If you check out 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. (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 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 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 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.
If they get any government grants, the grants often require specific data about about who’s using the service and how much they use it.
I don’t know if they get grants, but I know that can be challenge for non-profits.
Non-profits want to maximize their impact and spend efficiency. If they track how people use their services, they know better where to focus their efforts for improvements. If they know how people are finding their site, they know where to focus their marketing spend to help the most people per dollar spent. Marketing and user analytics are an important part of even altruistic goals.
This is correct. The folks adding these trackers to their sites usually have little to zero tech knowledge. They see a plugin or other way to provide them with the metrics they think they need and its “so easy” to use tag manager or the Facebook pixel.
I knew someone working for a nonprofit that was building out a form for indigenous troubled families, and they used both google and meta tools. Their intended cohort actively avoided it based on their initial finding that it was tracking them (they apparently had a tech person on their side of the table). This prompted a whole board level meeting, which resulted in the removal of the trackers, which were later re-added in another,less skeevy way, after the data they wanted stopped flowing) and the immediate enrollment in the program by hundreds of families.
In the end, they decided they need those tools, as alternatives were to clunky for them. Google and Meta make it seem easy for you, since they have much to gain and little to lose by making their data collection tools easy to implement. I went round and round with my friend about how bad this was, and they got it, but their higher-ups overrode them.
And Meta and Google lived happily ever after…
When a Charity applies for grants they often need to show KPIs.
Because free for you doesn’t mean free to run.
Easy solution: smuggle yourself to a boat heading to Germany, Netherlands or any other EEA country with decent social welfare system and seek asylum there. Government will pay your health insurance and taxes until you get a job.
Except the US are still considered a safe country and asylum seekers have been denied and sent back.
Recently watched a doc about trans people fleeing the US to the Netherlands and not being succesful with their asylum requests despite the terror they face in several states.
It’s a corporation. What did you think? That just because it’s a non-profit it will somehow be immune from sheisty corporate culture?
You think just because they tagged themselves as a non-profit to pay less taxes, that they are going to be a benevolent entity?
You think non-profit corporations are able to avoid enshittification?
You all reading here that believe that non-profits are supposed to be “the good guys” please elaborate why you think this preposterous idea. Genuinely. Seriously, I am asking you why you think this.
