Who Benefitted From Facebook Stealing Your Soul?
Lookie here. Eighteen different committees made payments to Cambridge Analytica totaling more than $16M from June 2014 to December 2016, according to FEC filings.
Ho Boy, Ted Cruz sure wasted his money. Hell, that man is unlikeable even when he knows what you want to hear.
And lookie here who oversaw the collection of data.
Conservative strategist Stephen K. Bannon oversaw Cambridge Analytica’s early efforts to collect troves of Facebook data as part of an ambitious program to build detailed profiles of millions of American voters, a former employee of the data-science firm said Tuesday.
The man is the devil. I’m telling you right now – he’s got a 666 tattoo somewhere.
Thanks to Deb T for the heads up.
A murder of crows
An exultation of larks
A shrewdness of apes
and
A BANNON OF SLEAZEBAGS! (Stolen from Charlie Pierce)
1Yeah, and Faux Noise is pushing an equivalency trope that says Obama did it first in 2012. Apparently, The Obama campaign INVITED people to sign onto a data sharing list of some sort, and the results were meh and it was later discontinued. But sharing your data when you are invited to do so and having your data mined without your permission (or if your permission is obtained by false pretense) are ONLY equal in the Fauxnyverse. The Murdochs -and indeed, the entire right wing!- have no shame.
2As a teacher, I was asked by the school district not to go on Facebok due to some unfortunate consequences in other districts.
3Since retiring, I have avoided it due to the hateful posts I was hearing about. I have also avoided Twitter and all the other social networks. I may be a dinosaur, but Trump and the Rethugs don’t know squat about those of us who inhabit our virtual Jurassic Park.
Patrons
4Every single thing you do on the internet is recorded and waiting to be mined by anyone with the wherewithal and money to do so. Google, Facebook, Yahoo all analyze data in order to bury you with ads their research says you will respond to positively. If you tell Facebook your favorite films or check-in at restaurants, etc the ads will become more and more pointed as Facebook’s ad partners build a profile of you. It is disconcerting but predictable. As users of gmail or yahoomail or other email services, we trade privacy for “free” email. In order to post cute cat images on Facebook, we trade privacy. The quid pro quo for every internet transaction is privacy. Including this post. 🙂
Ahem…from the WMDBSI’s closing on every post:
“Be Sociable, Share!”, followed by a bunch of social media link buttons… :]
A hint I’ve advised y’all to use before–
Use the Opera web browser, the best and safest one available (well, there are some others…but they don’t have all the useful features of Opera).
I almost never ever see any ads at all, period.
And my IP location tracking info always shows me being in places like a burg in Switzerland, France, Germany, Isle of Man, Canada, all over the US, Singapore, Australia, etc. So they don’t even bother.
Opera has built-in, very simple options to truly, really rly block ads, and activate your own cloaking VPN with just a couple clicks. Try it, you’ll luv it.
Guess what also too, the White House and others, they’re also using the same unbreakable, encrypted email service that I’ve advised y’all to get and use several times: Protonmail.
Protonmail is based in Switzerland, is totally end-to-end encrypted secure, and you can even send and receive timed self-destroying, uncopyable emails if you like (you can set a time-of-destruction for the email, when up it just disappears forever). Even the Protonmail admins have no access, and their servers are located under a mountain. None better, no analysis, ads, tracking, or anything else fishy.
See, paranoia is normal now, you need it to (maybe) avoid some of this crap.
5What puzzle me is that facebook/zuckerburg is one of the most mercenary souls in the universe.
6They attempt to profit off of anything they can.
For them to allow a data leak of such proporations without seeking to profit from it is almost completely inconceivable ( yes I do know what that word means)
Couple that with reports that the facebook security (oxymoron in this case) chief has been sidelined over his reported insistence to investigate the breaches and russian manipulation contrary to ceo’s wishes makes one question whether other payments are/have been made to reimburse them.
facebook has just taken a $37 BILLION loss of value and zuckerberg lost several billion personally yet they are still doing nothing but further muddying the waters in finding guilty parties.
Perhaps because, like the horror movies say, the call is coming from inside the house.
How much is zuckerberg et.el. profiting from tax cut and continued access to the russian market?
Yes, Sandridge, I remember your advice and I have been using Opera, but frequently when i try to post an innocent comment on this site, the outfit which monitors this site refuses permission to submit the comment and the word INAPPROPRIATE appears. Could the VPN be the cause?
7666 is Jughead’s the SIL’s tramp stamp. But it’s highly possible Dotard45 had 666 branded on all of that maladministration.
Whichever comes first, Mueller Time or the 2018 elections, it can’t happen fast enough to dismantle that den of thieves.
8maryelle,
Funny you should mention that issue. I have, only very recently, seen that same response from this website (and only this one).
As you suspect, I think that one of the Opera VPN IP pseudo-locations that it assigns to you is on some sort of blacklist (due to some others’ nefarious activity elsewhere) and JJ’s server is taking a blocking action.
I’ve (almost) proved this hypothesis by changing my pseudo-location, and having it then work.
How to do that, you ask?
Just find that little blue ‘VPN’ rectangular button on the browser address line, just to the left of the URL window slot (it shows blue when active, tan/orange when changing, plain when off).
9Click on it (the blue VPN button), a useful info and options box will drop down.
There is the VPN “On-Off” button slider. You can also see your web usage, status, etc., and a settings/options button.
Near the bottom of the box is your virtual location selector menu, and current IP address (the Opera VPN cycles/assigns many different IP addresses to your browser (and everybody else’s too), which is what the webpage servers see).
Click on the “(Optimal) Location” menu, it drops down a choice of world regional virtual locations that you’d like to use.
Change your location to some other place on Earth, and then retry the website. It will probably work fine then.
READ THE FINE PRINT! Like Micr says. Anything and everything you have on social media is harvested for future use. It says that they can use the information and the information on your friends in any way that they want. Right before you click ‘I AGREE’. It was the harvesting of information on my friends that made me unsign from all social media. I couldn’t bring myself to sell my friends out too. Well, except you Juanitia. You are my happy place.
10Thanks Sandridge. In order to submit my previous comment, I used Mozilla Firefox, but that is not a VPN. I changed the optimal location and if this comment submits, it worked.
11Y’all are using those codes that I don’t know. I guess I got to take lessons from the grandson. These days his girlfriend gets priority. I don’t understand….grin.
12How do you find Opera?
Don’t feel like you’re alone, Marge. I had no idea what he was talking about either.
13Marge Wood, go to Opera.com and download. In order to use the Virtual Private Network click on VPN blue box at the top.
14I access my email from it as well as juanitajean and other sites.
I set my Optimal location as Europe.
OK. I’ve been hoping to find something better than AOL. Lately I;ve had to talk to them a lot about mown inability to access my email. Some nice kids in India helped me through it. Now does Opera an the other service have a tech support phone number?
15Errgg…
Go to this website: https://www.opera.com/ (y’all know how to swipe, copy, and paste, right?)
About Opera in easy terms:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_(web_browser)
Opera’s feature set is fantastic (even a nerd like I only use a fraction to suit me, others use what they like):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_of_the_Opera_web_browser
Look around on the Opera page for some details.. There are free Opera versions for Windows versions, Apple, and the various smartphones like iPhone, Android.
“Help & FAQ for Opera browsers”: https://www.opera.com/help
https://www.opera.com/computer/features/secure
https://www.opera.com/computer/features/free-vpn
Use the Download buttons/links to get a copy of the Opera browser installation file. Install it on your computer, laptop, or phone. Open it up, go through the options settings and select to suit.
Start using the browser.
It works as simple or as complicated as you like. I guess that’s why I’ve been using it since the 1990’s, version 1 ( it’s now on ver51). It can be hellaciously complicated if you like, and do many things.
Until ~version 14, Opera also had a fantastic built-in email client (like Outlook or Thunderbird), I still use my old copy too.
Don’t tell me you don’t know what an email client is, and that you still use a braindead, spying, ad infested webmail app like Yahoo or Gmail? (I do have a gmail acct, but only access it through an email client, never on a web browser)
“Version information
Version: 51.0.2830.55 – Opera is up to date
Update stream: Stable
System: Windows 10 64-bit (WoW64)”
It’s still complicated…welcome to 2018…Bannon, Parscale, etc., have been watching you.
We won’t even get to Protonmail, safe and secure under that Swiss mountain. It is free, open source software, easy to use. They also have paid versions, to support them, I guess you can even pay with cryptocurrencies ;] .
I’ve used it since it began (you had to request an invitation), ~2014. Per reviews I’ve read, it’s still the best secure email available to civvies.
(yes, I used others like Hushmail before. Used to have secure corp stuff too (like the keyfob encrypt thingie), but retired 17 years ago, at 54y/o, pau).
OK, I lied… :
https://protonmail.com/
“Swiss Privacy
Data Security and Neutrality
ProtonMail is incorporated in Switzerland and all our servers are located in Switzerland. This means all user data is protected by strict Swiss privacy laws.
End-to-End Encryption
Automatic Email Security
All emails are secured automatically with end-to-end encryption. This means even we cannot decrypt and read your emails. As a result, your encrypted emails cannot be shared with third parties.
Anonymous Email
Protect Your Privacy
No personal information is required to create your secure email account. By default, we do not keep any IP logs which can be linked to your anonymous email account. Your privacy comes first.
Open Source
Free Secure Email
We believe email privacy should be available to all. That’s why our code is open source and basic ProtonMail accounts are always free. You can support the project by donating or upgrading to a paid account.
Easy to Use
Security without the hassle
ProtonMail can be used on any device without software install. ProtonMail secure email accounts are fully compatible with other email providers. You can send and receive emails normally.”
Etc etc etc…
Y’all are beginning to see the necessity of paranoia, yes? Especially now with Comrade Bonespurs, Putin and Co. now spying and attempting to control you.
16maryelle, (PS:the VPN button won’t be blue until you first turn it on).
“I set my Optimal location as Europe.”
Since your IP connection traffic will actually route through that distant location, I sometimes change location if I think things have slowed down a little due to daytime heavier traffic in that location.
EG: Use a VPN European location at this (local evening) time since it’s night over there in Euroville now (1919hr local, O’darkthirty there), switch to Asia in the morning, when they’ll be in the night time…
It’s all getting insane, isn’t it? The curse of Nerdism, things devolve to the most complicated state possible (real life tech really is far more complicated than I even hint at).
PSS: If you run any online ‘speed tests’, turn off the VPN, it’ll test faster. I use DSLReports speed test, and they first do some “Ping” testing, you can see where you are, then it pings sites near your VPN IP URL, like if you’re currently in ‘Europe’ and run the test, it will ping Paris, London, Berlin, Cologne, Vienna, Rome, etc., then test from there.
That Star Trek transporter can’t be to far off now, right? Beam me up, JJ..
17More about Protonmail.
If the Democrats and HRC had been using this, how might history have been different?
Get your secure email account–
https://protonmail.com/signup
“Physical Security
18ProtonMail’s infrastructure resides in Europe’s most secure datacenter, underneath 1000 meters of solid rock…
Our story begins where the web was born, at CERN.
We are scientists, engineers, and developers working to protect civil liberties online.
ProtonMail was founded in 2013 by scientists who met at CERN and were drawn together by a shared vision of a more secure and private Internet. Since then, ProtonMail has evolved into a global effort to protect civil liberties and build a more secure Internet, with team members also hailing from Caltech, Harvard, ETH Zurich and many other research institutions.
Today, we help our community of millions of users secure their private data online. More than 10,000 supporters have assisted us in this mission by donating to make this project possible. Thanks to your support, we are continuing to develop state of the art email privacy and security technology from our home base of Geneva, Switzerland.”
Thank you, Sandridge, for your invaluable information.
19I plan to check out ProtonMail ASAP.
Here’s a link that I read still from time to time even after retiring in early 2017…
20https://www.schneier.com
Thanks for all the info Sandridge.
“A BANNON OF SLEAZEBAGS!”
21Thanks to Charlie Pierce via BarbinDC for this. So fitting.
The NRA used C/A to get out the vote. From Newsweek-
The NRA spent more than $30 million to help the real estate mogul win election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. For perspective, that’s more money than the group spent in all federal campaigns during the 2014 election cycle combined.
The gun group may be even further financially entangled with the Trump campaign. The Federal Election Commission is investigating whether Russian entities, including a Kremlin-linked banker, funneled money to the NRA to help Trump. The probe comes after McClatchy first reported the possible illegal contributions in January and subsequent calls from the liberal advocacy group American Democracy Legal Fund to investigat
22“Bannon of Sleazebags” ranks right there with a “murder of crows” andf a “sneak of weasels.”
23So I noticed that Cruz gave Cambridge Analytica only $100,000 less than Trump gave Cambridge Analytica. I wonder if Ted thinks he got taken by Bannon? I also wonder why Alan Dershowitz insists that Ted Cruz was the smartest student he ever taught at Harvard.
24Sandridge – one word of caution. I have downloaded Opera twice in two weeks and got a redirect virus with it both times.
Once I uninstall the virus disappears. 🙂
25Sandridge –
26From the tech dummy:
If you’re using Proton, but the emails are being exchanged with someone on an accessible service, like Yahoo, are they still secure? Or does anything sent from either end become accessible?