Why does non-profit Upsolve.org, a free bankruptcy tool for the poor, need facebook analytics in a bankruptcy evaluation tool? - Lemmy Today
If you check out Upsolve.org [http://Upsolve.org] because you are considering
bankruptcy due to any sort of reason, there is a tool to help you evaluate
whether bankruptcy is appropriate at my.upsolve.org/bankruptcy-screener
[http://my.upsolve.org/bankruptcy-screener]. (Don’t click that before reading
more.) Bankruptcy is a difficult choice. Sometimes people pursue it as a result
of medical debt or other extremely personal reasons. Upsolve.org
[http://Upsolve.org] bills itself as an organization that help the poor. Unlike
a lawyer’s office, it can help people without charging a lot and unlike a
lawyer’s office, there is no duty of confidentiality or privilege. However,
someone taking a screening tool might be providing information just to see if
bankruptcy is even possible. And Upsolve.org [http://Upsolve.org] sells or gives
this information to Facebook. Even if it’s not selling the screener results,
just someone landing on this page, combined with IP gives Facebook valuable
information. The user who goes there without their IP protected could later get
ads for predatory financial companies to “help” debtors and importantly, this
information can be sold to data brokers to determine that the people viewing the
site are a credit risk. For example, if someone gets into a car accident and
needs 90,000 worth of medical care over two weeks. They get the bill after the
two weeks of medical care. They are going to be unable to work for a while and
they are considering bankruptcy. The 90,000 has not gone to collections. This
person is technically still employed but will need a lot of time off. They may
not even be able to go back to work. Normally, if this person decided not to
declare bankruptcy and to wait 4 months and hopefully go back to work, they
might be able to get a loan from a bank. But if Facebook has sold their info
(person with this IP identified is a person interested in bankruptcy
information) to data brokers, and the bank has access to that information, that
loan will be denied. Real consequences can happen from selling shit like this to
Facebook. Worst of all, the Facebook analytics aren’t on the main page and
instead are hidden in the screener. Although Upsolve.org [http://Upsolve.org]
probably just wants to target users online with ads about how great its service
is, and it’s actually a service that can help many save a ton of money, it may
be overlooking the privacy risk. I hate seeing scripts like this in pages for
things that should be confidential, things like abortion clinics, addiction
treatment clinics, financial help pages, and pages related to mental health. All
of that fucking info gets monetized the second someone hits the page if there
are analytics in the page. It would be one thing if that info only resulted in
helpful services being sold, but it also is given to companies building profiles
on people which can wind up in the hands of surveillance state government
officials, financial industry decision makers, and others that classify people
based on browsing habits. I may be wrong about this and facebook doesn’t sell
that specific “looking at possible bankruptcy” data to data brokers. I can’t be
sure. But I wish I didn’t have to wonder. And they probably do. And it probably
does go to financial institutions somehow, ultimately hurting some people who
were merely considering bankruptcy but don’t ultimately do it.
