TWIG 648: Band Saws and Butt Joints

Beep boop - this is a robot. A new show has been posted to TWiT…

What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!

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Thoroughly enjoyed Leo channeling Simon Barr Sinister with his moral panic sound bites.

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For this IdMe conversation:
– how does this work for twins or people that look the same?
–do I need to submit a new photo every few years?

–what if the criminals have already registered my account using AI generated faces?

Regarding the targeted advertising, Leo almost got there, then took a hard right… He said that advertisers target the TWIT shows, then went back to tracking and targeting the visitors.

Why not target the sites we are visiting? Or the pages? You can profile the story, find advertising that is appropriate and show that, it can’t be any less accurate than so-called targeted advertising.

As I posted over at Thurrott, Google really can’t seem to make up its mind at the moment. I am a retiree, I have arthritis and I am in danger of shingles, oh, and while I am at it, I need to get my newborn baby vaccinated…

The only problem with that is, I am still well over a decade away from retirement (and that is without the current plans to move the goal posts), I don’t have arthritis, shingles isn’t an issue and I don’t have a newborn baby… I’ve no idea how it makes its profile, but it does a damned lousy job at it, any advertisers it tells that is has highly targeted ads, then shows me that is ripping off the advertisers (and wasting my time).

As to people just don’t want to see adverts, it doesn’t bother me. I’ll watch the adverts, as long as no information is collected about me. Show me first party ads with no trackers, fine. Load up your site with a few hundred trackers and I’ll block them, which will probably block the ads at the same time.

Regarding ID. Here in Germany, we have NFC enabled ID cards, which are issued by the local council.

When we need to identify ourselves, we can either do a so called “PostIdent”, where we go to the Post Office and show our ID and they stamp a form or enter the confirmation online, or we can use an ID app, which reads the secret key on the ID card via NFC and makes a unique signature, which is confirmed by the central ID certification platform.

Your ID is originally confirmed by trained personnel on, supposedly, secure systems, when you apply for your ID card. You have to provide proof of residence (in Germany, you have to register the address you live at), birth certificate etc. and they run a check, then authorize the generation of the ID card, which you receive a week or so later - you have to return to the offices to collect and sign for it.

I have never understood the US attitude that the Government knowing about you is bad, but money grubbing companies that sell your information at the drop of a hat and exploit that information at every turn, is good…

Edit: One thing with Germany, though, the different government agencies cannot share information openly. E.g. the police can’t get direct access to residential or driving license information, they have to go through the courts, I believe, and show probable cause.

Likewise, when I got married, even though the residential registration was in the next office, I had to sign an extra form, so that the registrar could obtain a copy of our residential information for the marriage certificate.

With the correct regulation in place, like in Germany, I am much more happy for the municipality to have my information than some money grubbing business. There is also the protection here, that businesses cannot share or sell private information without my giving them written permission to do so.

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