And When You Click OK

By | March 25, 2018
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

And When You Click OK

I was online doing some research for an upcoming article when I – quite by accident – stumbled onto a post from Time.com / Money.

After we posted an article on how to share large files with Google, I noticed that many people are concerned with privacy in general and Google in particular. It surprised me a bit, since the Internet is not a very private place anymore.

But, don’t worry. I’m not going to post the entire Time.com / Money article here, but here’s a link to if you want to read it.

The part of that article that I thought many of you would be interested in, is the following section titled “The Lesson”.

It contains a couple of tools/sites that help illustrate how you need to be aware what happens every time you click “OK” to something.

Keep in mind that it’s generally impossible to get rich giving something away, no matter how wonderful that “thing” would be. Mark Zuckerberg didn’t become a billionaire by giving free Facebook accounts away, Microsoft made a lot of money giving Windows 10 away free, Instagram, Google and dozens of other companies,  are making a ton of money by giving away things for free.  Keep this in mind:

If you’re not paying for a product, then you may become the product being sold.

We’re not trying to scare you; we’re trying our best to keep you informed. And we want you to keep in mind that when you use the Internet you do not have much expectation of privacy anymore. Your ISP, possibly your government, and many of the free services, like those mentioned above, may be keeping a lot of information about you of which you are not aware.

One way you can stay on top of things is by staying informed. So, here is “The Lesson” from the  Time/Money article we referenced above.

The Lesson

If you really want to dig deep, Popular Science recommends using a third-party program that will locate your data. Try Stalkscan, which promises to show you “all ‘public’ info Facebook doesn’t let you see,” or check out Data Selfie, a browser add-on that follows your Web activity and “reveal[s] what machine learning algorithms could predict about your personality based on that data.”

But before you get mad, remember that in most cases you gave these apps access. You were complicit every time you quickly clicked “OK” when asked for access to your smartphone’s microphone just so you could play Angry Birds faster, Rice said.

“We gave up all this data willingly not really knowing what the impact is,” he added. “We should take more control of our data and be curious as to how it’s going to be used.”

So, if you’re not paying for a product, you may indeed become the product being sold. Be careful what you post on social media.

4 thoughts on “And When You Click OK

  1. JonInOz

    “Mark Zuckerberg didn’t become a billionaire ………. “, but he allowed a so-called social site to be at the top of the Anti-Social chart.
    In the real world social clubs, I will call them (sites) use dicretionary methods in the process of allowing individuals to become members.
    Mark Zucherberg allowed the web of his college Facebook to spread all over the world and without discretion all the perpetrators of evil have access to Facebook.
    Real world social site’s leaders’ do not spread personal and private information of every member all over the world for profit.
    TC & EB, you could have become billionaires if you had a site similar to NOTH and allowed billions of uncouth, police-politicians-other-respectablecitizens-abusing members to run wild with foul language, lies, deceit, and other farciful wierd actions of ‘keyboard’ attacking of strangers.
    Honest people with a regular income of a few dollars and cents are immensely superior to the billionaires and dishonest, disrespectful Zucherbergs of the world.

    Reply
  2. D.

    I always find it interesting what new way they come up with to make money off of us. While we are in bed sleeping of a night they are coming up with something new.

    Reply
  3. D.

    “So, if you’re not paying for a product, you may indeed become the product being sold. Be careful what you post on social media.” I meant to add above if this is not in one of the top things about being on the net then it should be.

    Reply
  4. Sandy Euglow

    Here I am bothering you people again. I have installed by the coaxing of my friends a program called Discord. I should have asked you before I did but I didn’t and now I am paying the piper. I cannot get it off my computer. I even went on their website to see how to do it. Followed their instructions and it looked like it deleted it until I turned this computer off and back on. It popped up this morning. Do you know anything about that program? It’s suppose to take the place of Facebook. I don’t like it and try as I may, I can’t get rid of it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *