• helenslunch
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    5 months ago

    Yeah there’s no question: your data is not safe. There are like 3-4 data breaches every day because no one holds these companies accountable for protecting your data.

    • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Yeah there’s no question: your data is not safe.

      Is that really a question when companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, your bank, etc. all claim your data as their property then sell it for profit, while offering no consideration in return?

      • helenslunch
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        5 months ago

        Those companies don’t sell your data, they just USE it to sell all kinds of other shit.

        • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          Many do sell data, actually. I just literally made a post about this, with real figures instead of numbers I’ve previously pulled out my ass. If you click my profile it should be high up there (otherwise it will be difficult for me to find it in your own instance). This is my instance’s version of the post: https://lemm.ee/post/21285233

          The main source stated that the “legal” data brokerage industry, that is companies who simply buy and sell user data, was worth $319 billion in 2021.[1]

          The global data broker market was valued at US$319.030 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.96% over the forecast period to reach US$545.431 billion in 2028.

          Data brokers are the companies that collect the information of users through the internet legally and further, provide this data to various companies

          You are right though, some companies (eg Google) simply collect user data and use it for themselves, they don’t really sell much of what they have. This means that my figure where your average user is owed $40 per year would be an underestimation, possibly a very large one.

          We could maybe add the value of Google to the industry value, however even then Google’s value is offset by their various loss-leading ventures - the true value of the data Google holds is completely obscured. In any case, I need to go to bed! XD


          1. https://www.knowledge-sourcing.com/report/global-data-broker-market ↩︎

          • helenslunch
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            5 months ago

            Of course they do. I said “these companies”. As in MS, Google and Facebook. They’re not sellers, they’re buyers.

            • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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              5 months ago

              Well, they do also sell data access to governments. The argument when the government requested data from them was “we aren’t set up for this, it will incur significant expenses, we’ll have to develop solutions then set up and staff a department to handle requests”, which the government paid for. It’s not directly purchasing the data, but it is effectively.

                • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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                  5 months ago

                  I’ll be honest, I’m still tired from last night lol, too much so to go digging. We’re also talking about something that has been the norm for more than a decade now - Google have long since established their processes for dealing with government requests. This may have started sometime around 2012, perhaps even earlier. I probably read it in an Ars Technica article, at a guess, but it could also have been something I stumbled upon on reddit.

          • ANON@lemmy.ml
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            5 months ago

            Man google doesn’t have enough to sell they are barely scraping by on 10000 a day

    • Moira_Mayhem@beehaw.org
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      5 months ago

      I have worked IT for 2 Fortune 500 companies and let me tell you NONE of them took data security seriously.

      Neither has 90% of any of the other sites I’ve worked on.

      In my experience so few companies bother spending appropriately on it because IT is considered a cost center instead of a needed service.