Connections Between Social Media and E-mail

    By ocean-kat on Mon, 06/10/2013 - 4:57pm |

    Given time restrains I didn't intend to blog here atm but I had an  experience with my Hotmail account that may have some interest to people here and apropos as we are now discussing internet privacy issues.

    Like many people I have a face book account. Rather sparse, rarely used, and some of the information I had to supply to sign up are lies. I signed up with a hotmail e-mail, just as I've signed up to this site with a hotmail e-mail. I never connected to facebook on my hotmail page. I never like anything on facebook or like any site by connecting it to my facebook account. I never connect to any site with my facebook account.

    For several months hotmail has been bugging me to upgrade my account, to outlook express they told me. Of course I ignored them as I was satisfied with hotmail as is was. About a month ago they informed me that they were upgrading me automatically. One of several new options was the ability to add a identifying picture to my e-mails. I could not care less so I did nothing. Yesterday they added a photo for me. The top picture from my facebook page. Keep in mind I never logged onto facebook from my e-mail page. In essence I never informed hotmail that I had a facebook page. Just as I've never informed hotmail that I've signed up with a hotmail e-mail here at dagblog or at several other sites.

    One can assume that hotmail, probably with some program, took all of its e-mail addresses and checked to see if the address was associated with a facebook account. And ocean-kat's hotmail address was. They then logged onto my facebook page, downloaded the picture from the top of the facebook page and added it to my hotmail account. Along with who knows how much other information I had on my facebook page.

    Amusing, in a way, since the lies I told to get a hotmail e-mail account are different than the lies I told to get a facebook page. I wonder how they reconcile those two sets of lies.

    Upsetting since this was done without my knowledge or consent. I wonder how many other sites I used that hotmail address to sign onto have also been searched to gather information about me.

     

     

    Comments

    Companies feel that your information is their property. Sometimes it can be relatively benign like pointing out books that you may like based on previous purchases.Other times it takes the form of abuses like the one you describe. The company assumes that you appreciate their assistance.

    If Snowdeb was able to have access to an individual's personal data from his keyboard, he was using data that a company had stored on its servers.


    by rmrd0000 on Mon, 06/10/2013 - 5:14pm

    Keep up the good fight against being put in that Skinner box by mixing up identities. Sacrificing coupons you might want to use are a small price to pay.

    We do have to worry about the brains of the youngest generation, those who neural nets aren't getting much training in do it any alternative way. Bill Davidow at The Atlantic:

    [....] If a fast-food provider using big data can discover by analyzing your Internet behavior that you have been looking for ways to lose weight, they have a pretty good idea that you might be one of those cravers and a candidate for a fast food virtual Skinner box.

    At that point, the marketing imperative becomes pretty simple. When your iPhone tells McDonald's or Burger King you are near a franchise, they send you a text message announcing 20 percent off on a Big Mac, or a Whopper and fries -- an unpredictable reward -- in hopes that you will react just like the rats in Skinner's boxes. Still more compelling is advergaming, and the role it plays in the cue, activity, reward cycle. For young boys, target-shooting video games now come with targeted ads for purchasing guns. Point of Impact, a mobile app released by Guns & Ammo magazine, is rated for ages 9 and up, for its "Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence" and "Suggestive Themes." The game allows players to shoot AR-15 rifles, the semiautomatic rifle used in recent mass killings, and provides links to gun manufacturers' websites.

    Advertisers will be able to engineer these gaming experiences in ways that are so compelling that they go from suggesting behavior to programming it? As virtual experiences become more real and behavioral targeting more precise, will consumer marketers be able to create BMW and Victoria Secret buying compulsions? [....]

    An aside. I haven't found most people to be oblivious to all this. Matter of fact seems like the most common topic of idle conservation recently is stuff like this which he mentions in the article:

    The effectiveness of these behavioral modification techniques are in plain sight -- families ignoring one another while checking the email and Facebook at dinner

    In particular I just heard about the assistant and exec who were sitting right across from each other yet texting almost everything rather than speaking. It occurs to me to think contrarian here and not just have a ridicule reaction: maybe they never liked speaking to each other. And maybe they want the record that text provides and voice interaction doesn't. As for the families or couples who used to sit in silence and stare around at dinner. At least they're communicating with someone and something now?


    by artappraiser on Mon, 06/10/2013 - 5:58pm

    P.S. A Hotmail account is my main email, since the 90's. I did change to Outlook early so I could grab the same name under Outlook.com. Mho, most of the Outlook.com changes suck, I liked the old system better. (Though the ability to do "sweep" deletions is great.) It wasn't just you, the deadline just passed and they transferred everyone on Hotmail to Outlook. Microsoft is one company that seems determined to keep it's branding intact, that of always making everything more complicated cheeky

    Like you, I have a very slim Facebook account that I have only rarely logged into. Unlike you, it is registered with the Hotmail account. Unlike you, I have not had any linkage between the two. Maybe what happened to you was a result of leaving the transfer process up to Microsoft? It's possible when I added the Outlook ability that I was given choices of settings, I don't remember. I do plan to investigate settings more, as I really don't like  how it conglomerates strings of related emails rather than keeping them separate....maddening....

    One thing I have been very fastidious about is that I have refused to register anyplace through Facebook, and it goes without saying then that I don't do Facebook "likes." If you've done either, that might be where the linkage comes from?


    by artappraiser on Mon, 06/10/2013 - 6:13pm

    I've been equally fastidious about never using or connecting to facebook on any other site in any way, shape or form.

    Apparently by default hotmail will search for a facebook account and a twitter account. I don't have twitter. They will download your public name, profile picture, "and other information" from either of those accounts and add at least some of  them to your e-mails. They will do the same for any e-mails you receive. It does seem as though this can be turned off and if I had voluntarily upgraded and checked the settings I could have opted out.

    ---------------

    What information is shared between Outlook and Facebook or Twitter?

    To provide you with an enriched email experience, we use encrypted email addresses to search for accounts on Facebook and Twitter. We only use the public names, profile pictures, updates, Tweets, and other information we receive from Facebook or Twitter

    --------------------

    No need to worry since they "only use the public names, profile pictures, updates, Tweets, and other information." Yes, its very specifically limited to "other information."

     


    by ocean-kat on Mon, 06/10/2013 - 7:17pm

    Upsetting since this was done without my knowledge or consent. I wonder how many other sites I used that hotmail address to sign onto have also been searched to gather information about me.

    There are some other related issues going on here.
     
    I just spent two hours last night 'erasing' four? types of software that somehow snuck into my computer claiming that they were there to 'clean' my computer. And all this software did was screw up my hardware.
     
    So I finish 'erasing' all of them and I go to bed forgetting to shut down my sound and this noble lady informs me that I have to contribute another fifty bucks or something to 'clean' my computer.
     
    Corporate spying is going to have a hell of a lot more effect on us peasants than the damn government; although I am not letting the 'govment' off the hook!
     
    I was thinking of doing a 'publication' blog. If you 'publish' a message all you need to do is communicate the same message to two people. That is just Black's Law Dictionary information.
     
    We cannot have it both ways.
     
    Most of us wish 'to be heard' and yet we are upset when 'they' discover what we are saying!
     
    So I publish some blog about how important Batman Comics are to me and mine and some 19 year old figured out how to include me in some survey and now I get fifty emails a day concerning Batman Comics.
     
    Capitalism at it's best, I guess!
     
     
     

    by Richard Day on Mon, 06/10/2013 - 7:33pm

    Odd that such a big deal is made about gov't tracking international phone calls (while Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook acquire and sell every bit of data they can get on you with your help.... using your browsing, purchases, email, 'likes', location, banking etc etc).

    Meanwhile,  few have a problem with billionaires/Wall Street buying politicians and government policy, writing laws and making special deals with secret 'social welfare' tax free contributions at election time..

     


    by NCD on Mon, 06/10/2013 - 8:12pm

    For this to be possible, facebook must have shared your email address and photo with microsoft without your permission, a serious confidentiality violation if you ask me. Are you sure that you never allowed hotmail to import contacts or anything like that?

    I googled around a bit and found this forum post about unfortunate cross-dressers who have been inadvertently outed by the hotmail change.


    by Michael Wolraich on Mon, 06/10/2013 - 10:13pm

    Just saw your comment above. I don't see how they could connect your facebook account without an email address from facebook.


    by Michael Wolraich on Mon, 06/10/2013 - 10:15pm

    LinkedIn begs me all the time to link everyone in my Gmail account, and shows me pictures of dozens of suggested ones, even though they're not connected and I don't use Gmail for LinkedIn.

    I stopped following all the mechanisms of how they track, but forwarding just 1 HTML picture with a link to one of these sites gives them a ton of connections to work from - cut-and-paste or however. The use of cookies has expanded, and the sign-on rules for most mobile phones & services gives Google & Apple another ton of private tracking to abuse. Just trying to be "helpful", they mash up all your accounts & info & deliver it to their chugging churning Big Data servers to make proper recommendations for you and keep America's commerce mills going.

    And forget about any "anonymous" service. Almost certainly the NSA tracks extra hard anyone using these services, and doubtlessly sucks all the data sent through them as the intelligence equivalent to high grade crack cocaine. "I have something to hide" is one of the signs they're looking for.

    So sit back, open up and enjoy it.


    by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 06/11/2013 - 2:53am

    The fact that they couldn't detect a spy within their own midst makes them  less scary.


    by rmrd0000 on Tue, 06/11/2013 - 7:19am

    That presumes they're actually focused on doing their jobs, rather than using our data for improper purposes.

    Presumably tasers are a good idea when a cop or others are attacked by a 320-lb dude angry & hopped up on drugs.

    Instead they get used on grandmas in a dispute about a seat at a ball game, or a guy passed out on a metro landing, or a 15-year-old girl in an argument with her mother or a pregnant woman who didn't sign her traffic ticket.

    These are the same kind of vicious incompetents who occupy NSA - they just don't have any public scrutiny to wheel in their worst mistakes.


    by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 06/11/2013 - 9:47am

    Apparently there is a privacy setting on facebook that allows your facebook page to be searched using your sign up e-mail. I doubt this existed when I signed up or I would have disabled it. Most likely at some point when I wasn't paying any attention to the facebook account, actually that's most of the time, they added functions and set them at a default level lower than I would have if I had been paying attention.

    ------------------------------------

    Outlook respects your Facebook settings

    We’re able to associate your Facebook account with email addresses that you have provided for that account based on your Facebook settings of who can look you up using the email address you provided.

    Managing your Facebook look-up setting

    Your Facebook setting of Who can look you up using the email address or phone number you provided controls whether other people, including those on Outlook, can find your public Facebook account by your email address or phone number on file with Facebook.

    For more information on this setting, see the Facebook help page.

    To block your public Facebook account from being found by Outlook and other services

    If you change your Facebook setting for Who can look you up using the email address or phone number you provided, then only the group of people you select will be able to find your Facebook account by your email address or phone number. Here's how to set it:

    1. Go to the Facebook privacy settings page.

    2. Sign in, if you aren't already.

    3. Next to the How You Connect, click Edit Settings.

    4. From the dropdown menu next to Who can look you up using the email address or phone number you provided select Friends of Friends or Friends.

    5. Click Done.

     


    by ocean-kat on Tue, 06/11/2013 - 2:25pm

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