How are tech giants converting our data into massive money?

[ChuckMaurice]

As data privacy is a common concern on the web (and where I work) I became a bit paranoid and started to remove things from Google, Onedrive, Dropbox and co. Now I’m considering setting up a Nextcloud server to hold files, contacts and calendar all from one place.

But I thought one thing : I don’t really know what those companies are collecting, and how they are making money with it. I think I’m not the only one, but people on a tech forum like LTT will have more answers than common, non IT folks.

I’m also using Gmail (for like 20% of my emails), Windows 10, macOS El Capitan and soon will have an Android smartphone, and some of this things are great for my use, if not mandatory. But data collection is important for those devices/services and I can’t always disable it, so I guess I’m better understanding why it’s present in the first place. I'm on Facebook but I'm careful about it and actually see the ads this time.

 

So, why is our data so important that Google, Microsoft, Apple and other tech giants make good products for free, but rigged with data collection method ? How does it justify making entire free OSs (or giving away W10 upgrade for free) or providing massive amount of free storage/complex services?

 

What data are they collecting? how are they converting that into money? Is it just about ads? cause like most people I don’t see them with adblockers.

 

I made a quick list of what I use or could use that is free, where I’m the product apparently :

• -          Google/Apple/Microsoft web services (including my own paid Office 365 subscription, with 1TB Onedrive :O)

• -          iOS/Android/Windows phones (I don’t own a recent smartphone, but I will in the next years)

• -          Mac OS, Windows 10, Chrome OS

• -          Cloud storage providers (ok they have paid account, but the majority of people are on free accounts)

• -          Social things like Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram (I don’t use them so maybe there is massive amounts of ads, I don’t know)

• -          Services like Evernote (using), Siri/Cortana, password sync, communication, email

• -          Basically anything that uses server time, sortage or has massive costs of development and is provided for free against access to your data.

 

 

[Goldensapling]

Basically, the internet makes basically all of its money from advertising. Literally any website.

If companies sell your data, the ad companies can make targeted ads, meaning the ad companies can give you ads that make you want to buy stuff. Meaning the ad companies get more money. Meaning they give large companies stupid amounts of money for lots of your information. 

Also, because governments are nosey as fuck.

[Ryujin2003]

So... I wouldn't use the word free. Nothing in the 21st Century is free.

Big companies provide things free for several reasons, but the main one is revenue. Most people never read the terms and conditions, but most things do have data collection? Why? Well, the first reason is quite obvious. If a company makes a product, and gains no feedback, they cannot improve it. So collecting data from everything, such as W10, allows companies to see who uses their product (social demographics, hardware, software interactions, etc....), and allows them access to issues that would otherwise not be reported or identified. This allows them to better design their products to fit the needs of the consumers.

 

More on to your point, advertising. Why is Google free? Because every link you click, information is sent to that webpage about where you came from. You go on a Google spree for a PSU, and go to Corsair, they can see you found them through Google. They then can get "free" information to better target an audience with advertising or pay companies, like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc... to have their products and sites appear first when certain searches are conducted (keyword based). How does Google, Hotmail, Yahoo, and other companies support free email? You send and receive emails all day. These companies aren't "spying" on you, but there is data that is collected to solicit advertisements to you. Your brother sends you an email "Hey, we're having a baby!", and now Google starts showing you advertisements for formula and diapers... Weird how, I thought that was a coincidence.

 

Any "free" platform is essentially a way to gather information. Using Siri, Cortana gives your voice usage to the parent company so they can work on their algorithms. But also helps with soliciting advertisements.

 

Everything you do is monitored. Everything you search for while logged into Google is tracked. Then packages of data are sold to advertising companies, who buy your information to again, solicit advertisements during your internet usage. Facebook, same way. You allow access to a "free" game you want to play, you've just given them all of your information. You download a free game from Google Play Stores or iTunes, you just gave them your information. It looks like free, but your accepting the ability to use the internet or play a game as your form of payment... It's really quite bad.

 

This is why some websites won't allow you access if you have adblock on. Because the advertisements are blocked, they don't get paid by that company.

[paddy-stone]

VPN /thread

 

It will still show you ads, but it doesn't know who you are unless you are signing in to websites.. even then because the server of the VPN is used a lot it won't be assigning that data to you personally I think?  that's why a lot of the time you will see things like cloudflare, to try and make sure you are a real person and not a bot that is running around or something even worse a DDNS is under way as there are lots of connections coming from the same place, AFAIK and in my laymens view of it, that is.

 

But hey a VPN is a good way to go, at least it stops a lot of the crap from sticking to you.

[VerticalDiscussions]

13 minutes ago, Ryujin2003 said:

-snip-

Cant live like this forever tough:

 

[GoodBytes]

Market Data actually. Data is processed and sold to other companies.

It usually fall into 3 groups of purchasers: large marketing firms, companies, and resellers).

 

- Large marketing firms use this data to know how to market products and service and where. Not to mention how.

- Companies buys it to do market analysis to know if a product will succeed (based on a risk/success factor) before spending the billions in R&D to make the product come to life only to see that it will fail. or to know how to tweak the product to make it interesting and sale to a group of people.

- Resellers. These are companies buying the expensive data, and offer as a service to customer who can't afford it. Or brings tools to process the information. Like they provide their own software to do filters, graphs and such to better analyze data. The sale of such solution is usually a subscription model.

 

No one cares about Jldjul's porn sites, private life. Unless a company is willing to spend millions to only target Jldjul specifically, which is moronic. It is not YOU, it is about market groups.

 

Say you are a company that makes file cabinets. File cabinets are boring.

But you want to bring interest to them targeted at tech companies, mostly startups. You introduce the file cabinet of the future which scans and stores all content of folders to a PC and organizes everything, and can detect already scanned files allowing you to remove them, and put them back. Plus, there is a built-in search system with a small computer colored screen. It acts as a secretary of sorts. Very fancy, very techy.

 

So, before you invest 100's of million in making this idea a reality (which you know you can due to R&D and experts you have, and even segments of prototype) that you have in an actual product on the market, not to mention marketing cost. You need to really know the target market.

 

You make it, and it is in bright colors plastic, because you want to be different, low cost, and says "Creative". It ends up being a flop, because despite your target Tech Startups, which are usually younger people who might prefer a lower cost due to limited budget, might be a generation that don't trust plastic product, and it needs to be in metal, fireproof, and survive a drop of 5 floors, as it is a common occurrence, for some odd reason. So, 100's millions are now gone, and your are possibly in financial trouble. If you had that market data, you would know that people of the age 18-30 which are common for startups, 95% of them look for fireproof, metal, and color black, and survive a 5 floor drop file cabinets, and you see that price is of no concern. This data could have been acquired for $1 million (say).

 

[Doramius]

As stated:
 

14 minutes ago, Ryujin2003 said:

..... every link you click, information is sent to that webpage about where you came from.

Think of it like going to an "Concierge Service" at a hotel in a place like Las Vegas.  You ask what great restaurants are in the area, they give you a handful of VERY good restaurants.  Believe it or not, restaurants know people are going to go to these hotels and they know people are going to want to eat.  They'll frequently offer a small kickback to the hotel for the referral, and the restaurant now gets increased patronage because of the hotel referrals.  If a restaurant provides bigger kickback, the Hotel might refer more people to that specific restaurant.  Restaurants that don't get much patronage will ask the Hotel, "If you're offering our services, too, why are they choosing the other restaurant?"  The reply might be, "Because they have burger sliders", "an earlier happier hour", "friendlier staff" or "they serve import beer on tap", etc.  That restaurant will then take that information about the customers and change how they advertise, provide products, and even address quality and type of food served.  Consumer data is critically important.  That process is that same for the tech industry, as well as nearly every other industry one might think of.  Consumer data is huge currency.

[beaker]

Big Data Analytics, SAS http://www.sas.com/en_ca/industry/retail.html

[Scruffy90]

Short answer, every company and their mother are trying to profile you and all of your habits online. Some analytics co.'s and advertisers know people's habits better than they know themselves. The ultimate goal is basically to have people invest in their product.

 

When I used to run a target, the goal was to use ibeacon and NFC along with the cartwheel app to tell track peoples shopping habits within the store (know what aisle they travel) and ultimately feed them coupons when theyre within an aisle. 

[ChuckMaurice]

1 hour ago, VerticalDiscussions said:

Cant live like this forever tough:

My thoughts exactly: I used to be a Linux user, but I betrayed my comrade to join Apple and the PC Masterace. I had to be pragmatic as gaming and creative work as much harder and less user friendly on Linux. 

1 hour ago, Ryujin2003 said:

Your brother sends you an email "Hey, we're having a baby!", and now Google starts showing you advertisements for formula and diapers... Weird how, I thought that was a coincidence.

I hope this isn't true, my brother is 16 ^^

1 hour ago, Doramius said:

As stated:
 

Think of it like going to an "Concierge Service" at a hotel in a place like Las Vegas.  You ask what great restaurants are in the area, they give you a handful of VERY good restaurants. [...]

Great analogy

1 hour ago, GoodBytes said:

No one cares about Jldjul's porn sites, private life. Unless a company is willing to spend millions to only target Jldjul specifically, which is moronic. It is not YOU, it is about market groups.

People should, though, I go to very tasteful porn websites. 
 

1 hour ago, GoodBytes said:

Market Data actually. Data is processed and sold to other companies.

It usually fall into 3 groups of purchasers: large marketing firms, companies, and resellers).

 

- Large marketing firms use this data to know how to market products and service and where. Not to mention how.

- Companies buys it to do market analysis to know if a product will succeed (based on a risk/success factor) before spending the billions in R&D to make the product come to life only to see that it will fail. or to know how to tweak the product to make it interesting and sale to a group of people.

- Resellers. These are companies buying the expensive data, and offer as a service to customer who can't afford it. Or brings tools to process the information. Like they provide their own software to do filters, graphs and such to better analyze data. The sale of such solution is usually a subscription model.

 

No one cares about Jldjul's porn sites, private life. Unless a company is willing to spend millions to only target Jldjul specifically, which is moronic. It is not YOU, it is about market groups.

 

Say you are a company that makes file cabinets. File cabinets are boring.

But you want to bring interest to them targeted at tech companies, mostly startups. You introduce the file cabinet of the future which scans and stores all content of folders to a PC and organizes everything, and can detect already scanned files allowing you to remove them, and put them back. Plus, there is a built-in search system with a small computer colored screen. It acts as a secretary of sorts. Very fancy, very techy.

 

So, before you invest 100's of million in making this idea a reality (which you know you can due to R&D and experts you have, and even segments of prototype) that you have in an actual product on the market, not to mention marketing cost. You need to really know the target market.

 

You make it, and it is in bright colors plastic, because you want to be different, low cost, and says "Creative". It ends up being a flop, because despite your target Tech Startups, which are usually younger people who might prefer a lower cost due to limited budget, might be a generation that don't trust plastic product, and it needs to be in metal, fireproof, and survive a drop of 5 floors, as it is a common occurrence, for some odd reason. So, 100's millions are now gone, and your are possibly in financial trouble. If you had that market data, you would know that people of the age 18-30 which are common for startups, 95% of them look for fireproof, metal, and color black, and survive a 5 floor drop file cabinets, and you see that price is of no concern. This data could have been acquired for $1 million (say).

 

Best answer by far, I knew it couldn't be just about ads (as I bet at least 50% of internet users have adblockers). Market data seems more profitable than just useless (even targeted) publicity. Great analogy too. File cabinets, the next big thing.

 

Thank you all for your answers, this is useful for me but also as a reference to explain quickly to people/organisations I work for why they should be concerned about data privacy.
Next question: who are the worst data collector? well, let me rephrase that: which companies provide the worst software/service in comparison to the data it collects?

[GoodBytes]

4 hours ago, jldjul said:

Thank you all for your answers, this is useful for me but also as a reference to explain quickly to people/organisations I work for why they should be concerned about data privacy.

Next question: who are the worst data collector? well, let me rephrase that: which companies provide the worst software/service in comparison to the data it collects?

Difficult to answer. Why? Look at Facebook. It doesn't try to get to know you per se, you give that info on a silver plate for them. So it depends on what you putting, searching, reading about.

 

Google is actively trying to find everything about you, especially that it has its own advertisement devision. It monitors what you search, what web site you visit with Chrome, including when you are using incognito mode, what app/game/music etc, you get or look at from their Store. etc. Google is bad, but only because they have this big ecosystem of products and services, which many jumps on nearly all or all of them.

 

Microsoft wants that pie, but they are far from Google at the moment as we speak. 

 

Firefox collect telemetry data only, which asks you when install it, and the option is visible in the option panel. They and lives off donations.. They hurt real bad when Google cut funding them, despite helping a lot getting people to use Google search, and discover it.

 

And well, we spend hours with the best and worst.

[ChuckMaurice]

47 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Difficult to answer. Why? Look at Facebook. It doesn't try to get to know you per se, you give that info on a silver plate for them. So it depends on what you putting, searching, reading about.

 

Google is actively trying to find everything about you, especially that it has its own advertisement devision. It monitors what you search, what web site you visit with Chrome, including when you are using incognito mode, what app/game/music etc, you get or look at from their Store. etc. Google is bad, but only because they have this big ecosystem of products and services, which many jumps on nearly all or all of them.

 

Microsoft wants that pie, but they are far from Google at the moment as we speak. 

 

Firefox collect telemetry data only, which asks you when install it, and the option is visible in the option panel. They and lives off donations.. They hurt real bad when Google cut funding them, despite helping a lot getting people to use Google search, and discover it.

 

And well, we spend hours with the best and worst.

Is the data collection considered ok for entreprise features from Google and Microsoft? Do they still collect data when you have entreprise accounts or Windows 10 deployed all over your company?

I'm trying to get it right for both me personnaly and people/organisations I help with IT needs (so I'm trying to get in the head of any manager/president I encounter as for IT needs). These kind of cloud services have became mandatory, and as for now I mostly recommanded Owncloud/Nextcloud, but not everyone want or can set up a server or pay for VPS to have this. Also many companies work with Microsoft with Exchange servers and Office 365.

 

Should I be worried enough, both personnally and professionnaly, to not recommand any "paid with data collection" service? For now I mostly use Microsoft's cloud (Office 365), and Google for Youtube and some mails. I don't sync contacts/calendars, but I would if I had a modern smartphone. I (and most professionnals I work with) can't get rid of neither Windows nor Android, but shoud I make a complete switch to Nextcloud for everything cloudy?

[beaker]

Don't forget Apple collect all this data too!

[GoodBytes]

32 minutes ago, jldjul said:

Is the data collection considered ok for entreprise features from Google and Microsoft? Do they still collect data when you have entreprise accounts or Windows 10 deployed all over your company?

Yes. In Microsoft case, it depends what you do. If you use Cortana (including the search box in Windows), or click on ads in apps, that is market data collecting. If you use the OS in general, it is telemetry data being collected. he difference between the 2 is that telemetry data has no goal in knowing you. It is just anonymous data (well.. it tries to be anonymous), to know how people use certain apps and OS features, etc. The data is usually used in combination with everyone else, to do stuff like heat maps, stats, graphs and so on.

This data has little to no resale value. It is only interesting to Microsoft and partners it does business with to offer services (Windows Defender for example, as Microsoft work with anti-virus maker to get (buy) their virus/malware database, which they merge all together, with their own research and delivers that. Then the rest is how good is the scan algorithm to find matches in the database and detect potential new viruses. A/V miht be intrested in such data to understand how virus/malwarre fools people to do certain actions, like scare them for money. It makes their research better, meaning their Anti-virus gets better).

 

Market data is as discussed. It is for advertisement, and sale to others purposes.

 

32 minutes ago, jldjul said:

I'm trying to get it right for both me personnaly and people/organisations I help with IT needs (so I'm trying to get in the head of any manager/president I encounter as for IT needs). These kind of cloud services have became mandatory, and as for now I mostly recommanded Owncloud/Nextcloud, but not everyone want or can set up a server or pay for VPS to have this. Also many companies work with Microsoft with Exchange servers and Office 365.

 

Should I be worried enough, both personnally and professionnaly, to not recommand any "paid with data collection" service? For now I mostly use Microsoft's cloud (Office 365), and Google for Youtube and some mails. I don't sync contacts/calendars, but I would if I had a modern smartphone. I (and most professionnals I work with) can't get rid of neither Windows nor Android, but shoud I make a complete switch to Nextcloud for everything cloudy?

In the case of cloud, mail, and anything that uses big corp server. All big corps got together to agree on implementing a scanning of content and work with authorities as a collision to detect child pornography. It is illegal to have and certainly to distribute in many countries. They are also comply with authorities when they bring valid warrants to et access to ones data. Microsoft informs the users if their account has been accessed by authorities.

 

Aside from this, everything your mentioned, at least on the side of Microsoft, it is only telemetry data collecting.

 

 

[divito]

People always act like data collection is nefarious or something. Knowing what your target market wants/needs, and being able to customize and tailor products or services is a good thing for companies and their eventual customers. 

That data collection in the aggregate is far more useful than Joe Blow's specific data; moreover, as it's been pointed out, the cost is ridiculous to specify anything, not even beginning to talk about a reasonable purpose for such a thing.

[themctipers]

watch dogs 2 

they have a fuck ton of psas about that in the game.

[ChuckMaurice]

14 hours ago, beaker said:

Don't forget Apple collect all this data too!

1 hour ago, divito said:

People always act like data collection is nefarious or something. Knowing what your target market wants/needs, and being able to customize and tailor products or services is a good thing for companies and their eventual customers. 

That data collection in the aggregate is far more useful than Joe Blow's specific data; moreover, as it's been pointed out, the cost is ridiculous to specify anything, not even beginning to talk about a reasonable purpose for such a thing.

I think that people (me included) are worried or paranoid about data collection is because most of the data is not anonymously collected. Companies buying our data can directly interpretate them with our name, computer, navigation habits. Our name or personal identifiant links everything they have together, even thing unrelated, and the common thinking is that they know us better than ourselves. I find this worriesome because of the potential threat it poses, I can't actually think of a precedent where one specific guy got in trouble from data collection (aside from hacktivists like Assange, Snowden).

 

I remember reading an article explaining Apple's anonymous data collection, I belive it was called something like "differential privacy" where it was about a statistical process that anonymized data. Example of what I remember:

- an user has 4 options, he chooses one of them

- Apple's algorithm randomize the answer between the 4 possibilities

- Apple collects the randomized data, and knowing the probability of random possibilities appearing, they can reverse-engineer their own process and gather useful data without having specified infos on each user.

 

 

edit: found a similar article (as the one I red was in french): https://www.wired.com/2016/06/apples-differential-privacy-collecting-data/

[deleteduser1535945]

ads 

i guess this is why google gives 15gb free and microsoft gives 5 

[ChuckMaurice]

14 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

In the case of cloud, mail, and anything that uses big corp server. All big corps got together to agree on implementing a scanning of content and work with authorities as a collision to detect child pornography. It is illegal to have and certainly to distribute in many countries. They are also comply with authorities when they bring valid warrants to et access to ones data. Microsoft informs the users if their account has been accessed by authorities.

 

Aside from this, everything your mentioned, at least on the side of Microsoft, it is only telemetry data collecting.

I'm not worried about the legal side as I don't store anything illegal (unless you count the ton of drugs I have in my car ^^). And I don't think the authorities will bother with me for the 3 or 4 movies I downloaded illegally in 2016.

 

My question was more about private property and company abuse :

Let's say, I don't know, I have a revolutionnary, game changing idea about file cabinets (again). I work on drafts, prototypes, projecs using my W10 computer, my OneDrive cloud and OneNote for drafts. Let's say the idea don't please Microsoft as they intent to launch their own range of file cabinets (why not?). Can they just take things from my data they want without me having any legal way to block them? Do they own my data as it is stored on their cloud, and I made it using their software?

 

This is a silly example but not that far from reality when almost every company is using either Microsoft, Google or Apple software/hardware, this is dangerous. What if for example Google engineers worked on Android using Macbooks/MacOS and Apple was able to sue Google based on the data they collected?

 

As I live in France (and worked in France and western Europe), French companies values the cloud "a la française" (pardon my french) with everything stored in Europe so american companies have no claim on the data whatsoever. This became like a shift in the industry for the last 3 or 4 years, and a lot of French companies don't trust the tech giants for their data.

 

Also, nosey governments again. I find this morally wrong that the National "Security" Agency is able to scan my files, I know if I went kinda off the grid with Nextcloud and Linux they still could "target me" but how worried are you about that?

 

 

How much more until the NSA shuts down this thread? 

[divito]

38 minutes ago, jldjul said:

I think that people (me included) are worried or paranoid about data collection is because most of the data is not anonymously collected. Companies buying our data can directly interpretate them with our name, computer, navigation habits. Our name or personal identifiant links everything they have together, even thing unrelated, and the common thinking is that they know us better than ourselves. I find this worriesome because of the potential threat it poses, I can't actually think of a precedent where one specific guy got in trouble from data collection (aside from hacktivists like Assange, Snowden).

 

I remember reading an article explaining Apple's anonymous data collection, I belive it was called something like "differential privacy" where it was about a statistical process that anonymized data. Example of what I remember:

- an user has 4 options, he chooses one of them

- Apple's algorithm randomize the answer between the 4 possibilities

- Apple collects the randomized data, and knowing the probability of random possibilities appearing, they can reverse-engineer their own process and gather useful data without having specified infos on each user.

 

 

edit: found a similar article (as the one I red was in french): https://www.wired.com/2016/06/apples-differential-privacy-collecting-data/

Even if you could extrapolate data down to an individual, most of the processes are automated. It's not like some human is going into some database and seeing these things. And while the name might be included in some sets, it's not the identifying factor. Our data will be identified by a unique id, which a name is not. Plus, it's the algorithms that parse out traffic data, and align them with ad purchases and products.

"They" don't know you better, the algorithm says "hey, this guy went to an anime website, and we have an purchaser that has anime products, let's show those." 

We're giving far too much credit to all of it. Sure, a company could have some algorithms to flag certain activity or collections of activity so they can investigate or try and gain something from it. But again, a lot of it is broad and non-specific in the aggregate. On top of that, you'd have to be doing something pretty interesting to get flagged at all.

[Doramius]

On 2/10/2017 at 3:07 PM, jldjul said:

Next question: who are the worst data collector? well, let me rephrase that: which companies provide the worst software/service in comparison to the data it collects?

RETAILERS!!!  While searching tracks some of your habits, ultimately, the actual purchase is the highest level of recorded data.  It validates any searching, determines whether this is a regular type of purchase or an impulse one-off, shows a physical item of purchase identifying actual money movement, and finally levels of money spent [also determining whether expensive/inexpensive items, the types of items purchased, and the quantities].  Even if you do not use a credit card and cash purchase from Best Buy, Walmart, or Radio Shack, the retailer records this information.  Albeit anonymous, it still is industry currency.  Some places even offer reward cards that provides more detailed info which is worth more in consumer currency.  

 

If you use an actual business account and/or credit card, you are using the most sought after consumer tracking currency.  A business account ties strategic purchasing directly to a consumer entity.  While they might keep the name of a business anonymous and other sensitive information private, they legally can say "we have 12 businesses that are home furnishing places that are buying heavily of 'such-n-such' piece of equipment.  Sell that info to the manufacturers of 'such-n-such' and stock more of, and variants of, at a discounted price."  All retailers use this.  It's business suicide if they didn't.

[laminutederire]

On Saturday, February 11, 2017 at 8:02 PM, jldjul said:

I'm not worried about the legal side as I don't store anything illegal (unless you count the ton of drugs I have in my car ^^). And I don't think the authorities will bother with me for the 3 or 4 movies I downloaded illegally in 2016.

 

My question was more about private property and company abuse :

Let's say, I don't know, I have a revolutionnary, game changing idea about file cabinets (again). I work on drafts, prototypes, projecs using my W10 computer, my OneDrive cloud and OneNote for drafts. Let's say the idea don't please Microsoft as they intent to launch their own range of file cabinets (why not?). Can they just take things from my data they want without me having any legal way to block them? Do they own my data as it is stored on their cloud, and I made it using their software?

 

This is a silly example but not that far from reality when almost every company is using either Microsoft, Google or Apple software/hardware, this is dangerous. What if for example Google engineers worked on Android using Macbooks/MacOS and Apple was able to sue Google based on the data they collected?

 

As I live in France (and worked in France and western Europe), French companies values the cloud "a la française" (pardon my french) with everything stored in Europe so american companies have no claim on the data whatsoever. This became like a shift in the industry for the last 3 or 4 years, and a lot of French companies don't trust the tech giants for their data.

 

Also, nosey governments again. I find this morally wrong that the National "Security" Agency is able to scan my files, I know if I went kinda off the grid with Nextcloud and Linux they still could "target me" but how worried are you about that?

 

 

How much more until the NSA shuts down this thread? 

Legally, in France we are protected from that thanks to ancient laws (1978 if I remember right). Anything stored in your machine cannot be even read from outside without it being potentially illegal, unless it's telemetry.