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Government spies on Twitter

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Renegade:
How about Twitter spying on people? I've set up a Twitter account with my Hotmail account years ago, but I do not use it. Twitter have kept sending me emails about feeds they thought I might be interested in, which were usually related topically to a handful of feeds I'd subscribed to, all of which are based on my academic interests (and are not from my local area).

However, today there was a new twist: Twitter sent me an email saying I might be interested in the feeds of my local council. How on earth did they figure out where I live? I barely log on to Twitter (maybe 3-4 times a year to do a search), and I only do it on my PC. Is that based on my IP address or they're doing something different?
-dr_andus (July 19, 2013, 06:44 AM)
--- End quote ---

Big Data works a number of ways:


* IP address
* Cookies
* Physical address
* Email address
* Loyalty cards
* Darn near any service provider
* Account IDs
* etc.
* etc.
A lot of those are already tied together. The trick is just to get what you need tied together, and that's not too hard.

For example, you login to your Twitter account. You then visit some site. Done. You've just allowed a tracking company to put 2 and 2 together. They now know your email address. They link that data up with a partner tracking company. They now know your physical address. Rinse & repeat and they know what you buy at the grocery store because you use a loyalty card. etc. etc.

That's a pretty crude description, but it about sums it up.

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