@Em0nM4stodon
Anything meta, tiktok or temu and adjacent

They're very aggressive and most people are completely unaware of and usually refuse to believe any wrongdoings or risks the entities pose.

Now google is bad in its own right, but honestly I'd still rather have it over the others. Google atleast has some decent software with decent security.

Screw the search engine and browser though.

@Em0nM4stodon
-The mobile phone
-credit cards

It’s where the total surveillance society started and then just went bananas

@Em0nM4stodon the persistent database/archive. Sure observe and know things in real times, collect and keep-no!

@Em0nM4stodon
Tossup between cars and phones.

@Em0nM4stodon I really really really hate managed machines. For the longest time I just used laptops I got from the places I worked at, and I usually had complete control. In my last position at an university I got a managed Mac laptop loaded with Microsoft software. I had to start a kind of kiosk software and push a Super Mario button in order to get 30min of admin rights. I punched it so many times that somebody registered that and I got admin rights for forever. But still. I gave the thing back a few weeks later. Just didn’t feel safe. Not only did I feel monitored by university staff, but also by all the bloat-ware that I couldn’t turn off or remove.

@Em0nM4stodon
Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) specifically. It's basically impossible to avoid them when driving. (In addition to fixed cameras, they are often mounted on police cars.)

In my home state (Florida), it's illegal to hide or obscure your auto tag. The only viable option is to not drive. 😡

@Em0nM4stodon Facebook pixel

@Em0nM4stodon

Microsoft Recall. Because I can do all the privacy stuff I want on my own computers, but that's all for naught if someone else is using a PC with default settings.

@Em0nM4stodon Everything Peter Thiel does.
Especially "Gotham". I know that if they didn't do it, governments would buy it from someone else. But they are doing it. And what they are doing is essentially enhancing the ability of governments to spy on their own citizens. And that sucks.

@Em0nM4stodon Networked computers. It was a mistake to connect them via anything but physical media.

@Em0nM4stodon
Corporate greed. I find it difficult to blame the tech itself. All tech has the potential to be used for benign, useful purposes (imagine if license plate reader were used to predict traffic patterns and adjust traffic lights and map apps to minimise traffic and get you to destination faster). It's the corporate greed that corrupts them.

@Em0nM4stodon

ONT-Routers from my ISP. It must be riddled with Autocracy Inc. malware from ages, now (no firmware updates since the Big Bang).

Buses' chinese "CCTVs". Though I got no proof, all points to the information being leaked to Xi.

Public WiFi signals. No way to prevent being tracked (not even without any electronics on me)!

WhatsApp. Because nobody cares what apps they use, as long as everybody else is using it.

E-mail. Because almost nobody uses E2EE with it (e.g.: OpenKeychain)

@Em0nM4stodon Any/All cameras when pointed at me, including randos on the street taking pics that may have me in it.

@Em0nM4stodon third party cookies. The avarge people don't know what they are and how they're used to track them.
But if I have to pick a service/platform probably I would pick Meta.

@Em0nM4stodon The mobile because they've created something that everyone has, including kids, that everyone depends on and can't live without.
Furthermore, there are very few alternatives, essential apps often don't work (bank apps), and they're very expensive (Linux phones).

They've been very clever at creating a very convenient piece of technology by turning it into a spy and an object of addiction.

@Em0nM4stodon @catsalad My iPhone, because there’s no third option and Android is just as bad or worse.

@Em0nM4stodon

Picking a #1 is hard!

But for its absolute ubiquity, I'd have to pick Google Analytics. I think that marked the first really pivotal moment of the conversion of the web from useful tool to shiny distracting toy hiding spyware etc.

@Em0nM4stodon Surveillance capitalism… I despise it. Mandatory GAFAM AI companions and the surveillance infrastructure that wants me to be so transparent that the translucence would turn me into a syncopated chess piece—a smombie who could be controlled and data-farmed without me even realizing it. Do not want… ✅ 💡 😅 #fckbigtech #fcksurveillancecapitalism

Rick and Morty - I Am Alive #yt

https://youtu.be/t2r5AfCYEp4

@Em0nM4stodon Social networks.

Because people voluntarily provide all the information we don't even ask for.

@Em0nM4stodon - License Plate Readers and Facial Recognition Scanners

You can't opt out of them. Facial Recognition you can try to thwart, but thats a moving target. LPRs its illegal to obfuscate your license plate.

@Em0nM4stodon noses. They're just weird. What are they good for other than holding up glasses and identifying possible poisons or other hazards? They don't even look good, and can barely hold jewelry (though to be fair, better than eyes)

@Em0nM4stodon Flock because you can't avoid it unless you are willing to go WAY OUT OF YOUR WAY and how it's already been proven to be "ChatGPT on a telephone pole" for cops who like to accuse first and question later.

@Em0nM4stodon

the iphone

@Em0nM4stodon I think I gotta go with license plate reading cameras. Government essentially building a graph of who goes where when, there have been hacks leading to theft of that data before (MA I think?), and like most things it starts out as "but terrorists" and then ends up being used for a minor tax fraud thing.

Maybe more generally, I feel that between all the cameras, license plate OCR, it is now pretty much impossible to anonymously go somewhere.

@Em0nM4stodon targeted advertising. It's creepy and information about you can easily fall into the wrong hands.

@Em0nM4stodon Ooh, that's tough to just pick one. Surveillance dash/car cams, probably (like Flock)

@Em0nM4stodon

AI agents. No consent. Ring Cameras. No consent. Meta’s Glasses. No consent.

Decisions made by other extremely stupid people that I can’t do anything about.

@Em0nM4stodon other people, mainly

@Em0nM4stodon Probably the ones I never suspected at the time I adopted them - like Gmail, Google Translate, and all the speech recognition that has moved from being a program and speech engine that was only on your hard drive to now being shit like Otter.ai and other types that are sending your words off your drive and analyzing them, and training AI, etc off them.

The latter is particularly bad news for disabled people who rely on speech recognition and many don't realize this aspect of it.