Last week, Tech in Motion Orange County hosted Dave Gullo, co-founder of Kickstorming, in Irvine for their September Tech Talk. With over 150 attendees, Dave Gullo’s talk drew a large crowd that was ready to learn about how every minute we spend online, we are being bought, traded, and sold. The event kicked off with an hour of networking, career counseling, and some light food before Dave’s presentation got under way.
Dave kicked off his presentation talking about just how many tracking tools are on a single webpage. There are 56 tracking tools just on TMZ home page while there is 1 on Reuters. Intent data is worth more than the ads. Your browser appears to be as unique as your fingertip! It can convey at least 21.7 bits of identifying information.
Tracking isn’t just data collected from your browsing history, but can be collected by your phone via GPS location. With MAC address tracking of your cell phones with units on recycling cans, Big Data can track you throughout your city.
Now before you start freaking out about how big data is collecting your life, remember that big data is never clean. It will be merged in ways we never think possible, and that will distort the information. It is certainly time for new laws to consider privacy and what’s going on in the internet!
If you’re interested in protecting your privacy on the web, Dave suggested checking out disconnect.me and ghostery.com, both sites which help keep your information from being tracked.
A bit about Dave Gullo: He’s a Hacker, Entrepreneur, and Co-Founder of Kickstorming which provides top tier product development services for talent-starved Silicon Valley tech companies. He is passionate about all things related to data, online tracking, and privacy. Dave spent several years focused on privacy research and "tracking the trackers" and will add some color to the concept of "If it's free, then you are the product". In the digital age, data abounds and most of the flow of data is not at the behest of the consumer. This discussion will take a look at how data is overtly and covertly collected, how it is used, and how you can (and can't) protect yourself from the creepy effects of this data.
Want even more details? Dave was kind enough to share his presentation with us here!
Thank you to everyone who came out to support Tech in Motion Orange County. Make sure you stay connected to the conversation and check out our next event in October.