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Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak is latest celebrity to call for people to leave Facebook
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Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says people should find a way to get off Facebook as he becomes the latest in an ever growing long line of global celebrities to call for people to leave the social media platform and their associate sister companies, sites, products and apps.
Facebook owns WhatsApp, Instagram and operates devices and software from smart phones, smart speakers and tablets to data mining software.
Your phone could be listening to you and there is ‘almost no way to stop it’, technology legend Wozniak says.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says people should get off Facebook if they value their privacy.
The company is invading people’s privacy and the only way to get away from it is to leave, he suggested.
What’s more, people’s phones could be listening to them and there is “almost no way to stop it”, said the man who founded Apple alongside Steve Jobs.
Mr Wozniak left Facebook last year, deleting his account in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data abuse scandal. He urged anyone else who is concerned about their privacy to do the same.
“There are many different kinds of people, and some of the benefits of Facebook are worth the loss of privacy,” Wozniak told TMZ, which had interviewed him as he passed through an airport in Washington DC. “But to many like myself, my recommendation is – to most people – you should figure out a way to get off Facebook.”
He made reference to the smart speakers and other listening devices that are now commonly available, and which have prompted a variety of privacy concerns.
“I mean, they can measure your heartbeat with lasers now, they can listen to you with a lot of devices. Who knows if my cellphone’s listening right now? Alexa has already been in the news a lot,” he said.
“So I worry because you’re having conversations that you think are private… You’re saying words that really shouldn’t be listened to, because you don’t expect it. But there’s almost no way to stop it.”
He went on to suggest that social media companies should offer people the ability to pay if they want to keep their data private, rather than having it used to sell advertising.
“People think they have a level of privacy they don’t,” he said. “Why don’t they give me a choice? Let me pay a certain amount, and you’ll keep my data more secure and private then everybody else handing it to advertisers.”
Over the years there have been several critical reports over social media and photo sharing sites and apps selling private photographs and data not advertising companies to use for campaigns.
Most people are under the false impression that making your account private prevents this, it does not.
Social media can be used by authorities, private investigators, the press and criminals to track live location access your private data including taking remote control of your cameras and devices and listening to you via your device microphones. It is the first point of call many agencies go to to monitor and control and track or even damage people’s lives. The Indian government says the epidemic of false accusations on Facebook controlled WhatsApp is so bad that a significant number of innocent lives are lost every year as a direct result. Many tabloid newspapers report social media as if it is fact with no fact-checks.
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