Gadgetory

our applications do a lot of scary things behind the scenes scary but kind of cool now if you're a tech junky you'll probably appreciate the refreshers here but anyone nude this sort of thing may never end up trust in the internet or their cell phone ever again so what kind of things am I talking about hold your breath many people take agreements in contract with a grain of salt for example if I enable Google location services on my LGB 30 I understand that Google's gonna track me from time to time right or maybe it's all the time it's why this feature actually ends up draining many phone battery signals are constantly paying from the source and time intervals from various satellites or cell towers update your position with some trigonometry and calculus in real time this data is then however sent to Google in our case where it's used for a variety of missions purposes one of the coolest in my book is Google traffic it's also pretty creepy I guess I should say location did it send from millions of phones across the world are all sent to Google several times per minute where it's processed and used to calculate traffic conditions this is all by the way listed in the agreements that you agree to when you download these apps in short the bulk of users and cars with typically Android phones using location services or changing locations over time right so Google knows the distance traveled per interval time and can then calculate the rate at which various cars and moving per section of road they have millions of phones to access so for instance of a car with an Android phone inside travels along a section of Interstate 10 and only moves 30 feet between communications which are let's say every five seconds then in Google can approximate an average velocity of four miles per hour or roughly six and a half kilometers per hour Google knows this is a freeway and assigns a red congested color to this stretch of road based on the number of users in front and behind experiencing a similar travel delay of course nobody in the right mind would willingly go four miles per hour on a freeway it's unobtrusive for the most part apart from battery stress which is why I'd label this one more cool than scary this was also an oversimplified example but you get the point and by the way Google isn't the only company doing this they're just the best at it let's move on to Facebook a company that seemingly sprung out of nowhere as the social media platform currently used by over two billion people that is pretty incredible but much like goo Facebook uses its user data and unorthodox and intriguing ways also some pretty creepy ways for example Facebook uses its messenger application to track all user locations down to a few meters on a consistent basis it's one of the reasons why this app has been known to drain smartphone batteries it's also why Facebook decided to separate its primary application from the messaging interface it separated user permissions and allowed for a dedicated location service if you think about it's kind of smart because most people aren't downloading an IM application expecting to be tracked day in and day out but it's one of the reasons why Facebook decided to split it from the parent application but worse than this is what Facebook actually does with this location data since it relies on targeted advertising as a source of income a big source of that income the company actively and consistently collects user data across various websites and various locations completely unaffiliated with Facebook itself in turn the application allows businesses to target you according to your demographic makeup and lifestyle down to the very square footage of your home yes Facebook can do that it doesn't just stop there by the way according to targeting data Facebook allows businesses to pinpoint for example soccer moms persons who plan to buy a car as well as a style and brand of car you currently drive users with X number of credit lines open your credit score and those who prefer NCIS over law and order if you visited any web site on any browser after logging into Facebook regardless of whether you've done it in incognito mode or not listen closely to this one Facebook still has access to that data and likely stores it in fact they can run around your browser entirely and access your ISP servers directly for of course a small charge one of the perks of being a big company it's also why this core user was so confused and surprised when he noticed Facebook was actually retargeting with relevant ads after searching for products in incognito mode Facebook's a fun one to pick at because its users are often so unaware of what's going on behind the scenes with their data how do you think it knows when you appear in an untagged photo for instance how does it know that it should recommend you to be tagged if it's your face it maps your entire face based off previous photos you've attributed to your likeness and uses predictive analyses to better gauge potential product audiences for interested companies it can predict things so well in fact that it's even successfully guests childhood crushes based on poses and photos and comments exchanged between parties and unrelated posts if that's not creepy I don't know what is many believe you're also being listened to I have to stress this one's not confirmed but there are some pretty creepy reports out there many reported relevant ads for products about which they've never even posted a message to anyone here's just one example how does something this specific end up in an advertisement if you've only spoken about it literally spoken about it not posted it anywhere there are several videos about this very topic by the way several experiments that I've linked in the video description just something to watch after this if you're still interested in the topic Facebook strongly denies this claim by the way stating quote we don't and have never used your microphone for ads just not true data mining according to many is a 100 billion dollar business I happen to think it's a great deal bigger than that your data is voluntarily distributed to firms all across the globe from various research and advertising purposes many of which you'll probably never know about I know it seems like I've picked on Google and especially Facebook in this video there were more or less used because of their sheer sizes and capabilities but data is worthless unless you can do something with it they above all else have the resources to do some crazy and scary things with it if you'll just take one thing away from this video nothing you do online is private absolutely nothing doesn't matter if you're tunneling through a VPN or if you're an incognito mode someone can always watch and someone can always store that data unless you're I don't know will I think will could probably get around that if you liked this video be sure to let me know by giving this one a thumbs up I appreciate that thumbs down a for the opposite or if you hate everything about life I guess you can thumbs down it for that too be sure to click that red subscribe button if you're feeling lucky and I'll catch you in the next video this is science to do thanks for being creeped out with us