Social media users are fertile ground for data farmers

Apr 24, 2018 | 5:00 AM

MANY OF YOU are probably not aware of this, but back in 2004, when Gmail was launched, Google would digitally scan your emails and based on what you had written, would specifically target you with ads that were felt to be relevant to the content of your email.

This invasive use of what you likely thought to be confidential information explains why, when you wrote your sister saying you were thinking of buying a new chesterfield, that furniture ads suddenly started appearing in your feed.

Since most people were unaware of this, the complaints to Google at the time were minimal and therefore ignored, so the practice continued for the next 13 years and only stopped last year.

You will probably remember the annoying Farm Ville and Candy Crush craze on Facebook where players were encouraged to share their results and in the process give permission for the app to data mine you and your friends. The only thing being farmed was every intimate detail of your life.

Remember that terms and conditions page you didn’t read but agreed with and the “yes” button you quickly clicked that gave the app permission to access your profile information along with those of your friends? That gave the company behind the game the right to access things like your marital status, religious and political views, your education, work history, all the pictures and comments you ever posted, your messenger content and your buying habits.

If you talked about your health, they knew all the details. If you posted a picture of the new baby, they sold your name to companies that wanted to sell you baby-related products. Farm Ville farmed you and your friends like a pro and there was nothing illegal about it because you gave them permission.

It still happens but the names have changed and the current big push is the numerous free credit check companies. You need to provide the kind of information that would, in the wrong hands, allow anyone with access to steal your identity and create a new and virtual you.

Then there’s the innocent post asking if you can remember your first grade teacher’s name, or first school or the street you lived on when you were a child. Sounds harmless enough until you remember those questions are often the same ones used for password recovery verification and you just posted that information. You were being farmed.

Another easy scam is the post on Facebook asking for likes. It’s targeted at your emotions, asking for a like and a share in support of a 100 year old World War 2 veteran, or a young child just finishing chemo, or a teacher wanting to show her students how fast things travel on the internet. But they too are data mining scams.

We are hooked on social media and it is becoming evident that the addiction was intentionally designed and for a specific purpose.

You, me and most others at some point agreed, even though it seems absurd now, to give a corporation we don’t know or control, access to our lives and all the foibles that go with that. Even more alarming, we gave that same corporation access to our friends and worse yet, our friends didn’t necessarily know or give permission.

Cambridge Analytica is the first visible evidence that our trust in tech companies has been misplaced. It may also signal the beginning of the end for the current social media model we’ve lived with for these last few years.

I believe there is more than one Cambridge-like company out there and this particular breach is likely just the beginning of a privacy infringement tsunami that will sweep through social media. We shouldn’t be surprised, but in the meantime, we should start to reconsider our relationship with these companies.

But if you still can’t resist the siren call of social media, please don’t give these apps access to your friends because without my knowledge or consent you are jeopardizing my well-being and security.

You are being scammed but why should your friends be scammed because of you?