- what is data harvesting? It’s a process of storing personal data from the users who uses online softwares, android apps and other online services.
- why data harvesting terabytes of data? what is the incentive here? why fill up terabytes of storage with personal data of users? Big companies do this data collection to target you with personalized ads and also to sell your data to data brokers
- Most people says “well i don’t have anything to hide so i don’t care” - but a person could have a embarrassing mental sickness like schizophrenia or OCD etc, and private stuff that shouldn’t be disclosed. Just because someone has things that they prefer to keep secret that doesn’t mean we are doing something criminal.
feel free to tell me what I should change or add to this? Thanks in advance!
Data harvesting isn’t about trying to find saucy details about you that can be used against you like blackmail. It’s not about whether someone has “nothing to hide.”
It’s so corporations/advertisers/influencers know your routines, know your interests, know what kinds of content you respond to, know where you get information from, etc. in order to use those avenues to influence your behavior. And advertisers just using it to sell you a product only scratches the surface. What they really want is to know exactly what lies they can tell you and how to dress them up so that you’ll believe them without question.
This is what was discovered when Cambridge Analytica blew up years ago. And then, by some “miracle,” it was almost completely forgotten within a year of occurring, and no meaningful actions were taken to prevent similar threat actors from manipulating people again. And yet we are seeing dozens of examples in recent years of deliberate misinformation campaigns being used to influence global politics, all because people believe it’s okay to freely give up their data because they have “nothing to hide.”