It's not really new. "They" have been doing this ever since you had a mailing address, birth certificate, driver's license, Marriage license, any records at the courthouse, on and on ad infinitum. It's just easier now that it is all accessible by computers. Our company received a weekly update from the County Sheriff of any employee arrested sent to the personnel director for example. By computerizing data the scanning, sorting and compiling of it by computers merely speeds up the process. Although I really don't like being bombarded by ads because I looked something up on the computer...

Hi,

Well it is much worse now because they have just about everything you talk about in messages and who you talked too and who your doctor is and who your dentist is and what stores you shop and where you go every time you go out. It's nuts.
I'll ask everyone the same question: Could there be a class action lawsuit in this?

 

They are doing it primarily because it is physically possible for them to do it. That's part of the mantra of "Big Data": Collect every scrap of information you can vacuum up because someone, someday, might find a way to mine it and since you can't mine data you don't have....

While it doesn't make me feel much better, the vast majority of the data sucked up will never get used -- probably less than 1% of it will. But certainly the potential to do things I object to will all of that data is real and I don't like them collecting it (but they didn't ask my opinion when they decided to collect it). So the best I can do is limit the opportunities for them to collect it. My smartphone has exactly two apps that I've installed and I examined their settings pretty closely (which doesn't mean that I didn't miss something) and I've tried to lock down the phone as much as possible. I don't do any form of social media (beyond AAC and two other forums). There are other things I could (and should) do, but they involve information that's been out there so long there isn't much point in trying to scrub it (but, still, I really should).

Hi,

Oh ok well now i just wonder:
I'll ask everyone the same question: Could there be a class action lawsuit in this (invasion of privacy) ?

 

Hi,

yes that is the way i feel too. They should not have access to ANYTHING let alone even know who my friends are and what their phone number is, mobile phone number that is, which is not otherwise available if i am right (maybe not but i thought that was protected).
I'll ask everyone the same question: Could there be a class action lawsuit in this?

Only a lawsuit if the provider violated its privacy policy. That is what this whole thread is about, I thought. READ and THINK about those terms, such as "associates," mean. An associate is any entity empowered to get the information, usually by payment of a fee.

No one reads the fine print, including me. Until, I got the "revision" of eBay's privacy policy. So far, big corporate has not complied.

 

I doubt you could win a lawsuit against them. Most people blindly click YES on the well written by their lawyer's terms and conditions. It was kind of like the T&C s we had at our company. No one in their right mind would have signed them and some large corporations corporate lawyers forbid their client's to sign them. But if you wanted to do business with us you basically had to agree to indemnify us from anything even if it was our fault. Even my engineering dept. supervisor said he would have never signed them. But people do blindly and give all of their rights away to play on the computer with other like-minded folks. Has anyone ever read what they signed to use this forum?

 

The issue is that these systems (most being useless - facebook, twitter, instagram, even google is becoming useless as a search engine) are so imbedded in our lives that most would give up all their freedoms to keep them around and that is sad. How did we get here?

I have recently been wrestling with another interesting data question - hospitals legally own all patient data (at least in canada). I find it rather strange as it is patient information and it would have not been generated without the patient. It was paid by the patient to be produced so how is it that the hospital owns it? They claim that patients are only entitled to copies of their records. This premise is one of many reasons for the issues in healthcare today.

 

They claim that patients are only entitled to copies of their records.

And that is all the hospitals have... It's all electronics bits of data today captured by electronic sensors. Doctors and nurses don't write on charts anymore it is all computerized. They don't even teach kids to write in cursive or tell time on an analog clock face now. I doubt they even teach engineering drawing in college now after the advent of CAD. Times are a'changin...

 

I have recently been wrestling with another interesting data question - hospitals legally own all patient data (at least in canada). I find it rather strange as it is patient information and it would have not been generated without the patient. It was paid by the patient to be produced so how is it that the hospital owns it? They claim that patients are only entitled to copies of their records. This premise is one of many reasons for the issues in healthcare today.

Ownership of the medical record per se is based on a very long history. One can look at it as a "work product" (WP) of the physician and others as it contains more than just numbers and images from tests. It contains professional opinions and observations making it the WP of those professionals. The same applies to attorneys, architects, and many other professionals. As the electronic record has evolved, there have been questions raised, but I don't think a physician will ever be required to release and erase a medical record, barring a court order.

Can you be more specific about how getting a copy of the EHR "...is one of many reasons for the issues in healthcare today?" What issues?

 

I'll ask everyone the same question: Could there be a class action lawsuit in this?

What tort was committed or contract violated? Who has actually read the terms of use and privacy policies?

 

I'll ask everyone the same question: Could there be a class action lawsuit in this (invasion of privacy) ?

Have you ever been a member of one of those lawsuits? I have, and have never ever received a payout from one.

 

The wrong in this is that when people first joined they didn't fully understand what all would be collected. And as time went on they started collecting more than they were at first under the guise of a better more immersed experience that's able to suits your needs, when in fact it was more for their needs.

This is Identity Theft pure and simple
OH! and then they sell "YOUR" information without "YOUR" consent to third parties and others.

And!!! you got no money for "YOUR" information being sold.
Brzrkr

 

Hi and thanks much for all of the replies.

Only a lawsuit if the provider violated its privacy policy. That is what this whole thread is about, I thought. READ and THINK about those terms, such as "associates," mean. An associate is any entity empowered to get the information, usually by payment of a fee.

No one reads the fine print, including me. Until, I got the "revision" of eBay's privacy policy. So far, big corporate has not complied.

Now you are making me think. In the US we have the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that is 'supposed' to grant certain 'rights'. Notice i had to put two of the most important words in quotes.

One thing we dont see i guess is the ability of a second party to demand or ask the first party if it is ok to void those rights.
That's another area where the Constitution fails us. The Founding Fathers had no idea that there would be entities that would try to find ways around the Constitution itself. They had no idea there would be criminals who tried to find ways around this.
So in effect the Constitution says you have been granted right X and anyone can come along and ask you to sign a paper that says tha you give up that right. There needs to be an amendment that states that no one can take those rights away even through an asking. That gets sticky though because then you dont have the right to give up a right.

So as we knew all along, there is no such thing as privacy anymore. There's certain areas where we will lose that right to privacy.
The thing i see here though is that it is almost like it is forced on us. Just like with a product name where we are not allowed (in many cses) not to use a word in the name that is too common (even though maybe that has changed too now) or at least it used to be that way.
The demand to give up the privacy right seems to have been forced on us through the takeover of certain technologies. If you dont agree with giving up that right then you dont get to use an ALMOST necessary technology in the modern age. That's where i see it is wrong. We are being forced, not really asked.

NOW i find that certain programs have been updated in my phone without me being asked if i wanted the update. During one 'update' i lost an icon and had to spend time figuring out how to get it back.

So one day we will go into the bank to ask for a car loan and the loan officer will ask, "So hey, how is that ingrown toenail doing?"
"And did you get that hernia operation yet?"
"Did your ex girlfriend get that sex change yet?"
"Sorry we dont want to give you the loan because your ex wife called you a jerk three years ago."

 

Constitution that is 'supposed' to grant certain 'rights'.

The Constitution grants nothing. It limits the Federal government's ability to infringe upon the natural rights that we all possess as a consequence of being born human.

 

I disagree joeyd
source: https://www.livescience.com/37398-right-to-privacy.html
The Privacy Act of 1974 prevents unauthorized disclosure of personal information held by the federal government. A person has the right to review their own personal information, ask for corrections and be informed of any disclosures.

Now I know it says nothing about a private company but there was no Google, (Twit)ter and Tracebook in 1974.
Brzrkr

 

I disagree joeyd
source: https://www.livescience.com/37398-right-to-privacy.html
The Privacy Act of 1974 prevents unauthorized disclosure of personal information held by the federal government. A person has the right to review their own personal information, ask for corrections and be informed of any disclosures.
Brzrkr

Oh. Which Constitutional Amendment was that?

 

The wrong in this is that when people first joined they didn't fully understand what all would be collected. And as time went on they started collecting more than they were at first under the guise of a better more immersed experience that's able to suits your needs, when in fact it was more for their needs.

This is Identity Theft pure and simple
OH! and then they sell "YOUR" information without "YOUR" consent to third parties and others.

And!!! you got no money for "YOUR" information being sold.
Brzrkr

Not understanding the words in a document to which you agreed is a very weak argument indeed. The expensive lawyers who craft those documents are well aware of that argument and choose their words wisely. Plain and simple, the people who "didn't understand" didn't read it.

Re: "<collected information>, when in fact it was more for their needs." Exactly. Their needs (i.e., to make money by any legal means) are your personal data. If you don't know what the product is, it is you. If you disagree, don't agree to the document.

It is not theft, unless you can show the information was not obtained legally.

 

Hi William,

There is lot of people that installed little amount of free software but published / posted personal data describing their family, daily activity even the house where they live. The actual difference with telling all those pieces of information in any social meeting or posting in the Web is that the last is way too much more easily to collect and destined to last being available forever (?).

Maybe I am wrong, but, as long all the data about myself does not afects my safety I give a dime on what anyone knows about me. My real secrets are those that I never told to anyone and are writen nowhere in the world.

The problem is that little innocent pieces of information can be collated into a larger whole that can be devastating in its impact. This is even officially recognized in that it is possible for a collection of data, all of which is completely unclassified individually, to become classified as a whole just because of the larger picture that can be drawn from it.

Also, people share all kinds of things without even being aware of the kind of impacts it might have. Someone posts a picture of their kid out in the front yard building a snowman and some sex predator extracts the geotag data and now knows where this cute kid lives. Of course there's no way to be completely safe and most potential vulnerabilities will never actually be exploited. But the more you put out there, the more there is to be exploited and the greater the likelihood that it eventually will be. So it's a balancing act.

 

What tort was committed or contract violated? Who has actually read the terms of use and privacy policies?

I have and regularly do. This is not to say that I fully understand everything I am agreeing to, but there are a handful of specific things I always look for, particularly in the Privacy Policies. I severely limit the sites I sign up for and there have been numerous sites that I wanted to register with that I chose not to because I was uncomfortable with (or outright objected to) the privacy policies.

 

Have you ever been a member of one of those lawsuits? I have, and have never ever received a payout from one.

I've been a member of many of them (always by default) and got a check for something like $8 a couple decades ago as a result of one of them. IIRC, the prototypical plaintiff got something like $2000 and the lawyers got something north of $4 million.

The one I was a member of that really had me shaking my head was against Classmates.com in which they were being sued for deceptive advertising by telling people that had the free baseline membership that someone they knew was trying to contact them but that they had to upgrade to the Gold membership for $20 in order to view it, only to discover upon upgrading that it was bogus. The settlement was a $2 discount on a renewal of a member's Gold membership, which was absurd on the face of it since the whole lawsuit was that the member was tricked into buying a Gold membership that they didn't want in the first place, so to get their settlement they now have to renew that membership and pay Classmates.com another $18 for something they didn't want. So only about 50,000 people (out of over 50 million members of the class action suit) files for a claim. The total payout to members was less than $120k (including the $2500 to the named plaintiff) and the administrative costs alone of paying out the claims was more than twice that. The lawyers got over $1 million above and beyond reimbursement of an unstated amount of expenses.

 

@joeyd999
It's not in the constitution it's an ACT like the civil rights act
@jpanhalt
But when the language used is above someones pay grade to understand this is the problem.
Why is there not an opt out or a delete my info and you can't sell it without my permission clause.
Brzrkr

 

I've been a member of many of them (always by default) and got a check for something like $8 a couple decades ago as a result of one of them. IIRC, the prototypical plaintiff got something like $2000 and the lawyers got something north of $4 million.

The one I was a member of that really had me shaking my head was against Classmates.com in which they were being sued for deceptive advertising by telling people that had the free baseline membership that someone they knew was trying to contact them but that they had to upgrade to the Gold membership for $20 in order to view it, only to discover upon upgrading that it was bogus. The settlement was a $2 discount on a renewal of a member's Gold membership, which was absurd on the face of it since the whole lawsuit was that the member was tricked into buying a Gold membership that they didn't want in the first place, so to get their settlement they now have to renew that membership and pay Classmates.com another $18 for something they didn't want. So only about 50,000 people (out of over 50 million members of the class action suit) files for a claim. The total payout to members was less than $120k (including the $2500 to the named plaintiff) and the administrative costs alone of paying out the claims was more than twice that. The lawyers got over $1 million above and beyond reimbursement of an unstated amount of expenses.

The purpose of class action is to hurt the perp, not enrich the victims.

And the lawyers always get paid (both sides).