In one fell swoop, every utility’s claim of “smart meters do not spy on you” is now dissolved.
Their myth is now shattered.
In a cutesy marketing video, shown below, global data analytics company Onzo admits to helping utilities surveil and profile their customers — and sell direct surveillance access to their customers’ homes.
“We use this characterized profile to give the utility… the ability to monetize their customer data by providing a direct link to appropriate third-party organizations based on the customer’s identified character.”
So if your fridge compressor comes on every six hours, and suddenly it stopped, you may start seeing refrigerator ads. If the unique draw pattern of a computer’s various parts (fans, CPU, memory, DVD drive, etc), working intermittently, suddenly stops being detected, you may get a computer repair ad or an ad from Dell or Gateway.
If it is being done by utilities and sold, you can bet surveillance is doing it too where they operate. It may even all be getting pulled to a master database of all citizens, where it is scanned for flags and stored for later review.
It is all harmless, until the machine turns on you, and the information begins being used to get informants in your house as repairmen, or to see when you forget to arm your security system, so an intrusion is possible. Nothing highlights how important being able to hide is, like being chased.
Meanwhile on the FR thread about it, RegulatorCountry notices something strange:
Call me paranoid if you want, but I believe Google is using Google Earth for ad revenue. My house is set back in the woods and I’ve been swamped since last year, never got around to getting the leaves up or the gutters cleaned out. Guess what I started seeing in online ads? Leaf blowers, gutter guards, etcetera. I also am going to be needing a new roof in the next several years, the algae stains are pretty bad even though it’s still serviceable with no leaks. Ads for roofing, too. Never got them before, haven’t done any web searches for these goods or services.
That’s probably not google earth. They will never look at everyone’s house from there, to target advertising. This personalized ads issue, without any online searches related to it to trigger it, is the same thing the Redditors reported. Here it is happening again to an online right activist. Given what I know at this point I would first think something is operating in his neighborhood, and targeting him, and that is how they amuse themselves. My impression is the work is slow and boring with non-criminals, so you take what laughs you can get where you can get them.
It is a weird, weird, world lately. And it is only getting weirder.
Spread r/K Theory, because you should hire Acme Grass Mowing to get your lawn under control, Roger
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“That’s probably not google earth. They will never look at everyone’s house from there, to target advertising. ”
It’s just geolocation by IP address.
But why pitch ads that require visual inspection of the house? They didn’t get that through geolocation.