Most things over here have gone electronic... taxes can only be filled on line, linked to a bank account. Immigration too, on line filled.
Holy Cow: You can make it exceptionally easy for Big Brother or you can make him work to get what he wants. Why make it easy?
Radar: Why would you want to make it hard?
I mean; for the last 10,000 years, zealots have been making it hard. Why do we want to hinder progress? I seriously want to know; why do old people cling to the past? I guess if you fight it; you're part of the problem; not part of the solution. Do you have a better way? Bring it! I(f you don't; please get out of my way).
Well, count me in as an "old zealot". I value my personal privacy and do not blindly trust any government to always do the right thing.
RADAR, post: 365075, member: 413 wrote: Look at what's changed in the last 40 years; is that a bad thing?
[sarcasm]Everything depends upon batteries and computer chips and both of em piss me off........[/sarcasm]
A Harris, post: 365108, member: 81 wrote: [sarcasm]Everything depends upon batteries and computer chips and both of em piss me off........[/sarcasm]
LOL! Every time we have issues with GPS I always tell my guys "Back when I started out I could just look back and see the chain was wrapped around a tree. Now I don't know what the hell is going on!"
It is sad that so many fantasize of someday becoming nothing more than mindless minions of The Almighty Overlord.
Must be time for the psychedelic hippie movement to return to rebel against The Establishment. I missed out on it the last time around. If life begins at 50, I have hope of becoming a teenager again before long. Perhaps this time I will try out holey tie-dye clothing with beads and Roman sandals and burn enough incense to smoke a black bear out of its den. Bell bottoms, granny glasses and antiwar posters all over my bedroom wall may be in my future.
Jim in AZ, post: 365097, member: 249 wrote: You do know that the little chip that went home in the box with you let a marketing company track it to your house?
And what technology might have been used to accomplish this? I think we're getting into tin foil hat territory here.
Getting back to the OP, I heard scammers will run a small amount first to see if the card works. Then try to get something big. Bruce, you might have a bigger problem in that a scammer appears to signed up for a merchant account using your company info.
Jim Frame, post: 365211, member: 10 wrote: And what technology might have been used to accomplish this? I think we're getting into tin foil hat territory here.
RFID - Radio Frequency IDentification
Check this out for additional info: Albrecht, Katherine. "Supermarket Cards: The Tip of the Retail Surveillance Iceberg." Denver University Law Review, Summer 2002, Volume 79, Issue 4, pp. 534-539 and 558-565.
Its been in use for years... no tin foil hat necessary.
The RFID chip doesn't enable any tracking once it leaves the store; a proximity scanner is required to read it. Using a "preferred customer" card is a different matter, and it doesn't need an RFID chip to keep track of what you buy.
the chip in your passport can be read at more than 5 meters
Jim Frame, post: 365483, member: 10 wrote: The RFID chip doesn't enable any tracking once it leaves the store; a proximity scanner is required to read it. Using a "preferred customer" card is a different matter, and it doesn't need an RFID chip to keep track of what you buy.
"...a proximity scanner is required to read it."
Correct - and you think there's not one of those in every cell phone? I think they may be in most new aotomobiles too...
Nov 27, 2007 ... rfid chip in cell phone is not a new thing
http://www.pcworld.com/article/139972/article.html
with proximity scanner too.
are you not quite ready yet?
Peter Ehlert, post: 365526, member: 60 wrote: are you not quite ready yet?
Today I took the blue pill and the red pill together. Then my unicorn pooped out a rainbow bridge that I took to return home. Thor out. (dropping the microphone).
Jim in AZ, post: 365518, member: 249 wrote: Correct - and you think there's not one of those in every cell phone?
But without a link to the purchase database, scanners "in the wild" only get the item ID. No purchaser ID, so no personal identity disclosure. What good does it do anyone to know that a certain item passed by on the street? "Big Brother" would have to have a scanner practically set up in your living room to connect an item to an address.
It's kind of like license plate scanners. With enough scan time (we're talking weeks, months) you *could* establish some potentially useful location information about a particular plate, but the investment in infrastructure and personnel to do so isn't trivial, so the analysis is only done in specific law enforcement cases.
The problem with Big Data is that it's so big that making use of it isn't easy unless you have the keys that narrow the field (e.g. reward cards, tracking cookies). You don't have to go the Holy Cow route the maintain a reasonable degree of privacy.
agreed Jim, Big Brother has more data than they can process on a daily basis, but they still gather more... it is in cold storage for when they wanna prosecute. NSA has a nearly unlimited budget, and the technology is far from new.
There is a chip in your Passport, another in your Driver's License.... so a catalog of any adult in proximity to you is kept. Now if you want then correlate that with the various consumer goods... such as that TV that is always listening and your computer that "phones home".
And since Big Brother freely shares, that would include Bubba when he gets his dander up.
Or TSA... imagine being at the check in returning home from vacation and finding that you are now on a No Fly List. That would really suck.
now, all this makes for great conspiracy theories... but some of those have proven to be true.
Peter Ehlert, post: 365638, member: 60 wrote: There is a chip in your ... Driver's License
Not in CA. Jerry Brown vetoed the bill that would allow that.
Jim Frame, post: 365588, member: 10 wrote: But without a link to the purchase database, scanners "in the wild" only get the item ID. No purchaser ID, so no personal identity disclosure. What good does it do anyone to know that a certain item passed by on the street? "Big Brother" would have to have a scanner practically set up in your living room to connect an item to an address.
It's kind of like license plate scanners. With enough scan time (we're talking weeks, months) you *could* establish some potentially useful location information about a particular plate, but the investment in infrastructure and personnel to do so isn't trivial, so the analysis is only done in specific law enforcement cases.
The problem with Big Data is that it's so big that making use of it isn't easy unless you have the keys that narrow the field (e.g. reward cards, tracking cookies). You don't have to go the Holy Cow route the maintain a reasonable degree of privacy.
Jim - The individual Item ID. (unique to each item) is linked to the purchser (or gift recipient) within hours if not minutes of purchase, cash or card puchase is irrelevant. Its not the "Government" that is doing this to any great extent at the present time, it is the large marketing firms. As I said, I have a relative in that field - the amount of money expended on this kind of stuff would blow you away. The statistics they can produce from their databases has a HUGE influence on what ads you see on your computer screen and what shows up in your mailbox. Television advertising is approaching the point that you may see a different advertisement than the folks across the street (just like computer advertising). All this information is for sale for a price... to nearly anyone that wants it. Its just another form of "mailing list." The "scanners" are not as tiny as the RFID chips, but they are in some very interesting places. I would not believe that this was anything other than a paranoid conspiracy theory if it weren't for this relative.
We are very habitual creatures. Because of that, it is very easy for a super computer to filter massive databases and figure out almost anything about our lives. How would an organization build such a massive database filled with personal information of everyone's lives?
Put your tin foil hat on here....by secretly tracking your every move, listening in to every single phone conversation, text, e-mail and potentially turning your microphone and camera on while you carry on private conversations....all this information stored for future use by whomever is in control of it at the time. Literally spying on you at a level multitudes greater than what was undertaken against the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Now step back and take your tin foil hat off and read the Snowden leaks. Some will say this is a good thing and we wouldn't be safe if it were not for these actions.
I am very sure the marketing companies (and especially Google, Amazon and one or two other online shopping places) are having a field day with me. But, hopefully to a somewhat lesser extent than others.
I adblock the living heck on the majority of my online experiences. When I log on to Comcast to check my email, I have all their ads blocked. Every single one. When I browse products online (for instance at Amazon), I often get emails touting various similar products and sales.... and the emails typically get dumped right into the garbage bin without so much as a peek at them.
I get snail mail adverts a few times a week. All but one or two go right into the garbage bin without so much as a peek. There is a local company that services central a/c units that regularly sends me snail mail ads. I do not have central a/c. How did I get on their list?
I have commenced to recording every single show I like on tv. The way the ads are structured are about as annoying to me as ads online. At least with recording the shows, I can fast forward through the ads. Especially annoying are the times when the ad breaks have been longer than the actual show material. 3-4 minutes of ads, then 2-3 minutes to wind up the end of the show.
There are other times I find myself watching a show on my computer (trust me, not my preferred method). I find myself finding a site that does not have ads instead of the network that produces the show.
