Instagram - Harvesting Your Personal Information

For those of you who use Instagram or are thinking about using Instagram and even for those who never intend to use Instagram, the following posting may be of interest.

  

In late December 2020, Instagram, a photo and video sharing social networking service wholly owned by Facebook, released an update to its Terms of Use.  Most of us mindlessly click "accept" on these wordy, mind numbingly boring legal agreements without thinking about the potential repercussions, particularly to our privacy.  As we know from years of experience with Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg simply cannot learn enough about our personal lives as part of his mandate to further enrich himself by supersaturating us with advertising as you will see.

  

Here is a link to the latest version of Facebook's Terms of Use (ToS) for Instagram.  The Instagram ToS opens with explaining to its users the wonderful services that it offers:

 

1.) Offering personalized opportunities to create, connect, communicate, discover, and share.

 

2.) Fostering a positive, inclusive, and safe environment.  We develop and use tools and offer resources to our community members that help to make their experiences positive and inclusive, including when we think they might need help. 

 

3.) Developing and using technologies that help us consistently serve our growing community.

 

4.) Providing consistent and seamless experiences across other Facebook Company Products.  Instagram is part of the Facebook Companies, which share technology, systems, insights, and information-including the information we have about you (learn more in the Data Policy) in order to provide services that are better, safer, and more secure. 

 

5.) Ensuring access to our Service.  To operate our global Service, we must store and transfer data across our systems around the world, including outside of your country of residence. The use of this global infrastructure is necessary and essential to provide our Service. 

 

6.) Connecting you with brands, products, and services in ways you care about.  We use data from Instagram and other Facebook Company Products, as well as from third-party partners, to show you ads, offers, and other sponsored content that we believe will be meaningful to you. And we try to make that content as relevant as all your other experiences on Instagram.

 

7.) Research and innovation.  We use the information we have to develop, test, and improve our Service and collaborate with others on research to make our Service better and contribute to the well-being of our community. This includes analyzing the data we have about our users and understanding how people use our Services, for example by conducting surveys and testing and troubleshooting new features.

 

Let's look at one interesting aspect of Instagram's ToS that you probably weren't aware of:

  

Any content that you post on Instagram is essentially owned by Instagram (no matter what they may say) until you delete it from their service.  You are granting them a free licence to copy, distribute or modify your content which can also be transferred to another "owner" without your express permission.

 

You will notice that Instagram refers to its "Data Policy" which you have to click on to access.  Let's look at what is hidden in its key moneymaking machine.  Instagram collects the following types of information from its account users, remembering that the information that users give the company can be stored anywhere in the world:

 

1.) content and communications including the location and date that a photo was taken (i.e. metadata) and can also see what you see when you use Instagram's camera feature to take a photo:

 

2.) information about the people, accounts and groups that you interact with across Facebook's products, your contact information if you choose to upload, sync or import it (i.e. your address book) as well as your call log and SMS log history (i.e. text messages):

  

But, it is most reassuring to know that Instagram only uses this information to help you and others find people that you may know!

 

3.) your credit and debit card numbers and other card information if you use Facebook's products to make a purchase or complete other financial transactions:

 

4.) information about your computer, phone, connected televisions or other web-connected devices keeping in mind that all of this is being done to "better personalize the content (including ads) or features that you see when you use Instagram:

 

This information that users give to Instagram includes the device's operating system, hardware and software versions, battery level, signal strength, available storage type, browser type, file names and plugins, mouse movements and whether a window is in the foreground or background. Instagram also collects information from your device signals including Bluetooth, information about nearby Wi-FI\i access points, beacons and cell towers as well as your GPS locations.  They also collect the name of your mobile operator or Internet Service Provider, language, time zone, mobile phone number, connection speed and information about other devices that are nearby or on your network.  What I found most interesting is that Instagram also collects identifiers which include identifiers from games that you play on your device, apps that are loaded on your device and accounts that you use.  While they don't explicitly state this, one wonders if they know who you bank with and any other accounts that you sign into from your device.

 

Here is the complete list of information that Instagram harvests:

 

 

See, it's all good.  Facebook/Instagram is a benign entity that only wants your personal information to improve and personalize your experience when using their products as shown here:

 

They also need this information to:

 

1.) promote safety, integrity and security

 

2.) communicate with its users

 

...and, most importantly, research and innovate for social good as shown here:

 

That makes it all worthwhile, doesn't it?  It gives users a warm and cozy feeling knowing that providing their most personal information to a corporate entity is improving society.

 

Let's close this posting with a couple of thoughts.  There are two lessons that can be learned from Instagram:

 

1.) If it seems too good to be true (i.e. a free service), it probably is.

 

2.) Nothing in life is free.

  

Like Facebook before it, what started out as a benign social networking service has morphed into something that is used to harvest our personal information with the goal of making the service's major shareholders even wealthier than they already are.  Users get a few shiny baubles and mirrors as a "reward" for sharing their most personal data with a money-making machine that benefits the very few people that reside at the top of the technoplutocracy.

Protecting the 2020 Election - The Role of America's Technoplutocracy

Since the 2016 election, Americans have been subjected to a repeated diet of electoral interference by "outside bad actors", suggesting that significant steps need to be taken to control the spread of false information and narratives during the 2020 presidential election in particular.  While it receives almost no attention from the mainstream media, 

 

Let's open by looking at a quote from Chad Wolf, Acting Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, during his September 2020 State of the Homeland address:

"We are identifying and preventing malign foreign actors and nation states from interfering in our elections and protecting our election infrastructure....

Our newest component – the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency  (or CISA) – is at the forefront guarding against nation-state actors’ cyber-enabled espionage and malicious influence activity aimed at all levels of government and industry.

 

As we approach the 2020 election, we remain steadfast in protecting this essential American process. 

 

CISA has doubled down both on their efforts across the federal government and in partnering with local election leaders across the country to make sure our elections are safe and secure.

 

Elections are a bedrock of our Constitutional republic, and securing them is paramount to accurately expressing the will of the American people.

 

To protect the integrity of our representative government, our ultimate goal must be to ensure that American voters decide American elections.

 

In light of new levels of organized efforts by Russia in 2016 to disrupt and deceive, the Department strengthened U.S. efforts to rebuff the aggressive and meddlesome behavior of any nefarious state actor.

 

Signed into law by President Trump, CISA has made extraordinary and rapid strides bolstering the security of this most sacred democratic process.

 

CISA leveraged unique cybersecurity technical services by funding the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (or EI-ISAC) that deploys and monitors intrusion detection systems on election infrastructure across all 50 states.

 

The results were historic - 2018 was the most secure election in the modern era.

 

Not resting on its laurels, CISA has only increased its protection in scope and impact as it pursues the goal of an ever-more secure election in 2020."

 

Let's take a closer look at EI-ISAC, the Department of Homeland Security's frontline shield against electoral interference in the United States.  Here is the front page of EI-ISAC's website as found on the Center for Internet Security website (noting that CIS is the operator of EI-ISAC):

 

According to CIS, EI-ISAC is "supporting the rapidly changing cybersecurity needs of U.S. elections offices."

 

EI-ISAC provides the following cybersecurity tools and training resources to "help elections officials protect their systems and data":

 

Joining EI-ISAC is free for U.S. elections organizations as shown here:

 

Now, let's look at one of the products being used by EI-ISAC to protect American elections.  Here is the lead page of Protect Your Elections website:

 

Here is an introductory video about Protect Your Elections: 

 

Here is how Protect Your Election can help with the election process:

 

Here are the tools that Protect Your Election offers to protect the electoral process against digital attacks:

 

 

Most importantly in this age of censorship, here is how Protect Your Election can prevent the spread of false narratives and information during elections:

 

If you read carefully through the screen captures, you may have noticed this:

 

That's right, America's technoplutocracy is hard at work, protecting your election!

 

With the above information in mind, let's close this posting with some key information from Open Secrets.  Here are the 2020 and previous elections campaign contributions from affiliates of Alphabet Inc. (i.e. Google), noting that organization themselves cannot contribute to candidates and party committees:

 

Here is a further breakdown of how these funds were designated by political party:

 

As shown here, the top 25 recipients of these campaign contributions are all Democrats:

 

By way of comparison, the top Republican recipient, Donald Trump, has received a rather measly $29,021.  Given this donation information, do you really think that Protect Your Election is really going to provide a balanced product, particularly when it comes to fact-checking?

 

While companies like Google and its technoplutocracy sector peers are publicly stating that they are in the business of protecting America's democracy from the hostile disinformation tactics being used by America's enemies for the benefit of the sweaty masses, I think that we can pretty much assume that at least some of the most influential players are in it, to win it for their chosen party, the Democrats.  At the very least, we should make the assumption that products that are being touted by the technology tyrants to protect democracy are highly vulnerable to political bias.