On 5/2/2012 1:09 PM, gonjah wrote:
I mentioned one of my crowns fell out on Facebook yesterday and today
I'm getting "affordable dentist" ads on Facebook. I find that a little
creepy.

Hellooooo... That's the entire point behind Facebook. You provide data
about yourself to Facebook; Facebook provides it to its customers, who
will then use it to pitch products and services to you, or just to
find out more about you. You aren't Facebook's customer, you are its
product.

I attended a presentation on forensic data recovery services
yesterday. The presenter owns his own company, and is a former Secret
Service agent who performs investigations and retrieves data from
devices and online sources in the course of his work. He was quite
emphatic about the foolishness of sharing personal information on the
internet, because it can and sometimes will be used against you - and
you have no control over how it will be used, nor do you know who will
be using it.

He made the same point about smartphones and similar devices and apps
- they quietly collect data as you use them, and you most likely have
no idea what they're collecting, who that information is being shared
with, and what they could do with it. Of course, as he noted, the
tendency of people to use these products provides him with lots of
data and even handy timelines to provide to his clients or law
enforcement, or to testify about in court cases.