If You Don't Want to be Monitored....

If you don't want to be monitored....buy a typewriter. Yes, one of those old fashioned clunky beauties that allows you to type without anyone monitoring and collecting the meta data on every key stroke you make.

You think I am kidding? I wish I were. But if you are sensitive to these things, these obsessions that the internet has with watching and "owning" everything you type....then YES, go ahead and buy a type writer. You may wish to get an electric typewriter instead of a manual one, as it will respond faster to your touch. The really old fashioned typewriters require quite a bit of manual physical effort...whereas the newer electric typewriters type faster and smoother.

But Yes, it will feel weird. Yes, you will need to buy ink cartridges and good paper and it might not be so easy to delete your typos as when you type on a lap top. But at least your words will be yours, and then you and only YOU get to decide who to share your hard copies with.

I heard a rumour that the Russian intelligence organization uses typewriters often so that their communications may not be hacked. I don't know if this is true. But I certainly would understand that type of strategy. 

Why should some multinational search engine or web browser company own the rights to anything you type into one of their "free" word processing program? Did you know that some social media companies have it in their fine print that anything you post, including words, videos and photos now become the permanent property of these companies? Yikes! Please be careful.

Don't forget the fine art of writing letters the old fashioned way. Don't forget about snail mail.

It is still a blessing to receive a snail mail from friends or family.

Well, that's all for now. It is not my intention to spread fear with this blog post, but to make you think. Maybe it is something you can pray about, so as to get God's leading in these very personal choices.

Peacefully productive,

Carla.

 

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Now you Have a Good Reason to be Suspicious of Rewards Cards

So, "they".....(sorry I can't be more specific) are considering using rewards cards to track how many family members are shopping in the grocery stores per week. The proposed limit  "they" prefer...is one family member shopping once in a grocery store per week. "They" say this would limit the potential for transmission of the virus.

Hmmm....I know when rewards cards first started gaining popularity, I was all gung ho about the potential freebies. But as time passed, I became aware as to how much data collection goes on with these rewards cards. "They" know where and when you shop, and what specifically you buy.
"They" can come to all kinds of conclusions about your discretionary income based on the data they scrape from your shopping habits. Now it appears that it may become a tool in the hands of "they".


Now the pandemic has given good reason for folks to give up on cash. But this is also a hay day for big brotherish type of activities. The more of our shopping is tracked by debit/credit cards and rewards cards, the less privacy we all have.

What would it take for you or your family to give up rewards cards cart blanche? Or are the rewards simply too tantalizing?

Peacefully alert,
Carla



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Can You Google Google?

I am alarmed. I am alarmed because of a couple of reasons.
The Trump administration has broken down "Net Neutrality"....so the internet will not be compelled to be fair or spooned out equally world wide.  The internet is just another commercial entity now, with it's own mission statement and profit margin. It's just that there is no limit to it's market place.
We are the product, and the consumer...AND we also do the work. We provide the data,through our every click and Facebook post..... from our lives and emails and blogs and skype calls and youtube videos. We don't just consume the net....we ARE the net and the NET has become us. We no longer know where we begin and where the net begins. We just know we want to be in it.

Is this the singularity?


Google offers Camera Phones called Google Pixel XL. They "offer" unlimited photo storage why? Because they are simply loading your photos to your google account in the sky....and adding your personal photo and phone data to their Big Brother files. Except here's the catch ......here's the meme. You pay them almost $1300 for the privilege of sending Google your personal files....all you do on your phone belongs to Google....if you buy their phone.You pay Google to spy on you. You pay Google to know everything about you.

It's like  the points cards that the cashiers keep asking me for when I checkout at the local pharmacy. They want me to use my "points card" as often as possible? Why? Because the data provided is valuable and important. Sure they may offer me a couple of freebies once a year in exchange for this powerful data, but the data gathering is prevalent and persistent....seemingly more important than the cash they exchange for the toothpaste I just bought there.

Don't just blindly chat on..... Think about the movers and the shakers. Think about Google.

Google Google, and learn something about this larger than life virtual giant. He isn't that "virtual" anymore.


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Be Aware of What You are Revealing About Yourself

Just a quick thought. Yesterday I viewed the movie called "The Circle" starring Tom Hanks and Emma Watson. Although, it had an odd and "unfinished" style of ending....watching it was still very much worth it, in how it stirs up our caution and awareness of revealing "too much" and at            "what cost" online.

Ok, so allow me to cut to the chase....how do we humans currently reveal "potentially" too much about ourselves?

1/ using rewards point cards at all of our fave shops, because they reveal where and when and what we buy, and how we pay.
2/ Twitter....yes, even though I really do enjoy Twitter, I am aghast at what folks tweet without thinking about the long-term ramifications.
3/ Facebook...oh the books that have already been written and will be written to describe how Facebook has changed the social fabric of our lives and how it leaves a very detailed trail of how we live, who we like and don't like....and how we communicate with almost everyone we deem special.
4/ Email. Although we like to kid ourselves that our email accounts are private....most of us still use non-encrypted and very public email servers which constantly monitor ALL of our sent and received emails for a host of reasons. Some of the reasons may be for public safety, but other reasons are for commercial advertising purposes and also for "yet to be determined" data mining purposes.
5/ Instagram. Nuf said.
6/ My Space.
7 the plethora of other social networking platforms
8/ voluntary blogs..... Sure folks like me may dream about making good coin from blogging, but most of us just do it because we love to write and practice honing our craft.
9/ Shopping with debit and credit cards instead of cash. Yes, I realize that cash is no longer king and its days may be numbered. But we must be aware that more our purchases are made through cards of all sorts, that the data about our every purchase is shared and diced and sliced and resold to whom ever is the highest bidder. Do we really want our shopping habits up for public/commercial display/auction?
10/ With the lure of becoming the next Youtube millionaire, millions of folks have sold themselves out by vlogging and selling their own videos to the Youtube video hosting service. I am not against Youtube, and use it regularly, but I am keenly aware of the fact that those who post there often are giving up a huge chunk of their privacy......and at what cost? 20 bucks a month in ad revenue? Consider what you are giving up when you allow perfect strangers to watch your life online.
11/ Google. Oh the books that are being written and still to be written about this Goliath. Yes, there is good and yes, there is stuff to be concerned about. I myself find the whole "google locating" issues to be very creepy. Have you ever noticed that when you "google" a local store", that Google displays how long the average person visits that location? How do they know that? Because they have locating apps through Google tracking our every move through our cell phones.
12/ Yes, there are ways to limit the number of methods that "Big Brother" can track and trace you. But the fine print is indeed fine, and the methods are intentionally made "hard and awkward" to implement for the "average" cell/computer user. If you have the patience, try to master the privacy and locating settings for the social media platforms that you frequent. Try your best to limit whatever you don't feel comfortable revealing. Make it harder for these companies to track and sell off your personal data.  And yes, it would still be helpful to go back to cash.....but oy, yes, cash is quickly becoming more "awkward" and "inconvenient"..... I guess I have been fished into that mindset already....lol.
13/ ISP's ( internet service providers) have records of ALL the webtraffic that flows through ALL your devices, both at home and when on the road. Also be aware that when you are utilizing
"free wifi" hotspots at cafes or your other haunts,  that the controllers/providers of the "free wifi"
hotspots can monitor/ see all that flows on any device that uses their Wifi services.

I am sure I will come up with even more ways in which we are "selling ourselves out" without consciously being aware of how much data we are revealing about ourselves with these seemingly
inert methods of communication and lifestyle.

If privacy doesn't matter to you, then by all means, ignore this post.....but if it does concern you and you want to protect yourself and your family....maybe it should become a matter of focus and prayer.

And yes, if this post has intrigued you, please do go ahead and read the book called
The Numerati by Stephen L. Baker. And yes, if you get the opportunity, go see the movie              "The Circle" starring Tom Hanks.

With peace and prayer,

Carla.



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What is the REAL Program Behind Rewards Cards?

Ed Liebow, executive director of the American Anthropological Association, says corporations increasingly struggle to make sense of the big data sets they collect on their customers. (quoted from article "Beyond Spam"
at https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-hormel-spam/)


So we can agree that corporations are collecting "big data" on you and on me.....all of us, as often as they can.
Yes, they may be having trouble  managing and/or extracting helpful information from that  big data, but that is only a matter of time and acumen.

One of the ways in which corporations collect data on us, their customers, is through the use of "rewards points cards". These "loyalty cards" are swiped
whenever someone buys anything at a certain store, and reports precisely when ( precise dates and times), where and what a human is purchasing. It also records the total bill of that particular transaction....and how it was paid for.....cash, debit or which credit card.

Why do we use loyalty cards and thus voluntarily give corporations precious private data about our purchasing habits? Because we LOVE free stuff, even if the real value of the points is quite small in real dollars.

It may take someone two years to accumulate enough "loyalty reward points"
in order to purchase even $20 worth of free merchandise, but humans are toting around dozens of rewards point cards, with the mere whisper that they might score some great freebies in the near or unforeseeable future.

Does that mean that I denounce points cards? Nope. But I do want to remind my readers that whenever they are using ANY kind of rewards points cards, that their shopping data is being collected about EVERY SINGLE transaction they swipe that particular points card for.

Corporations spend billions of dollars annually to do market research and here we are giving it to them on a platter for free or next-to-nothing....by voluntarily using our rewards points/loyalty cards....(  a free coffee is all it takes for many of us to divulge tons of our most personal shopping habits!)

Collect travel miles? Yes, your transactions are being collected and stored and analysed so that big corporations can figure out how to market more products to us and part us from more of our money. No, they aren't necessarily out to steal from you, but their goal is to accumulate as much of your cash as possible through the sales and marketing of their products.

Am I anti-corporation ? Nope.....far from it. But I just want my fellow consumers to be aware of the information that they are freely giving away to large corporations simply by using/swiping their loyalty/rewards point cards.

On a bit of a side note....paying cash is still more anonymous than using a debit or credit card. But cameras are rolling anyway, recording all transactions on film no matter how we pay for it....and no matter which rewards point cards we may or may not be swiping.

But maybe just maybe, we can limit the amount of free information that we provide to big corporations for free or next to nothing. Maybe we can think before we whip out our fave points card the next time we run to the store.
Maybe we don't care who finds out what our favourite brand of corn chips are, and where we like to buy them, at what price and at what time of the day and with what form or cash/debit/credit we pay for that bag of corn chips. But maybe we do care.....and maybe we don't need to sell our most valuable information quite so cheaply. 

Thinkfully yours,
Carla

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