What DeleteMe and Incogni aren't telling you

[rejectconvenience]

Video link: https://youtu.be/iX3JT6q3AxA

Blog post (for more context): https://www.rejectconvenience.blog/blog ... ces-video/

Within the blog post, I've linked all of my research notes, as well as the script for the video, which can be accessed by anyone for free. I'm doing this to allow people who want to learn more about this topic to have a solid launching off point to dive even deeper. Didn't like the stuff about car companies? Well, it turns out that I researched several car companies that didn't even make it into the video, and with Nissian, I even tracked every change to their privacy policy to answer the question: when did it get creepy? (spoiler, it was a long time ago). The notes are a bit chaotic, as is my brain, so heads up if you plan on reading through it. I tried to organize it as much as I could while doing it, but you know how that can go sometimes.

Anyways, I learned a ton making this video, I've already updated so much of my process to account for future deep dive videos. I'm aiming to do a privacy policy live stream sometime this month, so keep your eyes peeled! Hope you have a good one!!

[Tam]

missing hand at 15:36 https://youtu.be/iX3JT6q3AxA?t=936

Reject Convenience - What DeleteMe and Incogni aren't telling you [iX3JT6q3AxA - 1099x824 - 15m36s].png (604.48 KiB) Viewed 10072 times

[Thoughtless]

You should look into wifi beacons and bluetooth beacons.

When you travel around a store with your bluetooth and wifi on the could triangulate your device. Say that you wander over to the electronics aisle stay for 5 minutes then speed through groceries yet linger at the drinks section. They gives them great data on what people are interested in, if they stop at the promotions, that people who are interested in 'A' are likely interested in 'B'. Not too creepy yet. Just market analysis right? After all what they have is just a device ID.

Well you are done shopping so you go check out and enter your phone number for rewards. Well now they know who you are, what your phone number is, what you bought, and where your interests. They can also make some conjectures such as that you do not have interest in food but are interested in tech. But you are poor as you did not pick up anything so you need is a coupon. They needn't bother with food as you speed through the food aisle yet you have quite the number of items.

The fact that android and ios now rotate their device ids do not matter much as each time you check out your rewards give you away.

As for removing your information. That is up to the individual. VPN also up to the individual. Good OPSEC and Data Hygiene is always valuable. Just because one can't get all of them does not mean it does not have value. Do I think they are over priced? Yes.....

I love your videos as they are simple yet well researched. I can point new people to your videos without them feeling helplessly out of their depth and directionless. I do agree that pushing for privacy forward legislation is great but I will stay away from saying anything more on that subject as I can have strong views and privacy on the whole is highly political. Not left or right but people v corp. v gov.

[Borgi]

Edit:

Just saw, that the issue I pointed out has already been covered in the cookies video. Sorry, that I didn't realise it earlier. Thank you very much for covering it!

[Pearlple]

When you travel around a store with your bluetooth and wifi on the could triangulate your device.

Very important and valid point and it goes far beyond the use case you are describing here. I guess like many of the matters this community considers important to care about, the general public just doesn't care or doesn't want to spend the time needed to understand enough that they would care. For us there are various options to deal with this; obviously the 'simplest' way is just using a dumb phone and this issues is no more. Beyond that, there is the option of turning those functions off. It can be quite the hassle, but for example on GrapheneOS I can just set a limit so that if I am not connected to my Wifi or Bluetooth devices for a few seconds, it will turn those functions off automatically.

Though I believe this might be going off-topic for the context this video a bit and probably needs it's own in depth discussion or even a seprate video.

[December_W_Wolf]

I left a comment on the video itself regarding my first reactions and everything, but one thing near the end of the video personally stuck out to me, and I felt it would be more appropriate to mention it here because we have additional context. As part of the member perks, a Discord server was listed, but it seems you (Anthony) were previously against a Discord server (with this being one of the motivators to create this forum website to begin with), citing reasons such as not loving Discord's privacy policy, ending up making people register to Discord and not reading it, and the closed-off nature of Discord servers and their contents.

I am now very curious about the change of heart. Is it perhaps the notion that many of your viewers have a Discord account already? A second reading of the privacy policy that changed your mind? Is it so that people can keep using the services they're already signed up to without having to register for a new one (the forum)?

[Thoughtless]

When you travel around a store with your bluetooth and wifi on the could triangulate your device.

Very important and valid point and it goes far beyond the use case you are describing here. I guess like many of the matters this community considers important to care about, the general public just doesn't care or doesn't want to spend the time needed to understand enough that they would care. For us there are various options to deal with this; obviously the 'simplest' way is just using a dumb phone and this issues is no more. Beyond that, there is the option of turning those functions off. It can be quite the hassle, but for example on GrapheneOS I can just set a limit so that if I am not connected to my Wifi or Bluetooth devices for a few seconds, it will turn those functions off automatically.

Though I believe this might be going off-topic for the context this video a bit and probably needs it's own in depth discussion or even a seprate video.

I may have misjudged the interest and scope of the community due to his catalog of videos. Either way his videos are informative and well researched without straying too far into the "paranoia". I do think its good to explore the deep end and learn to scale back till one find one's comfort zone but too fast and people believe its hopeless. I brought up that one scenario because it illustrate how devious companies can be yet how easy the solution is once aware.

EDIT: I just remember a time before the CCPA when doing the manual opt outs took 2 months worth of weekends filling out forms, jumping through hoops and following up only to see it back up in the second half of the year. Of course it was only a few hours each weekend but the stress and frustration has left its mark on me. Now I just let EasyOptOuts do the work and do some touch up here and there. I don't remove everything everywhere anymore. A crumb of stale data here bad data there. After all a void is quite noticeable and a mystery piques interests.

[rejectconvenience]

I left a comment on the video itself regarding my first reactions and everything, but one thing near the end of the video personally stuck out to me, and I felt it would be more appropriate to mention it here because we have additional context. As part of the member perks, a Discord server was listed, but it seems you (Anthony) were previously against a Discord server (with this being one of the motivators to create this forum website to begin with), citing reasons such as not loving Discord's privacy policy, ending up making people register to Discord and not reading it, and the closed-off nature of Discord servers and their contents.

I am now very curious about the change of heart. Is it perhaps the notion that many of your viewers have a Discord account already? A second reading of the privacy policy that changed your mind? Is it so that people can keep using the services they're already signed up to without having to register for a new one (the forum)?

There's a paywall, so there's already intention to be on such a platform. Also, not all Patreon members sync to their Discord, so it's still optional, which is what I care about. This community I wanted to be open to anyone without worrying about Discord's privacy policies at all. That's it!

[shakefistiness]

Hey, enjoyed this video a lot and don't really have a lot to add to the discussion except could I ask what the music is playing in the background of part X please? Doesn't seem to be either of the ones YouTube lists.

Thanks!

[notDonaldJTrump]

You should look into wifi beacons and bluetooth beacons.

When you travel around a store with your bluetooth and wifi on the could triangulate your device. Say that you wander over to the electronics aisle stay for 5 minutes then speed through groceries yet linger at the drinks section. They gives them great data on what people are interested in, if they stop at the promotions, that people who are interested in 'A' are likely interested in 'B'. Not too creepy yet. Just market analysis right? After all what they have is just a device ID.
...
The fact that android and ios now rotate their device ids do not matter much as each time you check out your rewards give you away.

WiFi beacons, that legit actually sounds scary, I thought it was used if you were underground, and the GPS signal was too weak to be useful.

About Nissan, I watched a Louis Rossmann video once about how Nissan tracks your sexual activity... wow, that sounds crazy.

I'll try to bring something new into this discussion. After watching the video, I don't really think there is a way to get around avoiding these privacy measures. It's kind of like walking anywhere, busy or quiet. Say, if you walked in a city, you'd be surveilled by many CCTVs or something, but even if those failed, someone... someone would remember seeing you. Your phone would have told other phones where you were. It is possible to locate your device even without an active internet connection, so there's something to think about. If you were a criminal, and you were located in a desert, your footprints can be easily traced back.
If you burned paper, you release a ton of heat, smoke and end up with ash. Believe it or not, that's way too easy to catch using a thermal camera using a birds-eye view.
If you delete something on a computer, it isn't "really" deleted, even if the sector was overwritten. It may be expensive, but if the authorities want evidence of you doing something, they could xray that device somehow, and the remnants of your old data would still be visible. You could snap the ssd, but it can be easily pieced together like lego. If you grinded that ssd dead, the fine powder left behind proves you have something to hide.

As already discussed in the video, the best thing to do, really, is to avoid the data from getting back to you. I visualise this idea of data collection in 3 stages; collect, process, present.

Collection is obvious, collecting your activity and presence online. You can't really hide from it, it's kind of like touching sand, it never quite goes back to what it was previously. Though I have found a video on how to hide your presence from your ISP, which is right here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpeLclWHPPs
There is also another way of getting around this, particularly with link sharing.
When sharing links or searching something, there will be something random at the end of each link. Look at the one below
(don't click this pls)
https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ?si=<some random stuff>
<some random stuff> is actually an identifier that is linked with the current device you are using. I usually get into the habit of stripping this section from the end of the link, but come to think of it, it definitely tells them how YOU are related to the person who CLICKed on the link. The same happens with google search, your browser automatically submits a ton of information about the computer you are using to search, so it can better analyse your wealth, interests, everything, to better cater its information (or ads) to you.
I'll inject a disclaimer here, this method isn't bulletproof, as some information can be tokenised. With a token or cookie, it's possible to profile or trace you, even if it is less effective.

Processing is the most difficult part, but this part probably had a decade or 2 of experience in consolidating all the data to a profile, which can be linked to you. It's the process of collecting an activity, and finding who to profile it to. The speed you type in a javascript-activated field. Your scrolling heatmap. And onto the more obvious ones, the stuff you look up and what time you do it at. These can be traced back to a single "human" even across multiple devices. It doesn't matter if you do it on another person's device, it's only a small drop in the statistical bucket. This information identifies you, your interests and your wealth* to select the best content that can be successfully catered to you, for their positive outcome, such as increased watch time and a referral commission from an ad.

Present
Now comes my favourite. uBlock Origin. It's the most effective adblocker I used, and it's even better that it's free and doesn't come with a paywall. I have to be honest, I used to use the normal, traditional AdBlock because it worked well enough. But since they started begging for donations, I dumped it immediately for this thorough, effective adblocker that works on YouTube. It also works on Android as well, as Firefox natively supports extensions, something that Chrome and Safari still can't do to this day. Firefox does have promotions, but you can switch them off permanently. Even better, you can get the apks off github, making it possible to install a properly working browser on Android Wear, if you desire. (works smoothly )

Segues aside, this is the most effective thing you can do. It tells the evil spirits that whatever they do cannot get to you. You won't see the ads, you won't waste your time, and they can't get paid. In fact, ditch chrome on android if you can, because of those pesky news suggestions, and turn off the "Swipe left for discover" type stuff, it really isn't good for you. If you're on Apple, just don't use Apple News.

And I'd love to praise Reject Convenience for opting in with phpBB, because it is locally run and isn't subject to the Ad and data collection crap Reddit is obsessed with.
And it can run on my ancient iPad, which is always a plus.