User Data Collection Concerns

Commenters express suspicions that companies collect user data for spying, advertising, profiling, or profit rather than solely for product improvement, debating privacy risks and anonymization effectiveness.

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#621
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Keywords

AR ISP IMO ITEM HN businessinsider.com HR IOT TC CDN data user data collecting user anonymized collect spyware product spying users

Sample Comments

tantalor Jul 12, 2024 View on HN

This isn't data for serving user needs, this is data for spying on users

the_arun Aug 25, 2020 View on HN

What is the surprise? Who doesn't collect data? As long as that data is anonymized and used for improving their product(s), I am fine. It will be scary if the data is used for selling ads/data itself.

red-iron-pine May 22, 2024 View on HN

will? they already do. what do you think facebook, or gmail, or reddit, or the myriad 3rd party data aggregators has been collecting for years?

rickyc091 Apr 24, 2014 View on HN

Perhaps they are just trying to leverage people's personal data. See social trends, etc.

squigz Oct 5, 2024 View on HN

Why do you think you can't buy that? These companies have been building up profiles on millions (billions?) of people for many years now. It is not unreasonable to think they could infer stuff that they don't directly measure. Nor that these profiles would be shared/sold.

ginko Feb 28, 2025 View on HN

Still makes it sound like they want to profit from user data.

coderatlarge Jun 28, 2025 View on HN

maybe they benefit from the usage data they collect?

petra Sep 7, 2016 View on HN

They're surely mining your data. Why else would they do this ?

mpyne Jun 24, 2013 View on HN

How can they collect private data on you personally if you don't use their product?

chickenfries Mar 28, 2018 View on HN

You better believe they're going to collect that user data though.