by 0naptoon
It tracks user behavior on the site and connects it to info provided from the internet from a network of undisclosed partners. It share data with them to create a unique profile that can be used to reveal the user real identity
It is quite probably that somewhere on the internet exist a centralized profile for each of us that keep track of everything we do on the internet.
We don’t even know where this account is located and what information it contains about us. The majority of the people do not even suspect this account exist
There is this false understanding that when you create a profile on a website they will just know information about what you do on that website only. Which make sense. If you talk about anime on reddit then reddit will know you as an anime guy. No problem.
But in reality each website sends and receive data about the user with undisclosed partners and this information is used to build an unique, unified profile account. By whom? We don’t know.
From a practical point of view these computation about what you like, what you do, who you are, need to be made in an unique centralized place.
There is no need for each website to calculate a profile about you because it will just be a mess. Each will have a different understanding of your real “persona” and the information will be limited both for advertising and for population control.
Browsing around the ever-changing user agreement on reddit there are many points to study and ponder but just a few examples.
Reddit have a network of partners that they call “entities” with whom they share information about an user with the purpose of creating a personalized profile. These entities are not listed anywhere, as an user you don’t know if reddit have facebook as a partner or the CIA.
And don’t forget Reddit can’t control what their partners do with the data they send about you. Reddit could be a partner with advertising agency X and then this agency will be a partner with facebook or NSA. Or the secret service in Russia, why not.
As a shitty tactic example Reddit does not respect “Do Not Track” option in your browser and keep privacy options as Opt Out by request, not Opt In as would be fair
Is quite simple, you can have 18 different accounts of reddit, five twitter accounts, one facebook, two youtube accounts, somewhere in the cloud there is ONE account that combines all the information in ONE single profile about you.
All due to the power of network distributed responsibilities. You give permission to each of these websites as separate “entities” you had never given permission for a combined account with all the data about you, but the best part that is all legal.
They can take what is your sexual orientation from the types of adult video you are watching, how much money you have in the bank, use the gps location to know when and where you commute, if you are healthy or not at this precise moment, what is your political orientation, and on and on.