<story><title>&apos;Delete Act&apos; seeks to give Californians more power to block data tracking</title><url>https://www.kqed.org/news/11947039/delete-act-seeks-to-give-californians-more-power-to-block-data-tracking</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>SoftTalker</author><text>Why make this so difficult? Just ban personally targeted advertising. That&amp;#x27;s what everyone is really trying to achieve. Nobody really cares about any individual&amp;#x27;s personal data beyond using it to try to sell him something. Ban using it for advertising and it becomes worth less than the cost of collecting and storing it.&lt;p&gt;Sites can just go back to content-based targeting for ads.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>advisedwang</author><text>Privacy is about more than just targeted ads. That is just the most obvious application. Here are a handful of other practical privacy concerns:&lt;p&gt;* Negative information about you floating free (mugshots websites, revenge porn, news articles about past behaviour)
* Health and other behavioural information (e.g. used by health, life and auto insurance. These days your medical info might be used to sue you in another state even!)
* Privacy in semi-public places (ring cameras, uber dashcams)
* Financial information being used against you (credit ratings obviously, but also being deemed a fraud risk makes a lot of transactions difficult)
* Criminal history is commonly used in job applications.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not saying we need to go to one extreme - how would loans work without credit ratings, and CCTV definitly improves safety in some situations - but I just want to point out the range of issues at play. Most of these already have some kind of legal compromise.&lt;p&gt;Also beyond practical concerns there is a principal at stake too. We fundamentally deserve some degree of privacy just for it&amp;#x27;s own good.</text></comment>
<story><title>&apos;Delete Act&apos; seeks to give Californians more power to block data tracking</title><url>https://www.kqed.org/news/11947039/delete-act-seeks-to-give-californians-more-power-to-block-data-tracking</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>SoftTalker</author><text>Why make this so difficult? Just ban personally targeted advertising. That&amp;#x27;s what everyone is really trying to achieve. Nobody really cares about any individual&amp;#x27;s personal data beyond using it to try to sell him something. Ban using it for advertising and it becomes worth less than the cost of collecting and storing it.&lt;p&gt;Sites can just go back to content-based targeting for ads.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>amelius</author><text>Yes, and as a result people might consume a little less than they did before and that will help the climate as a nice side-effect.&lt;p&gt;I guess we&amp;#x27;ll get a ban on personally targeted advertising when Chinese companies start buying data brokerage firms in the U.S.</text></comment>