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Wolfie Christl @WolfieChristl
, 5 tweets, 3 min read Read on Twitter
Unbelievable. In June, T-Mobile's CEO tweeted that they "will not sell customer location data to shady middlemen" anymore.

Now they sold access to a data broker, which sold it to another one, which sold it to some person, which sold it to another person, which sold it to Cox.
1) Both giant corps and tiny data firms just don't give a f*ck

2) In the EU, this would/should be a 4%-turnover-case, for ALL involved parties

3) It's not just the bounty hunter accessing it, it's a systemic issue

4) 'Fraud prevention', the evil twin of marketing surveillance
"We pull from GPS, Wi-Fi, and triangulation sources"

Here's another location data broker. According to its website, this company has 1 billion "unique mobile IDs" and claims to buy location data from AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, Telefonica, Vodafone… complementics.com/wp-content/upl…
Complementics states their database includes device IDs, IP addresses, carrier info, demographic and interest profiles; however, geolocation data is "U.S. only": complementics.com/wp-content/upl…

They "work with" credit bureaus, insurers, hedge funds, healthcare firms... /cc @josephfcox
They also "work with" large data brokers such as Neustar, Lotame, Oracle and LiveRamp (formerly: Acxiom):
complementics.com/data-monetizat…

And Salesforce lists Complementics as a third-party data provider:
konsole.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/artic…
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@samfbiddle And now as Facebook removed the "white genocide" category, advertisers could e.g. buy access to 3 million people interested in Alex Jones:
@samfbiddle Another option? Advertisers could target people who are interested in the 'new world order':
@samfbiddle Or what about targeting people on Facebook who believe in 'chemtrails' and sell them stuff, anxieties or other kinds of outrage?
Read 6 tweets
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Wow, just came across this 2017 annual report by the data company @Nielsen. It mentions @facebook as a "third party data enrichment provider" (!) since 2010.

As far as I see, this partnership wasn't mentioned during any of the parliamentary FB hearings:
d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001492633…
So:

- What does it mean when Facebook is a "data enrichment provider"?
- Which (personal) data did Facebook share with Nielsen and vice versa?
- How exactly does Nielsen match "audience data from over 9.5 billion unique device IDs" to "over 350 million unique user profiles"?
I discovered this part of Nielsen's annual report through a U.S. class action complaint that accuses the company of misleading shareholders over its GDPR compliance:
Read 8 tweets
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So, MasterCard sells purchase data to Google and others. Both are not open about it at all.

My take: exploiting knowledge based on combining/matching *individual-level* data = systems of consumer mass surveillance, whether 'double-blind encryption' or not bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Anyway, great reporting by @mhbergen and @jennysurane.

This was an open question since Google stated that they take advantage of "third-party partnerships, which capture approximately 70% of credit and debit card transactions" in the US in May 2017: adwords.googleblog.com/2017/05/poweri…
Of course it's better when they use data mining tech that allows extracting knowledge from data about individual behaviors across firms without disclosing more data as necessary to each other. For pointers about how they might really do it see this thread:
Read 16 tweets

Related threads

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NEW: Disturbing details from @motherboard on how wireless carriers are selling the location data of Americans. This is a nightmare for national security and the personal safety of anyone with a phone. motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/…
After I exposed these dangerous practices last year, several carriers, including @tmobile’s CEO @JohnLegere told me point blank that his company would stop selling customer location data to shady third parties.
Major carriers pledged to end these practices, but it appears to have been more empty promises to consumers. It’s time for Congress to take action by passing my bill to safeguard consumer data and hold companies accountable. wyden.senate.gov/news/press-rel…
Read 3 tweets
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Scoop: AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint all selling customers' real-time location; ultimately ends up in the hands of bounty hunters. I know, because I paid someone $300 on the black market to track us. Located to a specific part of New York. No hacking required motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/…
Telcos sell customers' real time location to one set of companies, that then sell it to an array of different industries: car rental, fraud detection, and yes, bounty hunters. The supply chain is so complex, the telcos don't even know who has your data motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/…
Even if AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile sell their location data to one company, it eventually trickles down to people not authorized to use it at all. Including me. Potentially stalkers, criminals too. "People are reselling to the wrong people," source said motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/…
Read 18 tweets
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Google CEO Sundar Pichai testifies on user data practices before the House Judiciary Committee. I'll be live tweeting because there's nothing I love more than Republicans wasting my tax dollars complaining about bias against them that doesn't exist! c-span.org/event/?455607/
There are also some serious concerns that I hope members ask Pichai about including data breaches, Google's operating in China, sexual harassment problems, and the radicalization hellscape that is YouTube. #techhearings
Alex Jones and Roger Stone are both at the hearing so I'm sure this won't turn into a circus at all. #techhearings
Read 91 tweets
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I've been researching the idea of Unconditional Basic Income since 2013. Here's a list of findings I've compiled from various UBI experiments, unconditional cash transfer studies, and cash dividend research.

The data speaks for itself.

Data: reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/… #basicincome
1) "The design and framing of Mincome led participants to view payments through a pragmatic lens, rather than the moralistic lens through which welfare is viewed… this paper finds that Mincome participation did not produce social stigma."

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ca… #BasicIncome
Although there was a slight decrease in hours worked per year when primary earners were provided a basic income guarantee in the 1970s, that emerged as a result of spending more time between jobs, reasonably looking for a *good* job instead of *any* job.

academia.edu/1159217/A_fail…
Read 21 tweets
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UCC had opportunity to comment on the #Data.Protection & Privacy Bill. The enactment of this law is long overdue. A comprehensive law on the collection & processing personal information gives effect to the right to Privacy envisaged under Article 27(2) of the Constitution
UCC welcome the protections offered by the Bill in terms of export of data, breach notification requirements, data subjects access rights, automated decision making, compensation and the right to be forgotten and provision for financial and penal sanctions for breach of the law.
Distinction between Data collectors & data controllers.
The Bill should however clarify & distinguish Data Collectors, from Data Processors & Data Controllers. Clause 2 is inconsistent with international good practice which provides for two broad categories of Data Controllers
Read 17 tweets
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ICE is out in full force throughout LA. LAUSD grapples with future insolvency. Greedo has less than 1 week left of freedom.

And today, this is all Vichy LA Weekly has tweeted. A music video premiere of a New York pop artist and a riveting dispatch from AlienCon. #BoycottLAWeekly
Some news to announce that I’ve confirmed from two different sources: Semanal Media, the incompetent frauds that own Vichy LA Weekly, allegedly made a recent offer to buy the OC Weekly in cash. The offer was thankfully turned down, saving that paper from total ruin.
Why is this significant? It contradicts the shameful lie that Semanal Media gave when they bought LA Weekly.

They claimed that their lack of cash meant that they had to fire the entire staff. Now suddenly, with their paper still failing, they’re trying to buy another one w/cash?
Read 6 tweets

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