posted August 25, 2020 03:07 PM            

With my 'American' medical insurance, I was speaking to an agent in Manilla!!! {The Philippines }

BTW!!!
Remember how I said my fav-files were gone, or empty?

I went to save a new website in one of my empty previously-labelled folders, and suddenly as I created a new-file under it, all the other older previously-saved subfiles appeared in a row above it!!!

posted November 12, 2020 09:57 AM            

And!, in the mean time

*~

So TODAY...
The Sun at 20+ Scorpio is poised to enter my Scorpio 12th House!!!!

I went to Astrodienst www.astro.com to check on the position of an asteroid, and it WOULDN'T let me THROUGH----- Instead the entire screen was 'filled' with THIS message.

{{If you click the link above, you'll see it in full glory!!}}

QUOTE

We value your privacy

We and our partners store and/or access information on a device, such as cookies and process personal data, such as unique identifiers and standard information sent by a device for personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, and audience insights, as well as to develop and improve products.

With your permission we and our partners may use precise geolocation data and identification through

"device" scanning -- ????????????????

You may click to consent to our and our partners’ processing as described above. Alternatively you may access more detailed information and change your preferences before consenting or to refuse consenting.

Please note that some processing of your personal data may not """require your consent""", but you have a ~~right to ""object"" to such processing.

Your preferences will apply to this website only. You can change your preferences at any time by returning to this site or visit our privacy policy.

/quote
--------------------------------------

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?????

"our partners may use precise geolocation data and identification
through device scanning -- ????????????????

"THROUGH DEVICE SCANNING" ??????

Does this mean that in order to use Astrodienst anymore, that I have to GIVE PERSMISSION that their advertisers can look through the 'contents' of this entire 'COMPUTER HARD DRIVE' -- i.e. my desktop?????

They can FRISK each and every 'personal' piece of information WE have inside this computer?

""but you have a right to ""object"" to such processing.""
"Molestation" anyone???

posted November 13, 2020 03:12 PM            

My roommate does the same as you--
he signs up for everything and anything.

I mean too, there's nothing I have 'inside' the computer that's criminal or anything like that-- but JUST the thought of "advertisers" frisking through EVERY single thing.. feels a bit unnerving!

posted November 13, 2020 05:28 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by mirage29:
Yes, Teasel ..

My roommate does the same as you--
he signs up for everything and anything.

I mean too, there's nothing I have 'inside' the computer that's criminal or anything like that-- but JUST the thought of "advertisers" frisking through EVERY single thing.. feels a bit unnerving!

~silly me?

---

posted November 13, 2020 06:04 PM            

So far this seems to be for primarily commercial processes and done by bots. That is it's not live operators doing it, but automated programs that are scanning for words, and then tailor the ads.

It's an invasion of privacy to be sure, but some can argue that it's not that harmful...despite the stories popping up of ads coming in that revealed a pregnancy to others when the one possibly pregnant didn't want others to know that.

But Cambridge Analytica and others have also used them in research, secretly using your cams and mics to gauge emotional responses which were not only used to tailor ads to you and/or those of your psyche profile for commercial purposes, but also political ones.

posted November 13, 2020 11:24 PM            

It is correct that he DOES open himself to anything-- He really likes it when they take any and all his info and turn it into conveniences for himself.
FB comes up with posters of him in costumes of his interests and conversations, etc.

Sorry.
I should have read it more carefully
and considered an edit to make it clearer.

Pixie... Thanks again for offering an explanation that makes it clearer.
You (and Teasel) are always thorough!

Someone-I-know says she looks at it as the price we have to pay now FOR being connected to the internet.

Frankly, I think it's kind of dishonest (or a slap/insult to the customers) when you're held hostage; (loosely meaning) 'you can object ALL you want, but your objections won't matter A.Single.BIT?' We gotcha!!
..
Would be like going to their office.
Clerk gives you a paper to write-out your complaints/objections.
You hand it back.
They bland-face smirk while running your paper through the shredder, in front of you.

Interesting about the woman who got a 'positive' reading on her pregnancy test, and it 'appeared' publicly in a way where her friends were able to guess (before she would have wanted them to know)?
..
What?
Did the machine "read" her doctor's private email to her, then splash her accounts with congratulation-type opportunity ads?
*smh*

Thanks MUCH for your inputs.
I guess I'll have to click the "agree" ..
on the Dark of Moon! ~~ hahahhhh

New Moon in secrecy "Scorpio" 23.17'31"
in my secrecy "12th House"
7 minutes after the Midnight-hour (A.M.) EST
Sunday, Nov 15, 2020.

I feel hot and cold about the issue--

* on one hand, "why not!"
This will teach the computer to conform and shape-itself closer to my own patterns and desires. Maybe I can get more done, and more quickly;

* on the other hand,
what are *they* keeping my senses so saturated and blinded-with, that after a while I'll enter a kind of limbo where I'm not going to be able to perceive OUTSIDE of my own mind-bubble wall of perceptions? Get away from my own head??

Hmmm..
Will it also present a challenge -- where we have to develop a cleverness in searches that can throw them for a loop?

hahahh again! ...
Doing "Battle??!"
with 'bulls' of wall street??
[3:48] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWpA-2-KdDo

posted November 14, 2020 09:27 PM            

And it can be complex, like this one:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html

quote:

---

There are, however, some brief periods in a person’s life when old routines fall apart and buying habits are suddenly in flux. One of those moments — the moment, really — is right around the birth of a child, when parents are exhausted and overwhelmed and their shopping patterns and brand loyalties are up for grabs. But as Target’s marketers explained to Pole, timing is everything. Because birth records are usually public, the moment a couple have a new baby, they are almost instantaneously barraged with offers and incentives and advertisements from all sorts of companies. Which means that the key is to reach them earlier, before any other retailers know a baby is on the way. Specifically, the marketers said they wanted to send specially designed ads to women in their second trimester, which is when most expectant mothers begin buying all sorts of new things, like prenatal vitamins and maternity clothing. “Can you give us a list?” the marketers asked.

“We knew that if we could identify them in their second trimester, there’s a good chance we could capture them for years,” Pole told me. “As soon as we get them buying diapers from us, they’re going to start buying everything else too. If you’re rushing through the store, looking for bottles, and you pass orange juice, you’ll grab a carton. Oh, and there’s that new DVD I want. Soon, you’ll be buying cereal and paper towels from us, and keep coming back.”

The desire to collect information on customers is not new for Target or any other large retailer, of course. For decades, Target has collected vast amounts of data on every person who regularly walks into one of its stores. Whenever possible, Target assigns each shopper a unique code — known internally as the Guest ID number — that keeps tabs on everything they buy. “If you use a credit card or a coupon, or fill out a survey, or mail in a refund, or call the customer help line, or open an e-mail we’ve sent you or visit our Web site, we’ll record it and link it to your Guest ID,” Pole said. “We want to know everything we can.”

Also linked to your Guest ID is demographic information like your age, whether you are married and have kids, which part of town you live in, how long it takes you to drive to the store, your estimated salary, whether you’ve moved recently, what credit cards you carry in your wallet and what Web sites you visit. Target can buy data about your ethnicity, job history, the magazines you read, if you’ve ever declared bankruptcy or got divorced, the year you bought (or lost) your house, where you went to college, what kinds of topics you talk about online, whether you prefer certain brands of coffee, paper towels, cereal or applesauce, your political leanings, reading habits, charitable giving and the number of cars you own. (In a statement, Target declined to identify what demographic information it collects or purchases.) All that information is meaningless, however, without someone to analyze and make sense of it. That’s where Andrew Pole and the dozens of other members of Target’s Guest Marketing Analytics department come in.

Almost every major retailer, from grocery chains to investment banks to the U.S. Postal Service, has a “predictive analytics” department devoted to understanding not just consumers’ shopping habits but also their personal habits, so as to more efficiently market to them. “But Target has always been one of the smartest at this,” says Eric Siegel, a consultant and the chairman of a conference called Predictive Analytics World. “We’re living through a golden age of behavioral research. It’s amazing how much we can figure out about how people think now.”

---

quote:

---

Andrew Pole was hired by Target to use the same kinds of insights into consumers’ habits to expand Target’s sales. His assignment was to analyze all the cue-routine-reward loops among shoppers and help the company figure out how to exploit them. Much of his department’s work was straightforward: find the customers who have children and send them catalogs that feature toys before Christmas. Look for shoppers who habitually purchase swimsuits in April and send them coupons for sunscreen in July and diet books in December. But Pole’s most important assignment was to identify those unique moments in consumers’ lives when their shopping habits become particularly flexible and the right advertisement or coupon would cause them to begin spending in new ways.

In the 1980s, a team of researchers led by a U.C.L.A. professor named Alan Andreasen undertook a study of peoples’ most mundane purchases, like soap, toothpaste, trash bags and toilet paper. They learned that most shoppers paid almost no attention to how they bought these products, that the purchases occurred habitually, without any complex decision-making. Which meant it was hard for marketers, despite their displays and coupons and product promotions, to persuade shoppers to change.

But when some customers were going through a major life event, like graduating from college or getting a new job or moving to a new town, their shopping habits became flexible in ways that were both predictable and potential gold mines for retailers. The study found that when someone marries, he or she is more likely to start buying a new type of coffee. When a couple move into a new house, they’re more apt to purchase a different kind of cereal. When they divorce, there’s an increased chance they’ll start buying different brands of beer.

Consumers going through major life events often don’t notice, or care, that their shopping habits have shifted, but retailers notice, and they care quite a bit. At those unique moments, Andreasen wrote, customers are “vulnerable to intervention by marketers.” In other words, a precisely timed advertisement, sent to a recent divorcee or new homebuyer, can change someone’s shopping patterns for years.

---

One such event is pregnancy, and so many programs try to analyze data to determine if someone is having a baby, because if they can get them hooked (and also expecting mothers are even easier to manipulate into buying with guilt) then they'll likely get a steady source of revenue. So they look for ways to entice expectant mothers in...which resulted in this disturbing case

quote:

---

About a year after Pole created his pregnancy-prediction model, a man walked into a Target outside Minneapolis and demanded to see the manager. He was clutching coupons that had been sent to his daughter, and he was angry, according to an employee who participated in the conversation.

“My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s still in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?”

The manager didn’t have any idea what the man was talking about. He looked at the mailer. Sure enough, it was addressed to the man’s daughter and contained advertisements for maternity clothing, nursery furniture and pictures of smiling infants. The manager apologized and then called a few days later to apologize again.

On the phone, though, the father was somewhat abashed. “I had a talk with my daughter,” he said. “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of. She’s due in August. I owe you an apology.”

---

quote:

---

When I offered to fly to Target’s headquarters to discuss its concerns, a spokeswoman e-mailed that no one would meet me. When I flew out anyway, I was told I was on a list of prohibited visitors. “I’ve been instructed not to give you access and to ask you to leave,” said a very nice security guard named Alex.

Using data to predict a woman’s pregnancy, Target realized soon after Pole perfected his model, could be a public-relations disaster. So the question became: how could they get their advertisements into expectant mothers’ hands without making it appear they were spying on them? How do you take advantage of someone’s habits without letting them know you’re studying their lives?

---

I know it's very sensitive, though sometimes wildly inaccurate. I emailed someone complaining about the exterminators my partner insisted upon, and suddenly that specific email address is hit with ads for pest control, as just one example.

posted November 16, 2020 02:15 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by teasel:
Mirage, I just received that notice again, when I was checking my transits. A friend recommended that I install something that turns off javascript on pages (so that I can read news articles, without having to subscribe). I just clicked that, and it got rid of the pop-up. I don't know if it will keep them from scanning for your location, and whatever else they mentioned, but the pop-up is gone. It's javascript manager, in the extensions area of the browser, that you can add on.

Oh, and it's fine, re: the previous post.

---

I wasn't sure if I wanted to chime in.

Your absolutely correct teasel!!.

Javascript extensions are essentially small programs that run on your browser.

Most vulnerabilities are now done at the browser level.

I wouldn't be so worried about phishing and even Man-in-Middle/ eavesdropping type attacks if the websites uses https.

A little bit different but the concept is the same for mobile phone conversations.

The police or almost anyone can mimic the cell tower between the caller and the receiver then eavesdrop.

A Man-in-the-middle attack on a website would mimic the website between the sender and receiver and do some phishing...but again https defeats this.

Never access a website using http while at Starbucks or any other public wifi that's were people will do the phishing.

Anyway if a website says allow Extensions always click disable unless you know exactly what extensions are going to be run and or installed by that website.

Sometimes you can click on view extensions and see what extensions that browser will use them for.

Best is to set your browser extensions to disabled and only allow them when needed.

You might get websites that say "this website cannot be viewed because you have your extensions disabled"

It will then ask you to "allow" and sometimes view the extensions and see what there used for.

Click on "allow", don't click on "Always Alow" that way the extensions can only be used when your browsing that website only and when you give it permission to run then it goes back to disabled again.

@mirage
I whould have just uninstalled my browser and wipe it all clean then do a reinstall and set all browser extensions to disabled.

Worst case, reinstall windows or which ever operating system your using and start reinstalling everything.

But that's the extreme case. I wish I was there and could install and monitor wireshark.

It's a free network analyser that you can use to monitor all internet traffic on your computer.

The objective is to look for anomalies and anything that appears unusual.

FYI: My major is BSc in Computer Science Honours.

posted November 16, 2020 06:20 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by DualGemV2:
I wasn't sure if I wanted to chime in.

Your absolutely correct teasel!!.

---

posted November 16, 2020 10:33 PM            

Teasel!! Of course you're right, a LOT of times!!!

Javascript.. Yes, I've come across that in some websites. They asked me to turn it on. I didn't.
Asteroids website that shows that message.
- http://www.kentauren.info/menu/index1.htm?page=/cgi-bin/astephn.pl

What you wrote Teasel, helped me get closer to understanding what the astro com wants.

DualGem! My Gemini-friend. haha
Thanks for chiming in!!! and the advice.

I still haven't gone to the astro com site yet.
Might wait a few days--
do more research.

One of these days, I'm going to know this stuff well!!