You Can Close The Open Book That Is Your Data

Now that it has been demonstrated Facebook is not the benign social media giant it has always claimed to be, people are becoming more conscious of how vulnerable and how valuable their data is to unscrupulous entities. Among those who are concerned, there will be a corp looking for ways to keep more of their information private. Fortunately, you don't have to be a technical wizard to take prophylactic measures.

Exactly what does Facebook have on you? It is easy to find out, and easy to change your privacy settings to frustrate those who 'want to get to know you better'.

In the Facebook settings for your account — right below the link to deactivate it — there’s an option to download a copy of all your Facebook data. The file can be a creepy wake-up call: All those years of browsing the News Feed, and sharing selfies, engagements and birthday wishes on Facebook have taught the company quite a lot about you. You, the user, are part of the reason that Facebook has become so good at targeting ads. You’re giving them everything they need to do it.

Here’s a link that will take you right to the settings page, if you’re logged in to your account. One there, click on the link to download your archive, and follow the prompts.

The following video offers further explanation:



Yesterday I downloaded my data and, after nine years on Facebook I was amazed at what is stored there: all manner of messages, posts, photos and likes. While most of what I put on the social media is not personal, as I prefer to use it to post links to articles and interesting blog posts, in the past I have included vacation photos and other such memorabilia, but for the most part have always kept this information either private (available only to me, or limited to my FB friends). Nonetheless, I am not at all confident that the data could not be taken and sold by FB anyway.

However, it is easy to change your settings, and something privacy experts agree is a good start.

On a related note, I have stopped using Google for my searches, because all of them are tracked and sold; instead, I am using another engine called DuckDuckGo, which does no such tracking. You can click on this link to find out more about it.

Finally, those who are cavalier about their data may want to think twice after reading this article about the "extreme vetting" the U.S. is subjecting visa applicants to, expected to affect 14.71 million applicants, including those who apply as students, for business trips, or on vacation.

I Just Love This

I hope you do, too.

Your Apps Have Eyes

I am convinced that, like so many other traditional values, our right to, and desire for, privacy is quickly becoming but a vestige of an earlier era, We readily share information on Facebook, for example, most never checking their privacy settings, leaving ourselves open to all kinds of manipulations and intrusions and even giving potential employers ample reason not to hire us. When we download apps (since I don't have a smartphone, I am somewhat protected) we blithely check of the Accept Agreement that is mandatory before we get our 'free' new application that, after all, promises to make our life so much better given the promise of control literally at our fingertips.

However, as most of us know on some level, nothing is ever really free. At the very least, the following report should serve as a wake-up call to regularly check our privacy setting on all of our devices:

A New Record In Canadian Debt

It is $1 trillion and counting. While I am by no means a fiscal hawk, such a high debt level should concern all of us, given the looming spectre of interest rate hikes, which means the cost of servicing that massive debt has only one way to go - up.

Sadly, Justin Trudeau's promise to grow the economy 'from the heart outwards' is turning out to be just another of his empty rhetorical flourishes. With no discernible plan to manage and pay down that debt, we should all be worried.

Go to the 8:33 mark for the full story:

A Tonic For The Soul

Those who read this blog with any regularity would most likely describe me as an inveterate cynic. Indeed, it has become my default position. Nonetheless, when I see goodness and positive resolve in the world, my heart can still be touched, although not overwhelmed.

The massive anti-gun protests that swept the United States yesterday has occasioned a hopefulness that I haven't felt in a long time. Organized and led by young people, some of whom have been personally touched by gun violence, the Washington component of the massive demonstrations is estimated to have seen over 500,000 in attendance. And make n mistake about it - these were people with a strong and explicit message directed toward corrupted lawmakers: our lives are worth more than the money the NRA is paying for your deadly complicity in the deaths of far too many innocents.

“Vote them out!” they cried, over and over, on a dozen jam-packed blocks of Pennsylvania Ave., the street that connects Republican President Donald Trump’s White House with the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress. “Vote them out!”

Near the end of last night's NBC broadcast, two reporters were realistically positing the end of the massive coverage the media have given to this movement, news cycles being what they are. Apparently, the young people are undaunted by this reality; they intend to continue and deepen their campaign for sane gun laws through something they are very adept at: social media. I hope they succeed.

One of the most important aspects of these demonstrations, from my point of view, is that they have spawned a sense of unity, cohesion and oneness that is anomalous in a nation as fractured as the United States is. And that growing unity, that recognition of the commonalities that bind us together can transcend the things that separate us, is what the powers of darkness (for want of a better phrase) truly fear. The reactionary right is well aware their hold is facilitated by sowing division, discord and animus. As Abraham Lincoln famously said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

To that end, the NRA is bringing its mighty guns to bear in order to try to disrupt this growing unity. For example, while it maintained 'radio silence,' so to speak, for four days after the Parkland shootings (surely tactical move rather than a gesture of respect), after that brief period it strengthened its digital presence:

The NRA was already spending an average of $11,300 per day for online ads alone before the school shooting on February 14. Since February 18, online ad spending has more than quadrupled with a daily average of $47,300.

The majority of this increase was spent on Facebook in advertisements that were targeted to Florida residents. The National Rifle Association also jumped into the top 100 advertisers on YouTube and has maintained this new status since February 21.

But that is but one of their tactics. Consider Colion Noir,
a pseudonym for Collins Iyare Idehen Jr., a lawyer and gun rights activist from Houston who has nearly 650,000 subscribers on YouTube.



I imagine there are few things the NRA would not do to continue its stranglehold on America's soul. It is now up to those who have seen and experienced so much violence and death in their young lives to do mighty and sustained battle against a seemingly implacable foe.

May They Inspire Us All

Their voices, I hope, are growing too loud to be ignored any longer:

A Broad Canvas

If, like me, you are a retired senior to whom the fates have been reasonably kind, you have the luxury to contemplate the world around you at your leisure. If you are at all engaged in the larger world, however, that contemplation is rarely relaxing or enjoyable. You have seen too much in your lifetime.

A clear benefit and curse of advancing years is the context it confers. Without succumbing to mindless sentiment or nostalgia, I can remember earlier days when our society, although frequently roiled with major problems, was able to preserve and nourish something that now seems to be rapidly receding into the realm of the notionally quaint: the common good. People who ran for political office, it seems to me, more often than not, ran with a mind to represent the entire country or province, not a narrow or divisive constituency nursing some nebulous sense of grievance.

Today, that seems rarely the case. Nationally, of course, that 'narrowcasting' was most obvious during the foul reign of Stephen Harper, its main justification being to secure and retain power. His replacement, Justin Trudeau, while bearing the accouterments of a progressive populist, has disappointed deeply, purveying a neoliberal agenda and readily abandoning his election promises, an electoral reform that could have rejuvenated our waning democratic participation, and his pushing through pipelines without the 'social licence' he averred was sacred. Meanwhile, the Conservatives leader, Andrew Scheer, in true populist style in order to convince the electorate he is 'one of us,' dons a plaid short-sleeved shirt and bluejeans, while NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, courting the press, seeks to fashion himself as a Justin 2.0:



Here in Ontario, things are no better. We have a desperate Kathleen Wynne promising everything to everyone in a proposed spending spree which, should she be returned to power, would ensure at the very least another sale of public assets, the most likely immediate target being the LCBO. Her recent appointment of privatization czar Ed Clark as its chair was a barely concealed hint of a further implementation of the neoliberal agenda.

As a retiree, I am particularly offended at Wynne playing to the stereotype of the selfish senior by promising to remove the deductibles and co-payments under the Ontario Drug Benefit program, which provides seniors with free drugs. This will save the average person $240 per year. My vote really can't be bought, Kathleen.

Then, of course, there is the rise of the reactionary populist Doug Ford, promising to find 'new efficiencies' to save $6 billion with, wait for it, no job loss or government cuts! Shame on anyone who lived through the Mike Harris years for believing such patent malarkey.

Finally, we have the NDP's Andrea Horwath who, in a bald and venal play, gave up her balance of power leverage and triggered the last election, the same one that gave Wynne her majority, thereby allowing her to sell off 60% of Hydro One, a sale Horwath now promises to reverse by buying back the shares and lower hydro rates by 30%.

The contemporary canvas I contemplate is a bleak one. In Voltaire's Candide, Professor Pangloss avers "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds". Notably, the work is a satire. Perhaps it is time for a new generation of readers.