On Wed, Feb 12, 2025 at 08:55:05PM -0800, saclug(a)garymcglinn.com wrote:
I know that there are a lot of ways to have your
online activity tracked. And, I thought I understood many or most of them.
But, I tried out Gemini with the request, "write a two page article on
Stoicism." The results were interesting and pretty good and give me an idea of what
Gemini can do.
A week, or less later, yesterday, I get an email from Facebook suggesting that I join the
"Daily Stoicism" group.
WTF. I never use Facebook and basically ignore their reminders on how many notifications
or messages I have.
AFAIK, there is no legal way Facebook should know what I am doing with Google, unless
Google is providing them the information on a back channel.
Am I missing something? Everything I know suggest that I would have had to visit a
Facebook site sometime between my Gemini request and my receipt of an email from Facebook.
Or possibly have visited a Facebook site before my Gemini request and not have directly
entered a URL or used a bookmark in the interim. AFAIK, those things didn't happen.
I am only an "armchair lawyer" (not a lawyer at all). Way back in the
day, EFF came to speak at SacLUG and discussed some of these details.
Try Privacy Badger plugin
https://privacybadger.org/
There is also a Facebook Container plugin
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-container/
Brian
--
Brian Lavender
https://www.brie.com/brian/
"There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to
make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other
way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies."
Professor C. A. R. Hoare
The 1980 Turing award lecture