I am still new regarding privacy and all that, so i am sorry for any mistakes/ newbie questions.
I and my friends were talking on Discord regarding the Oxenfree plot (a game about a time loop). One of the plot points mentions a submarine. To his surprise, He received a youtube recommendation about a nuclear-powered submarine as shown:
he was a bit spooked about this and asked if Google is listening. I asked about his browser and extensions, to which he answered that he’s using google chrome and the extensions below:
my question is: how did this happen, and what should he do next to avoid this happening again?
thank you in advance.
Reminder that confirmation bias can be really hard to see around. It’s literally one recommendation. About a submarine. Which you probably didn’t talk about for very long. And is something you can’t buy or have a choice in supporting. Let’s be real, Discord and YT as corporations have little interest in furthering the Military Industrial Complex, and anybody who says otherwise better have solid evidence.
As for the other comment, I don’t see a source that says anything about Discord selling conversational data directly to advertisers. Discord is certainly not a privacy-focused application, but it’s not in their best interest to sell your conversations directly like that.
As for what they put in their TOS, it’s pretty standard fare. Almost all user-generated content services will have clauses like that so that they don’t get sued, because they’re hosting your data. (reminder: this is not legal advice.)
The clearest forms in which you will be advertised to are when you search for products, or visit sites with trackers. But even then, your data isn’t necessarily being sold. Google, for instance, is generally not in the business of selling data to other advertisers, because they themselves are an ad business and having their own data gives them a competitive advantage. I tell you this to help you understand why companies are motivated to track you. Youtube, quite frankly, doesn’t give a crap. For YT ads, expect to receive personalized ads, but for video recommendations, it’s far easier for them to just do it based off of other stuff you’ve watched and what other people are watching. I’d be surprised if their algorithm uses external tracking data, because why would they? They have all they need in-house.
If you and your friend really care about privacy and never want to worry about this again, you’ve got a lot of work to do. Stop using Chrome/chromium/blink/webkit. Use Firefox or one of its more privacy-focused cousins. Disable Javascript on as many sites as possible. Have as few accounts as possible, and delete your Google/AMZN/FB/reddit/YT etc. Use Tor or a VPN to prevent IP-based tracking. Make sure your DNS is 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8, or better yet, AdGuard DNS. And of course, stop using Discord or any cloud-hosted software. Teamspeak, IRC, and Signal/Matrix are good alternatives. Also shoutout to Quassel for a semi self-hosted IRC setup.
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That website is absolute garbage. Not to mention, the reddit thread it cites regarding program logging has a dev response confirming that program usage history isn’t uploaded, disproving it’s own point: https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/43lqyb/why_is_discord_recording_our_open_programs_and/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=2&utm_content=2
That website doesn’t look trustworthy at all to me, so I went off reading discord Privacy Policy which stated the following:
“We generally do not store the contents of video or voice calls or channels. If we were to change that in the future (for example, to facilitate content moderation), we would disclose that to you in advance. We also don’t store streaming content when you share your screen, but we do retain the thumbnail cover image for the stream for a short period of time.”
Take that as you will.
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Years back, like 2004 ish, Google patented a method of using your browser to monger conversation in the room and then deliver relevant ads online based on that conversation in the room.
These days most of us expect that any internet connected device with a microphone is listening to us and feeding that data to advertisers.
They’re not doing that. They have different ways of tracking you and don’t need to listen to your real-life conversations, because they all (hopefully) know that if they were caught doing that, people would actually (hopefully) be upset enough to demand reform.
Take for example your location data. Is Google storing your location data? Yes. Are they selling it? I doubt it. Instead, big companies at one point were able to track your movement within stores by using your bluetooth beacon address. IDK if that’s still possible, but that’s more in line with the way these things pan out. Also keep in mind some companies have incentives to keep data to themselves, usually when said company peddles ads themselves. You’re still being tracked and are the victim of targeted advertisement, but your data is more siloed than you think.
Was his phone laying on the desk next to him while the conversation was happening?
