldn’t show the content of the email as gmail would.
Moving in the direction of better and voting with your dollars is an important step away from already enshittified structures, which I’d argue, are inherent to certain models and not others. EG: a self hosted, open source software developed by a non-profit could sell and incorporate and enshittify, but the possibility of forking is an effective disincentive that could easily eat projected gains.
If smart TVs knew what we liked, I don’t think 90% of what’s in the “most popular” sections of every streaming service in existence would be filled with random shit nobody has ever heard of. Unless they know what we like, and then just refuse to give us what we actually like… 🤔
You’re already paying for the streaming service. They don’t benefit off of giving you what you want in that scenario
They don’t need to recommend you the shows you already know about. They want to recommend you things you haven’t heard about in the hopes that you will find something new that you like so that show will keep you paying once the ones you already are watching are done.
This. This benefits them.
And if it fails, well again: you’re already paying them.
Let me put on my MBA hat and propose to only show the user websites selling new notebooks and suppress repair shop or repair guide pages.
I’m going to engineer an llm which continuously complains on social media that I don’t have enough money to buy a new laptop until it drops below x price
Pretty sure that’s very illegal here on Europe.
We have the freedom to pay more!
The economics term for this is price discrimination. Nothing to do with racial discrimination, it’s discriminating based on willingness to pay.
But usually it’s not done by raising the prices above normal it’s done by setting the regular prices higher and then offering a discount to people who aren’t willing to pay less. People tend not to get upset when it’s done that way. Student discount at the movie theater is a form of price discrimination. People accept it because they’re being nice to people that don’t have a lot of money. Seniors discount? Also being nice, I guess. But the reality is they know everyone else is willing to pay more so they charge more.
And this has already been happening online. About a decade ago I noticed what when I searched for flights from an airline then went to facebook, I’d get an ad from that airline offering a discount. Not as sophisticated as attempting to determining the exact price I was willing to pay, but it’s along the same lines.
But the problems with these schemes is that people quickly figure out the system. I just made it a habit to search for a flight, then go onto facebook to look for the discount even when I’d be willing to pay even if there was no discount. But why not trick the system into thinking I didn’t really care about booking the flight and get that discount?
people figure out the system
Only tech savvy people figure out how to go around this system. Roughly 80% ~ 90% of consumers will not realize what’s happening or won’t bother figuring out a solution.
Hell, even if only 10% of the consumers paid a slightly higher price the company still earns more by buying your data.
Statistics are on the side of the company. Buying consumer data is always the best strategy for them. The only thing that can limit abuse of privacy and consumer rights is government regulation.
then offering a discount to people who aren’t willing to pay less.
Do you mean “aren’t willing to pay the full price”?
guess what insurance companies make money off of ?
This is only a problem if the service provider is a monopoly (or if every service provider illegally coordinates price fixing).
I might be willing to pay up to $800 to fix a $1000 computer (a more expensive repair might cause me to look to buy a replacement rather than repairing). But if it’s a 1 hour job requiring $100 of parts, then all the computer repair shops would be competing with each other for my business, essentially setting their hourly rate for their labor. At that point it’s like bidding at auction up to a certain point, but expecting to still pay the lowest available price.
So the problem isn’t necessarily perfect pricing information from the other side, but lack of competition for pricing from the other side. We should be fighting to break up monopolies and punishing illegal price fixing.
You don’t need a monopoly for this to be a problem.
Databrokers can offer data sets of “customer price elasticity”. Tables of “how much we think X would spend on these generic item categories”. Eg “booly would pay $15 for a burger, vs $10 average”
Point of Sale systems could start offering integrations to these data sets.
All shops have to do now is set a list price, a minimum price, a category, and leave it up to the PoS to (not) give discounts.
You want a burger, you’re fed a single-use short lived discount “$5 off a $20 burger. Today only” While someone else gets “buy one get one free”.
It’s then a ‘fair’ market. Shops have and ‘compete’ with their (high) list prices, data brokers compete with “excess profit” statistics (ie, how much more money above the minimum price they made). Nobody is colluding, they’re just basing discounts off external arbitrary signals.
It slowly becomes the norm to get just-in-time discounts, and the consumer gets shafted. If you’re not in the system, you’re paying more than everyone else.
(And all of this has been happening in some markets for over a decade)
This framework you describe is still grounded in a large number of producers intentionally avoiding undercutting the competition in price.
If a profit can be made selling burgers for $10, and literally every burger seller knows that I’m happy paying $15 for a burger, they still have to compete with each other to get my business. Am I going to choose the place that charges everyone $10, or the place that I know engages in opaque pricing and is offering me $15? The most sophisticated price discrimination algorithm in the world doesnt do any good if the other burger shops don’t play along.
And this plays out every day in places like airports. Yes, I know I just need to eat before I jump on my connecting flight, and I’m not super price sensitive in that situation. But I won’t go to the place that’s far and away more expensive than another, or who I just recently read about on some travel blog as a price gouger.
And for a more concrete example of something that happens today, with services that are worth a completely different price than what it costs to provide it, and where everyone knows the buyer is valuing the service at that high value. Say I have an unfinished basement, and I want to hire a contractor to finish it with drywall, paint, flooring, HVAC, etc. It’s obvious to everyone how much that project adds to the livable square footage, and plenty of public valuation models show exactly how much that job adds to the value of the home. And everyone knows I’m about to list the home afterward for sale. But if 10 contractors are competing for the job, they don’t really care what value it provides to me if I choose not to hire them, so they’re bidding prices that cover the level of profit they want to make on the job, while not ceding the price advantage to the competition. The presence of competition tempers the price gouging.
So I still think competition is the key policy to pursue. Competition solves the problem being described here, and any market with this kind of individualized price gouging is suffering from insufficient competition.
They also serve you the ads with the most JavaScript bs and crypto mining so you think your laptop is obsolete and you need a new one.
Without ublock Firefox makes my PC take off
This cat with the PC running around unfettered. Scaring all the cats and dogs.
