'Scrapers' Dig Deep for Data on Web

[steph]

We just assume our data is safe & our participation in online forums private. Barry, has scraping been a problem for Wacco? And what does happen with the data we generate? - Stephanie
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From yesterday's Wall Street Journal:

'Scrapers' Dig Deep for Data on Web

By JULIA ANGWIN And STEVE STECKLOW

At 1 a.m. on May 7, the website PatientsLikeMe.com noticed suspicious activity on its "Mood" discussion board. There, people exchange highly personal stories about their emotional disorders, ranging from bipolar disease to a desire to cut themselves.

It was a break-in. A new member of the site, using sophisticated software, was "scraping," or copying, every single message off PatientsLikeMe's private online forums.

PatientsLikeMe managed to block and identify the intruder: Nielsen Co., the privately held New York media-research firm. Nielsen monitors online "buzz" for clients, including major drug makers, which buy data gleaned from the Web to get insight from consumers about their products, Nielsen says.https://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...288117888.html

[Tars]

We just assume our data is safe & our participation in online forums private.

That would be a wrong assumption. It's more probable that every email, website visit, forum post, blog reply, Facebook entry, is being "scraped" or "datamined" by someone. Doesn't mean anyone's out to get us. It mostly means that bot programs have been written to collect that data. "Mining" it is a bit more complex, and costly. Sifting the data is much more labor-intensive than merely recording it. So unless they're looking for something highly particular we can write just about anything without worrying that it'll cause a significant problem to us.

We already know that our phone records and web travel history is available to most anyone who'd want it. Our position on Earth is tracked, via cellphone, but it's probably not monitored, at least for the large majority of us, most of the time.

The "scraping" that the Nielsen Co. did was not different in principle than the website that installs tracking cookies on visitors' home computer. It's been going on for a long time now.
Nielson Co. mines for more general group information, market trends, comments about a particular brand name, etc.

There's still some comfort in knowing that, the global mass of data generated at any time is so incredibly huge, that unless one is doing something unusually impactive on society, there's really no need to be paranoid, no one's paying attention anyway.

'Course, it might be a useful point to remember that paranoia is a survival trait. Fight the man.

[podfish]

We just assume our data is safe & our participation in online forums private.

We do??
Sorry, but once data touches a computer it's at risk. Data is colorless and odorless so you don't notice it leaking out of everything - but there are plenty of people out there harvesting it and massaging it. It's worth trying to remain private but you really can't count on it. Most people "know" that, but I don't think many have really internalized what that means. It's kinda pointless to get very worried about it, since we're all in the same boat, but at least try not to believe in any anonymity or invisibility.