There is a craving for the now-utopian ideals of privacy, anonymity, and security on the internet in response to the pervasive digital panopopticon marketed as the "free" internet. Despite robinhood efforts to establish a moidicum of digital privacy protections, there are engineers that are paid to find creative workarounds to continue to turn a profit on our personal information.

Silicon Valley is the Patient Zero of 21st century technological innovation. In 2000, Google proved to the world that free services can be monetized through mass surveillance (see internet incorporated (tm)). And fortunately for Google, the general public and regulatory bodies did not push back -- until Facebook was exposed in 2010 for their first (public) foire into psyops, utilizing behavioral profiling to gain intel for political advertising [1].

Fun! Fact! Facebook's partner in crime, Cambridge Analytica, assisted Trump in his 2016 campaign!! [2]

foreshadowing the inefficacy of the ccpa

In September 2018, catalyzed by the public outrage of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal, the California Civil Code was amended as an attempt to improve user privacy protection in the digital realm.

The CCPA [3] states that users now have the right to:

1. Opt out of sales and sharing of personal information;
2. Know what data is collected about them and how it is used;
3. Delete personal information collected from them.

Google and Facebook loved this idea so much that they reinvigorated a California lobbying group called the Internet Association. At the time, the key members were: Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, AT&T, Salesforce, Intuit, Stripe, Reddit, Spotify, Twitter, Netflix, Airbnb, Linkedin, Expedia, eBay, Dropbox, Etsy, and PayPal [4]. Raise your hand if you're surprised! FYI, if you're looking for a Big Tech hitlist, this is it.

Overall, they spent a projected total of $300 million on these efforts [5] -- pennies compared to the ~$950 million that Google rakes in per day [6]. Unsurprisingly, the Internet Association dissolved in 2021 after the new legislation was ratified.

the request barrier

The CCPA is losing the battle against the claim to protect intellectual property. Also unsurprisingly, there are very few influential parties who would benefit from the enforcement of this regulation.

not-so-pseudoanonymized data

The privacy risks associated with cookies were vocalized since the first patent relating to cookies was filed in 1996 [7]. There is even an article referenced in that original patent highlighting concerns regarding the use of cookies for personalized DoubleClick advertisement banners.

identitylink

**IdentityLink**: A persistent ID that links pseudonymous cookies/mobile ad IDs to personally identifiable information (PII).

So how do we successfully circumvent the right to opt out of personal data collection and sales of that information?

privacy regulation compliance services

"essential" cookies

sharing is caring!

the data broker industrial complex and big tech data laundering

see: the data broker industrial complex for a primer on the data dark web