TIMEGLASS JOURNAL – Special Report – 8:40 a.m. CT Wednesday 9 July 2014
I began to suspect my cell phone calls are being monitored. Not by NSA, although they are doing that to all of us. Not by live people. Most likely by the cell phone service company I’ve been using.
This is similar to Google’s ad tailoring. Google super computers scan gmail text for key words to determine your interests, and then produce tailored ads for you – which show up on the gmail page and some of the websites you visit.
I have no doubt the same can be done for people using cell phones, and probably land line phones too. A super computer snatches key words right out of the audio or data stream. Those key words are used to determine your interests. Then ads you see on the Internet are tailored for you.
A neighbor and I conducted an experiment. We staged a cell phone conversation. We talked about specific products and services. About 48 hours later, I began to see some of those products and services show up in ads at some of the websites I visited . . . and on my gmail page – which indicates a working relationship between the cell phone company and Google. Too many matches to be dismissed as coincidences. For example, I talked about the “zero gravity recliner chair” I bought at Amazon. Then I began to see furniture ads on my gmail page and at some websites I visited.
You can conduct a similar experiment to find out if your calls are being monitored for ad tailoring.
Ad tailoring is not necessarily a bad thing . . . if it is accurate . . . but it is not accurate – although it is slowly improving.
There is a difference between privacy and security. There is no privacy. Security protects your computer from being hacked and getting a virus, for example. I believe cell phone communications now lack privacy as much as emails. I believe gmail is now most secure of all, because of Google’s Cloud, and use of Google’s Chrome Operating System. I believe it stops NSA from reading gmail, but of course it does not stop Google from ad tailoring. By the way, there is now very little difference between what you see when you opt out of ad tailoring and what you see when you have ad tailoring. With ad tailoring I can participate by blocking advertisers I no longer want to see.
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