a quick note to say--

[kaberett]

In which the Internet is creepy: I spent Thursday & Friday nights at facesfriend's place. At no point did I connect to an internet via my laptop; at no point did I search the 'net for directions; and my phone Doesn't Internet and is in no wise associated with either Google or FB accounts. Most of our IMing is via gchat or IRC. How, then, is it that when I rocked up on facebook a little while ago from the Oxford Tube, it asked me if I lived in Cambridge, London, or facesfriend's area of town? BECAUSE IT HAS NEVER ASKED ME THAT BEFORE and Thursday was at most the second time I have been to that neck of the woods in my life.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

Big Data scares me and this is why. See also, the time Facebook asked if I knew one [redacted]. She's my therapist. Facebook should so hella not know who my therapist is.

But I don't know what to do about it except go totally off the Internet grid. And even then they'd still have all the previously collected data, and also so much of my life would lose vital functionality.

[milkymoon]

I wonder if Google and Facebook get data from emails or something. We've had Facebook, Google, LinkedIn etc ask if we know people that we've never talked to on the alternative accounts, or LinkedIn asking for us to add housemates, etc that we'd never contacted using the email associated with LinkedIn (but we have emails aggregated to several accounts so that may be why)...

[worlds_of_smoke]

Isn't there some sort of way to locate someone based on cell towers? Maybe they pinged your cell tower history and made an assumption? -headskritch-

[astolat]

Not enough info to be sure, but here's my guess -- you connected to Facebook from the Oxford Tube so I'm assuming you mean you were using the wifi at this station? FB could tell via geolocation where you were connecting from, and once it knew you were there, probably it just checked its database and saw that people who connect from that location at that time who have already told FB where they are from, are most often from those places. And it was probably accurate either just because of a lucky guess and/or train arrival patterns. So at a guess, it's not actually as invasive/creepy as it seems, just looks that way thanks to the magic of big data. :P

[syntaxofthings]

FedEx yesterday knew my exact age, previous addresses, and where my mother currently lives in an attempt to verify my identity. More like terrify me.

[kerrypolka]

Last week Google added "Staying at the Ritz" to my calendar for Tuesday-Wednesday, and claimed it had gotten it from an email. I searched my inbox for 'Ritz' and didn't find anything from the past two years. I have no idea where it got that from, but I did feel slightly reassured about how wrong it was.

[davidgillon]

Possibilities that occur to me:
Unacknowledged metadata sharing between telcos and google/FB. (This makes a scary amount of sense from the Google/FB point of view, and ditto for the telcos if Google/FB are willing to pay enough).
You might not have connected to the internet, but did your laptop? It doesn't even necessarily have to be a full handshake, just ping out an 'I'm here' message. I've generally concluded it's impossible to know what any tool on my PC is doing unless I built it myself (and as I think that's too much like hard work I should be paid for...)
Friends' son starts new job as a 'data scientist' next week, can't wait to hear what scarily invasive analysis of daily life he's actually doing.

[silveradept]

Some location things don't need you to connect, merely just to be in the presence of a signal, which they notate, collect, and then send along to the mothership when you are actually connected. It's quite insidious.

[khronos_keeper]

Oh, it's okay! See, gchat gets saved in logs the way that emails do, so they're also searchable by google's personalized search algorithms. Also, if your phone is in anyway listed on Google or FB or any social media sites, they can probably cross link which cell towers your phone signal bounces off of? And finally, different social media sites and Google analyze your social network compared to what they can glean from your physical location.

However, finally, in terms of FB asking you if you were from Cambridge when you were in Oxford, since areas like that tend to be shit in terms of reliably geolocating your IP ping, they tend to extrapolate to the nearest town. If you'd reloaded, it probably would have asked you if you were from X town/city relatively nearby as well.

Sorry, I'm American and marginally affiliated with intelligence/security stuff, so I'm a bit less scared than most, mostly by way of a.) I'm resigned to its omnipresence and b.) entertained by its real life fallibility. :D

[emceeaich]

Too many web pages load Facebook's scripts (for comments, single sign on, or just plain people stalking) so even if you didn't sign on to FB, you probably loaded a Facebook asset (single pixel gif, or javascript) and if you had any FB cookies, and there'd be enough info there on the basis of IP address to geolocate.

I'd recommend running the Ad Block Plus and Ghostery extensions and frequently updating them, they can stop sites from side loading Facebook assets.

Also, if you absolutely have to use Facebook, do it in a separate browser that is only used to look at Facebook, and delete all data (if you are feeling sufficiently burn-it-it with fire, use a virtual machine instance that gets deleted every time.)