Privacy Policies ate your lunch! Again!Ok folks, it's time to blow the whistle again and I don't mind saying that I will be doing it in the face of a multi trillion dollar industry built on collecting data, rendering it, and selling it to 3rd parties. Noting I have only recently been introduced to this subject and don't have much to really back up my claims, except for a lot of bad experiences that I will keep to myself.
What is data collection practice?
Data collection is the practice of harvesting any bit of information that can be collected from a unique individual that is then compiled into a database and auctioned off to a clearing house and/or data collection agency. The data collection agency then processes all of the seemingly "jibberish criteria" using multi-billion dollar super computers employing decades worth of intellegince developed by teams upon teams of people, with the end result being if you sneaze on Tuesday they know exactly what to market to you on Wednesday.
Where to find the data collection policies layered into all your web brokers, platforms, or services?
Most all the time the data collection policies are found at the bottom of the home page of the website, and is typically a long legal drafted document stipulating the companies legislative right to collect your data and mine it for anything it can make a profit from. That means if you want to take action against the company for the data they recorded about you then you must hire a team of lawyers and take them to court!
Basically the "little guy" has been hacked dominantly enough that it was converted into a legal practice, that in turn acts as a gag order to prevent them from being able to do anything about it.
What's the big deal about data collection?
Essentially it's an indirect way to (1) steal intellectual property (2) employ mind control techniques that empower the business to tap into your wallet at their leisure. Example: if say Etrade "collects" your trade history then sells it to a data collection agency that processes the information with billion dollar equipment & intelligence then they can reverse engineer your entire trading system and turn around to sell it to a 3rd party on the open market, effectively nuetralizing your ability to profit with the intelligence you developed in private. ERGO your own trading broker, web service, etc stole your lunch money.
A few alarming examples is the fact that most privacy polices use the word "collection" instead of "use". If they were "using" your data to offer you their service then you wouldn't have to be concerned with it being saved in a dossier/profile and getting auctioned off to a professional agency that will mine it like its digging for gold; but they always use the word "collection".
Observe the sarcasm relief "skit": "No I've never heard of anyone in a trillion dollar industy using super computers to analyze people's data, but hey maybe you should run with that because you never know it could be a thing."
Seriously there are major issues with data collection and some of the areas are beyond alarming such as the fact I was reading Microsoft Outlook & Microsoft 365 related privacy policies (data collection) the other day and came accross the line "we reserve the legal right to open and read your mail", I'd say that we have major privacy issues here. Or looking through any major brokerage privacy policy and just the vagueness in the way they mention "we collect data on your trading history, transactions, etc" such as on Etrade, or TDAmeritrade. The most aggrevating part is every leading company in the technology industry is layering in more and more data collection policies within their services that most of the time if you try to disable them the service stops working properly. At the end of the day you have to realize that even though the company looks like a nice professional service they are not treating you nice and professional, in fact they've gone out of there way to win the legal right to abuse you by destroying your privacy and stealing a record of your activity to use against you.
The fact of the matter is if you can't ascertain privacy while trading you will never succeed because they will share your information and adapt to your trading system before you have a chance to consistently profit with it. Even worse if the industry writes you off as "incompetent" then they will use your trading history or collected data to bet against you.
In conclusion if you can't figure out a way to either (1) use services that actually list a privacy policy for the purpose of stipulating ways they provide privacy instead of destroy it, or (2) stay ahead of the incoming attack from data collection; then you need to find a job that doesn't involve computers. Period.
That's how bad it is. That's how far down the wrong road technology has traveled.
