While I am normally loath to anchor a post in a personal anecdote, yesterday’s case study might encourage readers to discuss their experiences with information overreach and what strategies have proven to be successful in beating them back.
The bottom line here is I did prevail in an arm wrestle over an unreasonable request, but it wasn’t pretty, and I came close to being the loser.
Regular readers have probably seen me mention that I don’t have a smart phone so as to avoid GPS location.1 Consistent with that, I don’t give up my SSN to medical providers (one time that meant not getting a test ordered by my MD since the lab he strongly preferred would not book me without an SSN) and I delete certain provisions of standard HIPPA documents (some MD offices don’t care, others go on tilt). So I am pretty consistent within the limited realm of influence I have.
I’m withholding the name of the guilty company, which provides all sorts of tests, like CT scans, MRIs, digital X rays, and ultrasound, in free standing clinics in the South since the head office types who created the unreasonable policies might beat up on the local staffers.
I went in yesterday to a nearby location for an image, doctor Rx in hand. I had gone to this vendor in January in a different office for the same type of test, so I was (or should have been) in their records. Both times, I paid myself at the time of service; yesterday, as before, they ran my credit card in advance.1
They then asked to copy my driver’s license.
I said I didn’t understand the request. I explained that I had just paid for the test, so they were not exposed to the risk of insurance fraud. I said I had not been asked to allow them to copy my driver’s license in January. I said I was very concerned about identity theft, I’d just had a friend go through trying to get her life and finances straightened out after that and it was horrific. I offered to let them sight my license.
There was a man and a woman behind the desk. I had been dealing with the woman but the man next to her interceded. He said that some things had changed since January. I reiterated that they had no need for a copy of my license. He then left briefly, and then came back and said he’d called and they needed a copy of my license.3
The staffer then said it was company policy, that he could either give me a refund or take a copy of my license.
I normally might not have escalated so quickly (and my bad tendency is to escalate) but he’d been patronizing and became even more so (too obvious subtext: “You dumb bitch, what about ‘our policy’ don’t you understand?”), which is like waving a red flag in front of me.
I said since no one had a copy of my license, the only way I could accede to their requirement would be if they signed a note agreeing to assume liability for exposure or misuse of the image. I also told him I had a website that got 1.5 million page views a month and I’d be writing up their company’s reckless, nonsensical policies.
The “1.5 million” cut through his bureaucratic veneer. He stiffened, got angry and said I couldn’t have the MRI, he’d be issuing a refund. I shot back, “You aren’t going to win this one,” that taking that stance would look even worse in a writeup.
A young woman emerged from the back. Turns out she was a manager type. She offered to have me sign a release so that the information from my test would go only to me, not to an MD. Since they give the patient the image on a disk at the time of treatment, the only part I would have to collect was the radiologist’s report.
Understand how bass-ackwards this is. The company’s pretense is that they need a driver’s license image to make sure that they don’t send a patient’s test results to the wrong doctor. It’s clearly ludicrous because they asked for no driver’s license information on my intake forms, nor did they take any shots of my face to link to or store with the images so they could compare them to the driver’s license photo. I can’t fathom in what universe this makes any sense. Consistent with that, I’ve gone to quite a few clinical labs and imaging centers in the US and Oz and never never never had any think a copy of an official ID was necessary to keep their records sorted.
I told the manager woman that this outcome was actually better. I’d seen the the ordering MD in New York only once, didn’t much like her and found some key statements to be inconsistent, so I was fine with not having to deal with her again. I mentioned I was planning to take the images and the report to a local doctor instead.
The manager said she could fax the radiologist’s report to the local MD…inconsistent with the release I’d just signed, to have the records go only to me.
Mind you, it was only due to getting an unexpected break that this impasse was resolved in my favor. Normally getting ugly is an exercise in futility.
If readers have any helpful hints for dealing with other types of unwarranted information grabs, please pipe up!
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1 I rarely have my dumb phone charged and even when it is, it seldom leaves the house. But please do not try contending that triangulation is as accurate as GPS. It isn’t. Courts have rejected the use of triangulation in prosecutions because it is too approximate to determine the location of a suspect at a particular time. As important, unlike GPS, a dumb phone doesn’t keep location-revealing data on it. And unless a warrant was put out on your mobile in advance, phone companies retain data that can be used for triangulation only for when you were using the device, as in calling or texting.
2 I pay for all labwork and any medical imaging out of pocket and submit to my insurer for reimbursement. Two reasons: first, the “cash” price is as low as, and sometimes markedly lower, than the best insurance negotiated rate, so I save money. Second, the insurer does not have the right to my test results if they are not paying, although they obviously do get diagnosis and procedure codes. If I had chronic medical conditions, it might not be so smart to have my medical records fragmented across doctors and labs, but aside from having beaten up joints, I am healthy as a horse and not allergic to any medications.
3 As you’ll see soon, this looks to have been false, plus his time away from the desk was so short that if he actually called, the most he could have conveyed would have been something like, “We have to have a copy of a driver’s license, right?”
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i hate that,lol.
thankfully, i live in a place that still retains some semblance of how it used to be:
we’ve had the same doctor for 20+ years, and consider him a friend(and me bringing yard eggs and boxes of cherry tomatoes for him and staff at random softens the fallout from the times i owed him money)
imaging is done at the hospital, and while the “business office” people tend towards what you describe, i’ve known a bunch of them for a long time, too. wife’s also related to a bunch of folks who work at the hospital.
same with our local pharmacy, here in town(dr and hosp are 45 miles down the road).
deep(and deep-ish) personal connections matter.
back when i was trying to get on disability due to my dead hip, etc…Doc sent me for an MRI at a standalone, for profit, chain outfit in Boernie(100 miles from my house)—trying to save me $.
it was as you describe…and that was 2007(?): wanted far more info than i thought warranted…since it was a cash transaction…akin to buying one of those framed “paintings” at walmart.
i told Doc that i’d rather pay a little extra next time and deal with folks i know at the hospital.
i’m also reminded of the difference between our local napa and the “carquest”, or whatever down the road….the latter wants your phone number, mother’s maiden name and so on…just to buy a bottle of brake fluid…if i must darken their door(since napa is closed on sunday), i give them made up on the spot info….just like i do online. alias, fake #, fake address, email i only use for that purpose, etc….such “fraud” doesn’t apply to medical, of course….otherwise, i don’t care…they have no right to accurate info about me, and therefore do not get any.
local napa doesn’t ask for any of that, and is a lot like the old timey locally owned parts stores of yore.
these chain parts stores were at the forefront of harvesting info…i remember being put off by it 30 or so years ago, way prior to internet.
i know this isn’t scalable….and that the kind of companies like that that i deal with are going extinct. most people i know take all that probing in stride…and it’s probably too late for boycotts to have any effect(ie: vote with yer dollar for the ones who don’t do that).
such boycotting should have begun a long time ago. now people are habituated to it, and the practice is omnipresent and all but unavoidable.
principiis obsta; caveat ruinam.
In Idaho, you used to be able to get a drivers license without your SSN on it — they attached a number from a pool they kept available for young idealists like me.
Does your state offer state-issued ‘identity cards’ that don’t have SSNs on them? Providing that would keep the paper pushers happy, but not expose your SSN.
In Ohio you can have a State ID or a Drivers Licence – but not both ! I tried. I don’t know what other states are like.
Same in New York as of last observation. Because, you know, God knows what you might get into with _two_ IDs.
Thanks but you are missing the point. There is no legitimate reason whatsoever for a medical lab to even ask to look at, much the less retain a copy of, my driver’s license. No MD requires that. No ER I have been to myself or with my mother has asked for a copy (one might have asked to sight it to confirm the photo looked like the patient and the name matched the name on the insurance card). Even more telling, pharmacies, which dispense controlled medications, don’t ask for any government ID.
They do require a DL to dispense decongestants containing ephedrine, which though non Rx have been kept behind the counter since the advent of DIY meth labs.
And at first-time visits to a new MD office they usually copy your insurance card and DL for the file.
I have experienced this both as a patient and as a provider for years: it is standard practice.
btw I also strike certain portions of the HIPAA form. I never agree to “balance billing” and there has been no pushback from the office staff who collect the forms.
To my chagrin I do have a smart phone but I keep the location off and don’t use the calendar, keep Proton VPN on all the time, and avoid Google like the plague. I allow ads on this site after being reprimanded by you a couple years ago, but generally ads are blocked and for sure 3rd party ads are. I also periodically clear history and cookies. And I send no info to Apple. My browser doesn’t have access to my mic and I have disabled Siri.
Sorry, I have gone to four new MDs in the last year looking for non-surgical treatments for my orthopedic injury (one of which I left without having been treated, having been made to wait 2 hours for a 10:00 AM appointment, but I did go through all the intake before I hiked out), as well as two new chiros in the 14 months. One of the MDs practices out of NYC’s Hospital for Special Surgery. None of them asked for my driver’s license or any ID. And they don’t copy my insurance card because I self pay.
Presenting a driver’s license isn’t the same as retaining a copy. The Alabama pharmacy regs require that a buyer of decongestants with ephedrine present a DL or government ID and that the pharmacy take the info off the mag strip. This seems to present a loophole since you can’t/don’t update you address on your passport if you moved (if you look, there is no visible address on the document; I checked when I moved and you don’t update your address with the Dept of State), not so much for abusive purchases as in making it more difficult to connect dots if you moved.
And you can get every pretty much other scrip without presenting an ID, including opioids, again confirming that asking for an ID is an overreach.
Sadly, per Lambert, you are sending your info to Apple. I can’t find the Water Cooler, but one in the last month described in detail how all the recent Apple OS send info to Apple every time you go on the Web.
SSNs aren’t on driver’s license, at least not in IL or NC.
I can’t imagine any state included them.
For a lot of online info grabs I use an add-on called Blur that creates burner email addresses that can be turned on and off. Yeah, they know who I am registered with, but hey, it’s one level of indirection with other 3rd parties.
Bit wary about giving any thoughts of advice as I have learned to be wary of getting advice from people who will never suffer any of the consequences if their advice all goes wrong. Having said that, it might be an idea to bone up on things like Alabama’s privacy laws to see if they apply in such a case-
https://www.alabamagazette.com/story/2018/05/01/legal/what-laws-are-available-to-protect-my-private-information/1363.html
If you were going to lose that argument with that jerk, I wonder what the effect would be of pulling out your mobile, setting your recorder on it to active, state the date & time on it, and then asking him to confirm that you are being refused service for not giving him a personal identity document and then asking him his name ‘for the record.’ But only if you lost that argument of course.
All of this information retrieval is supposed to create efficiencies but we all know it doesn’t. Bureaucracy feeds on information from the trough and grows fat, but fat animals don’t run fast.
And it seems like the information overreach becomes worse each year. The only solution I see is to begin feeding garbage into the system.
I don’t take surveys anymore, of any kind, but when I do I say that I am a geriatric Asian woman who lives with her eight foster kids, that I am currently afflicted with dementia and colon cancer at age 52, that I’m a French citizen living in NYC on a student visa for my second PhD in astrobiology, and feed other BS into the matrix. I fill out forms incorrectly and leave blanks. When possible in the bureaucratic structures, I put in the wrong information that can be passed off as a mistake.
The only way out of this is to make people give up on having an efficient imperial bureaucracy in the first place.
Similar approach here. I loathe and avoid surveys, and if cornered, entertain my inner fabulist …
In many cases the person (no common sense individual) at the front desk asking for info like driver’s license no., SSN is somebody who’s paid a much lower wage than the bureaucrat who made up the requirement. I don’t show or give them my driver’s license no. or give them my phone no. or address. When I have to, I gve them false info.
I’m like you Yves, I don’t want them to have my personal info unless there is a good reason. Most of these people have no good reason. If they force me to give them a document such as the DL, I walk away w/o requiring/accepting their service. Most people are stupid to give out their personal info for the asking. Really sad!
In some states (Hawaii is one) the cop who’s writing you a ticket wants you SSN. They use the SSN to send it to the collection agency they use for fines. If you’re a visitor (toursit) to that state they know you won’t fight the ticket and usually the cop gives you an unwarranted ticket to beef up their fines quota.
Information overload: I won’t use rbnb because they demand a digital copy of ID such as a passport or drivers licence. This has been quite inconvenient at times. A few years ago I was having a large weekend family party at my house, lacked space, and wanted to rent a large apartment nearby for several days. I found a nice one but the owner wouldn’t rent it to me. She insisted I give her a copy of the ID rbnb required despite my giving her my name and address, about 1km away. In response to her accusatory question of why was it I didn’t want to give it to her I answered why was it exactly she so badly wanted such personal and confidential information. Of course I lost and had to make another arrangement at a less nice location.
No-one I know makes this kind of fuss. They all give their confidential information without hesitation. I do go to rbnb’s but someone else makes the arrangements despite my anti-ID harangue and offer to go to a regular hotel.
Medical information: in Canada we need to give our government health card to doctors and hospitals. It is obviously linked to all kinds of confidential information available to the provincial government. There is no danger of identity theft if that is the main concern. If one is concerned about surveillance by BIg Brother it might be worse than giving private info to a for- profit clinic.
Medical care: as a non US-ian I find Yves’ description of payment methods for healthcare pretty bizarre. We just give our health card and that’s it. I should note we still don’t have prescription drug coverage, so it’s pretty much as in the US, although it looks like prescription drug coverage will be phased in beginning January 1, 2022.
It sounds like a better use for your flip phone would be in the car, plugged into the cigarette lighter in case of emergency.
Even a ‘dead’ burner phone should still call 911. Keep it charged and carry it in the car.
In this particular situation I simply would have claimed not to have a drivers license (or state ID or whatever). They must have a policy for such a situation, which that shitsipper would have had to resort to even if he “knew” you were lying.
I put carefully cut pieces of blue masking tape over my driver’s license number and the bar code info on the back of the license. It’s easily removed should you need to present the license to a truly authorized individual, such as a policeman. I think I’ve only had one person ask me if I could remove the tape and I explained that I understood their need for a photo i.d., but that didn’t entitle them to have my driver’s license number on record. They asked for a photo i.d., and that’s what they were getting. I.D. was accepted without further discussion. It’s a technique I read about on an identity theft website years ago.
This is a great suggestion, thanks!
Indeed it is a great idea. I’ll definitely try it. Thanks grayslady.
This info about ssn is useful: Who Can Lawfully Request My Social Security Number?
https://www.identityhawk.com/Who-Can-Lawfully-Request-My-Social-Security-Number/
You aren’t legally required to provide your SSN to businesses unless one of the following is true:
• You’ll be engaging in a transaction that requires notification to the Internal Revenue Service; or
• You’re initiating a financial transaction subject to federal Customer Identification Program rules.
….
These are some examples of businesses that require a Social Security number for legitimate purposes:
• Insurance companies
• Credit card companies, lenders, and any other company receiving a credit application from you
• The three main credit reporting agencies: TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian
• Any company that sells products or services that require notification to the IRS, including investment advisors; banks; real estate purchases; financial transactions over $10,000, such as automobile purchases; and other financial transactions
It doesn’t sound like the MRI outfit meets any of these profiles. They were just collecting personal information, which is valuable itself as a traded commodity. There are almost no restrictions on what private companies can do with ssns and other personal info they collect.
Nothing stops any businesses from asking for an ssn, but that doesn’t mean they have the legal authority to require ssns.
try to get job without one.
granted, they are supposedly using it for the IRS or whomever else.
thank you Flora–correct and timely information –as usual
Their pretense is extremely laughable. They have you in person which means a visual verification of your ID would likely be sufficient to confirm you are you. As for sending the results to the right doctor, meaning your doctor, again they have you right there to confirm they have the correct doctor on file if it truly is their desired intent.
Asking for your driver’s license to scan and save the data is actually more likely to lead to problems that can be prevented by taking advantage of having you in person – assuming their intent is to prevent a wrong doctor from receiving your results. What useful information is on your license that would fulfill the stated intent? Name and address I would suspect. Well people move, marry, divorce, etc… and all that data is always changing on easily 10% of the population at any given time. Add on top of that, that few people update their driver’s license info in a timely fashion and NO system is real-time tied into the 50’ish DMV’s and therefore you have a TON of stale data out there at any given time.
I would personally conclude that it’s either an out-right lie as to their intent or the biggest and dumbest boondoggle taken on by said clinic as I can guarantee it does not achieve the stated/desired result. I say guarantee because for the FI I work for, when it comes to online account opening our biggest head ache is all the work it takes to verify identity and current addresses given how slow third party address sources are to catch up to people’s lives. When you have someone in person there is no value in trying to do this unless you are creating some other value other than the said clinical services being offered.
Related side note, this is one of the benefits of Canada’s universal health care system – you only show your health card, no other information is required or asked for, health care information is extremely private and only kept by the government. You show up for an MRI or CAT scan and all you need to do is give our health card, which they swipe then return to you with “please have a seat, we’ll be right with you”, then in you go and out you go and you wait for the phone call from your doctor.
So now that I think of it, a fairly good argument for universal health care is privacy.
How bad can the medical system get? I wonder at what point do people give up and try treating themselves? Other businesses seem to survive without demanding your drivers license to transfer information. I believe one third of medical costs are administrative. Maybe the I.D. gives this administration something to do. The business is like a monopoly; you are often stuck with their terms, because you need an illness treated and can’t just walk away.
I think new cars are supposed to have tracking devices.
They are, with heroin and alcohol and cannabis. Not to mention other self care activities like binging Netflix or video games or pornography.
No judgment here, because I’ve done all but one of those things (take a guess), but people are absolutely in a wrecked state of self medication right now. It’s killing tens of thousands of people a year.
I saw a report one time about an unlicensed person doing dental work. The licensed dentists were trying to close her business, but it sounded like she was doing competent work at a fraction of the cost.
Edward asks: How bad can the medical system get? I wonder at what point do people give up and try treating themselves?
My answer: I’m already doing it. Here’s a story from the Arizona Slim file:
I came home from my 2017-18 Christmas-New Year’s visit with Mom, and I found that my place had been ransacked. Torn apart. That’s how my life felt too.
Well, the police investigated, turned up nothing conclusive, and on September 25, 2018, I got word that my case had been closed. I. Was. Furious.
It wasn’t the sort of anger where, shall we say, it would have been socially acceptable to stand on a street corner and holler “Eff the police!” Uh-uh. That would have gotten me arrested.
Within a week, I couldn’t walk. I was in excruciating pain. Thus began a five-month journey through mainstream and alternative health care. This included visits to an urgent care center and a medical clinic, sessions with three massage therapists, acupuncture, and four months of physical therapy.
Over time, I regained my ability to walk normally. But the pain persisted.
Then, in early January 2019, a Pennsylvania massage therapist recommended the late John Sarno’s book, Healing Back Pain. When I got back to Tucson, I put myself on the library reserve list. Finally, on February 11, I was able to check that book out. After reading it, I continued the my Sarno knowledge quest and read The Divided Mind and The Mindbody Prescription.
Sarno in a nutshell: A lot of physical pain is actually caused by the brain. It’s trying to keep those angry, evil thoughts from escaping from the unconscious. And this problem is especially prevalent among those who are hardworking, conscientious, and perfectionist.
Boom. Fits me to a tee. Thank you, Dr. Sarno. And rest in power.
He also urged his patients to discontinue all special treatments and resume normal activity. So, I started a cold turkey campaign. No more heating pad, Lidocaine patches, pain lotions, Advil, and physical therapy. How did this make me feel? Better!
As for the anger, it’s still there. But now I recognize it. I write down all the things that are making me mad, and guess what. That makes me feel better too.
For many months, I was afraid to sit down because I thought it would hurt too much. Then, in late February 2019, I decided that no chair would defeat me. And I started sitting again.
What about my bike? Been back on it since March 2, 2019! Having the time of my life while pedaling around Tucson.
As mentioned above, Dr. Sarno is deceased. However, other practitioners are continuing his work. Here’s a website that can explain more:
https://www.tmswiki.org/ppd/Howard_Schubiner,_MD
I am glad you were able to resolve your back problem and to liberate yourself from the health care system. It sounds unpleasant. When you get sick, the illness can take over your life. I saw a report once about a group of Cambodian refugees who went blind from the trauma they experienced. The blindness was in their minds, not physical.
Slim! Snap regarding Dr. Sarno. I had similar symptoms while doing a stressful job and his book made sense and really helped.
New cars, deluxe models, track your GPS data, odometer, times of operation, etc. There’s dozens of sensing devices monitoring various mechanical datas. Also keeps track of your body weight when you sit down, supposedly for air bag reasons, but when combined with the other data used as a “driving signature” allows someone to identify who was driving. It hasn’t happened yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if states started using this to send out fines and generate revenue. It’s probably not legal, yet, but we’ll see.
It is worse then I realized. There doesn’t seem much hope of the government reigning in this spying.
Now I understand why this blog, the images are not visible when I share to Twitter, because you don’t have a smart phone you don’t know that posts from NC don’t have images. People with a phone call see the shared posts only show up as text without any image.
No, we don’t have images because we don’t have images. This has nothing to do with a phone. This site is about long form discussions and photos generally distract from the text. Plus any use of images puts us at risk of getting hit later for copyright misuse. So even when we cross post, we carry the images over from the original post ONLY if they are clearly marked as Creative Commons License or were taken by the author of the article.
If you think this is bad, try striking out the mandatory arbitration clause. A few years ago I consulted an MD for a surgical procedure, lined out the mandatory arb provision from the intake forms and got away with it at the office but the omission was discovered on the day of the procedure. They brought back the form as I was being prepped for surgery and said the doctor would not proceed unless I signed. I did but wrote in above my signature “I have been informed that care will be denied if I refuse to sign.” They said that was unacceptable, canceled the surgery and turned me out on the street still dizzy from medication. Unfortunately I didn’t have the page views to strike back,
I imagine the arbitration clause is the first to meet the ink of Yves pen.
(I enjoyed Yves post. We’re kindred spirits.)
Wow, good for you!!!
Somebody tells them to ask and they do. Someone asks them to do it and they do. Just a transaction, right?
“We have to have a copy of a driver’s license, right?”–Yves, but my bold.
A nuance here, with the changing use of Language. The use of “RIGHT” as an end of sentence attachment to encourage confirmation with what the speaker has just stated grates on me to no end and seems to be so common in many interviews I listen to. Like the lilt (as in a Questioning statement) added to the end of many younger generation definitive statements.
The use of the confirming “RIGHT” is stair stepping the listener to acknowledge the veracity of the speakers point. It is prompting for confirmation, no? I have never heard an interviewer lately pause and say–“No, I can not agree that what you are saying is totally right.”
imo–Using RIGHT in this fashion also manipulates decision making because in a dialogue it expresses the outcome expected from the person questioning and makes the person answering uncomfortable in expressing something different than the expected.
I forgot to mention earlier, my medical offices all want to take pictures of me too. I’ve refused – so far no problem.
I’ve also had an employer want me to sign a model release (I’m not a model)- this one included a license for worldwide use for eternity of my image- and no money to boot! Another Refusal. I keep hoping to see my image so I can sue the ever living out of them.
Civilized countries have appropriate legislation in place that prescribes how privacy information is to be acquired, handled , and used, etc…
Thank you for posting this. It’s really important to talk about ways we can start unplugging ourselves from the matrix. Not only for privacy reasons, although that by itself should be enough. Unfortunately, it’s only going to get harder with the coming “great reset,” digital health passports, blockchain ID. . ..
Alison McDowell has a good sense of where all this is going at:
https://wrenchinthegears.com/
I’m a big believer in identifying the problem first, then trying to come up with a possible solution. So, I think we need to be honest with ourselves about how bad things have gotten. WITHOUT THROWING OUR HANDS UP IN THE AIR AND GIVING UP. Ignoring the problems won’t make them go away. That, of course, is what they want us to do. That is how things got this bad to begin with. And that’s how they’ll get even worse.
Unless you really live off grid, your privacy is gone and you’re (we’re) being influenced in many ways that we don’t recognize or understand. Especially in real time.
If your car is newer than seven years old they can track it with GPS. Everything you buy with a credit card is recorded and stored.Everything you watch on TV is recorded and stored, down to your channel surfing habits. All phone conversations are recorded and stored. If you use a computer online, everything you do on it is recorded. I suspect, whether it’s encrypted or not
It’s all recorded and stored by the NSA in Bluffdale, Arizona. And we really don’t know who they may allow to have access to parts, or all, of our data. We’re supposed to trust them, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
“The data center is able to process “all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Internet searches, as well as all types of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital ‘pocket litter’.”
.
Remember the “meltdown” and “spectre” vulnerabilities in 2018? They are not viruses, but “zero day” vulnerabilities in the microprocessor’s kernel language. They came out with some “patches” for them and, as with so many other things, people stopped asking questions about it and went about their lives. Industry claimed the patches worked, but from what I read about it, early on, they couldn’t be permanently patched. I strongly suspect the NSA has access to every computer through these hardware vulnerabilities. In any case, we barely hear a peep about it now.
I’m tired of writing comments like this.
I want to offer some possible solutions, but all I can up with is mass scale boycotts. That could work. Other than that, fight the dark with light. Fight evil with good. Fight hate with love and compassion.
STAND UP! SPEAK OUT! DISSENT!
To your point about auto GPS, I am the very happy driver of a 2003 car with 54,000 miles on it.
I very much appreciate your work. You’ve been around a long time and have contributed much to solutions. However, in reply, all I can think of to say is: The truth is no longer hidden. People are hiding from the truth. I made a correction to my comment over an hour ago, will it be posted?
My apologies for my impatience about the comment moderation. I’m not used to how it works here. Please forgive my frustration and thank you for all you do.
I tell them I don”t have a D/L… Sometimes they say well how did you get here? Me,.. “I walked”
I get my dander up as well…. When they ask for too much info… I’ve left all the big banks in my area because they insisted on my D/L when I walk in to the same bank branch to cash a check EVERY FRIDAY….. LOOK AT MY FACE… KNOW YOUR CUSTOMERS!!!! No I don’t want an ATM card, nor do I wish to bank online.
Now I bank at a local community bank, I greeted by name, checks cashed no problem, no D/L just ” how would you like that back, Mr SteveB?” It’s a pleasure.
BoA is going the extra… uh… turnstyle? / ;)
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bank-of-america-idUSKBN15M2DY
Oh you are tugging at my heartstrings. I had the same battle about copying my license with Sprint when we briefly used them a few years ago.
About 4 years ago, I filed a complaint with HHS Office for Civil Rights. Kaiser Permanente requires third party targeted advertising trackers be turned on to access one’s health records. The “opt out” simply doesn’t work.
https://healthy.kaiserpermanente.org/privacy.html
HHS OCR dismissed my complaint.
Yesterday, I had an appointment with a physical therapist over the phone. I would need access to my EHR to arrange a video visit, which I simply will not do for the same reasons you are protesting, Yves. Needless to say, the appointment was worthless.
I have been a victim of too many identity breaches–including tax filing and the 2015 Office of Personnel Management breach. My data is out there. I don’t want my EHR access to be linked to my browsing behavior too.
Covid has turned the delivery of health care upside down. Don’t expect things to change. The panopticon includes the virtual doctors’ office.
(Tried to post this a couple hours ago. Hope it doesn’t post twice.)
Thank you for posting this. It’s really important to talk about ways we can start unplugging ourselves from the matrix. Not only for privacy reasons, although that by itself should be enough. Unfortunately, it’s only going to get harder with the coming “great reset,” digital health passports, blockchain ID. . ..
Alison McDowell has a good sense of where all this is going at:
https://wrenchinthegears.com/
I’m a big believer in identifying the problem first, then trying to come up with a possible solution. So, I think we need to be honest with ourselves about how bad things have gotten. WITHOUT THROWING OUR HANDS UP IN THE AIR AND GIVING UP. Ignoring the problems won’t make them go away. That, of course, is what they want us to do. That is how things got this bad to begin with. And that’s how they’ll get even worse.
Unless you really live off grid, your privacy is gone and you’re (we’re) being influenced in many ways that we don’t recognize or understand. Especially in real time.
If your car is newer than seven years old they can track it with GPS. Everything you buy with a credit card is recorded and stored.Everything you watch on TV is recorded and stored, down to your channel surfing habits. All phone conversations are recorded and stored. If you use a computer online, everything you do on it is recorded. I suspect, whether it’s encrypted or not
It’s all recorded and stored by the NSA in Bluffdale, Arizona. And we really don’t know who they may allow to have access to parts, or all, of our data. We’re supposed to trust them, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
“The data center is able to process “all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Internet searches, as well as all types of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital ‘pocket litter’.”
.
Remember the “meltdown” and “spectre” vulnerabilities in 2018? They are not viruses, but “zero day” vulnerabilities in the microprocessor’s kernel language. They came out with some “patches” for them and, as with so many other things, people stopped asking questions about it and went about their lives. Industry claimed the patches worked, but from what I read about it, early on, they couldn’t be permanently patched. I strongly suspect the NSA has access to every computer through these hardware vulnerabilities. In any case, we barely hear a peep about it now.
I’m tired of writing comments like this.
I want to offer some possible solutions, but all I can up with is mass scale boycotts. That could work. Other than that, fight the dark with light. Fight evil with good. Fight hate with love and compassion.
STAND UP! SPEAK OUT! DISSENT!
Reply ↓
It took about two and a half hours for that comment to get through the censor. I’ve made four or five comments here recently and every one of them took a long time to get through moderation. Why? How long will a mere correction take?
Should have said:
“And we really don’t know, [how it’s being analyzed and used or] who they may allow to have access to parts, or all, of our data.
[The meltdown and spectre vulnerabilities affect almost every computer and digital device in use. It is unclear, to me, whether the vulnerabilities have been addressed, at the manufacturing level, since they were discovered in 2018.]
This is out of line. This is a thinly resourced site and had you bothered to read our site Policies, we commit to freeing comments only once in a 24 hour cycle. You have no business beefing about services we have never said we offer, particularly since you don’t contribute to the site to help fund comment moderation (among other things).
If readers have any helpful hints for dealing with other types of unwarranted information grabs, please pipe up!
“Sorry, I don’t drive.” They lie to you, so you lie to them. I have a laminated ID for the local transit system with a photo which I offer to show by way of face/phot-match on such occasions.
One thing I did when I was traveling a lot years ago and had to register at a motel or hotel and didn’t want to give out all that info was just scribble so it was totally unreadable. They always accepted it and it became a game to see how many times I could get away with it. I was up to #57 and some guy called me on it and said he couldn’t read it and gave me another card to fill out. I just scribbled that card the same way so it couldn’t be read, handed it to him and he accepted it.
Yes, I have used that trick too. I have a brace for my right hand since I sprained my thumb once. I put that on and make out the form with my left hand. Guarantees that it’s unreadable. I am very right hand dominant.
Although being a relatively recent naturalised citizen of the USA I have only lived here (Southern Oregon) for the last ten years. In other words, there is not one jot of advice I can give. But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t take in what happened, plus the comments, and lodge it somewhere in the back of my (aged) brain. It’s a fact that there are pockets of this sort of behaviour in many countries including England, my birth country. The beauty of this modern wired-up world is that the advice from many is excellent.
Yeah taking the phone with you is a lot more useful (in potential situations) than leaving it at home. My phone is of the supposedly “smart” type, but I have it in “airplane mode” (their euphemism for “disconnected from the cellular network, which you’d probably only do when required on an airliner”) 99% of the time. And the GPS part of it also turned off. Unless the phone is lying to me about what is really turned off (which is possible) then I can’t be tracked.
If I had a car with network connections (inevitable some day) I’d look for a way to disconnect or shield the antenna that makes that connection. Note that, contrary to popular misconception, receiving GPS satellite signals per se does not disclose your location, it only allows the GPS receiver to calculate its position. The car’s computer may be storing internally a track of where you’ve been, but without a network connection that data can be extracted only by physical connection to the car’s computer.
You assume facts not in evidence, that I drive meaningful distances and/or on freeways. I don’t. I am all the time in our teeny suburb where the cops would be all over me pronto if my car were to break down and mess up traffic.
Seems like poor implementation based on some recent studies.
maybe photos are helpful sometimes? but health IT should be able to figure this out without additional privacy reaches