Wowee! Relationship chatbots are terrible for your privacy in strange new ways while also being terrible for your privacy in regular old ways.
The whole article's a great read, but here's a fun excerpt=
To be perfectly blunt, AI girlfriends are not your friends. Although they are marketed as something that will enhance your mental health and well-being, they specialize in delivering dependency, loneliness, and toxicity, all while prying as much data as possible from you.” --Misha Rykov, Researcher @ *Privacy Not Included
It's rather ironic Mozilla has a team doing valuable research on the dangers of AI corporations taking your data, compiling it into profiles, and selling those profiles to advertisers (90% of them)....
...While Mozilla itself purchased a subsidiary that offers AI-enhanced shopping which takes people's data, compiles it into personal profiles, and sells those profiles to advertisers.
Mozilla's Privacy Not Included needs to do a deep dive on Mozilla's Fakespot.
Mozilla recently updated the Fakespot privacy policy, and never removed the data sale clause.
Fakespot code is already been injected into Firefox, too. It is currently fully functional, although it only works on the three largest shopping websites on the United States.
At some point, you have to figure the multimillion dollar corporation actually knows what they're doing... Right?
Their privacy policy doesn't seem to state that they sell your data? Only that they use it for anonymous statistics and advertising directly to you (ie. Emails). Please correct me if I'm wrong.
And their privacy policy seems more specific than the last time I read it, right when they were acquired.
We use your personal information for a variety of business purposes and legal bases, including to provide our Services, for administrative purposes, and to market our products and Services, as described below.
A. Provide Our Services
We have a legitimate interest in using your personal information to fulfill our contract with you and provide our Services, such as:
Managing your information and accounts;
Providing access to certain areas, functionalities, and features of our Services;
Answering requests for customer or technical support;
Communicating with you about your account, activities on our Services, and policy changes;
Processing your financial information and other payment methods for products or Services purchased;
Store your product analysis and search history on the Services;
Processing applications if you apply for a job we post on our Services; and
Allowing you to register for events.
B. Administrative Purposes
We have a legitimate interest in using your personal information for various administrative purposes, such as:
Pursuing our legitimate interests such as direct marketing, research and development (including marketing research), network and information security, and fraud prevention;
Detecting security incidents, protecting against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent or illegal activity, and prosecuting those responsible for that activity;
Measuring interest and engagement in our Services;
Serving you with advertising from our advertising partners only while using the Services and only within our Services;
Providing you with information or advertising relating to our Services;
Marketing our products and services to others;
Improving, optimizing, upgrading, or enhancing our Services (for example, by generating analytics about how our customers browse and interact with the Services and to assess the success of our marketing and advertising campaigns);
Developing new products and services;
Ensuring internal quality control and safety;
Authenticating and verifying individual identities, including requests to exercise your rights under this Privacy Notice;
Debugging to identify and repair errors with our Services;
Auditing relating to interactions, transactions, and other compliance activities;
Sharing personal information with third parties as needed to provide the Services;
Enforcing our agreements and policies; and
Carrying out activities that are required to comply with our legal obligations.
C. Marketing and Advertising our Products and Services
We may use personal information to tailor and provide you with content and advertisements. We may provide you with these materials as permitted by applicable law.
Some of the ways we may market to you include email campaigns, custom audiences advertising, and “personalized advertising” or “targeted advertising,” including through cross-device tracking.
If you have any questions about our marketing practices or if you would like to opt out of the use of your personal information for marketing purposes, you may contact us at any time as set forth in "Contact Us" below.
D. With Your Consent
We may use personal information for other purposes that are clearly disclosed to you at the time you provide personal information or with your consent.
E. Other Purposes
We also use your personal information for other purposes as requested by you or as permitted by applicable law.
F. Creating De-Identified and/or Aggregated Information.
We may use personal information to create de-identified and/or aggregated information, such as demographic information, information about how you use the Services, information about the device from which you access our Services, or other analyses we create. If we create or receive de-identified information, we will not attempt to reidentify such information, unless permitted by applicable laws or required to comply with. De-identified and/or aggregated information is not personal information, and we may use, disclose, and retain such information as permitted by applicable laws including, but not limited to, for research, analysis, analytics, and any other legally permissible purposes.
Do a search on the page for "Category of Third Parties to Whom Personal Information is Sold and/or Shared". The following are sold to advertising partners:
Internet or other electronic network activity (e.g., browsing history, search history, information regarding an individual's interaction with an internet website, application, or advertisement, and online viewing activities)
Inferences drawn from other personal information to create a profile about a consumer
Geolocation data (e.g., ... your device's precise location)
Damn, hadn't realized Mozilla was doing ad profiling! 😓
Anybody know of a way to disable that somehow, mobile\desktop? If its not a thing I think I might be jumping ship... Really hoped Firefox had their shit together!