[INDOLOGY] Academia.edu creepy things

[Tracy Coleman]

At the very least, we should not speak our thoughts aloud, or keep our private diaries on our devices. 🙂
________________________________
From: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces at list.indology.info> on behalf of Ananya Vajpeyi via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info>
Sent: Saturday, April 8, 2023 3:23 AM
To: Claudius Teodorescu <claudius.teodorescu at gmail.com>
Cc: indology at list.indology.info <indology at list.indology.info>
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Academia.edu creepy things

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I find there’s a lot of leakage between one’s mobile phone calls, emails, social media accounts and services like Academia / Research Gate / Dropbox / Interfolio. It’s only a matter of time before our thoughts too become accessible, predictable and monetizable. In the event that as academics we can’t go off the grid entirely, perhaps it’s better to resign oneself to this invasion of the mind snatchers?

AV.

On Saturday, April 8, 2023, Claudius Teodorescu via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info<mailto:indology at list.indology.info>> wrote:
Hi,

If it is the case that Academia app was installed, one can notice that it collects name and email address (see [1]), which is sure enough to correlate with information from Indology archives, which are public.

Maybe deleting the Academia account will help.

Claudius

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/datasafety?id=com.academia.academia&hl=en&gl=US

On Sat, 8 Apr 2023 at 11:11, Jean Michel DELIRE via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info<mailto:indology at list.indology.info>> wrote:
I once uploaded an article to Academia and, since then, I receive notifications every day that 'people' are reading this article and other papers of mine. Usually, I don't know these 'people', which could even be a certain CuneiformComposite (the name of a font), but some are known to me and appear in my emails.I also receive notifications that my name has been quoted in such or such article (some having nothing to do with my work, as very specialized medical articles by instance), but it is impossible to know more, without paying. This seems to be a very erratic process, probably led by a silly robot.

Best,

Jean Michel DELIRE
Lecturer on History of mathematics - IHEB (ULB)
Lecturer on Science and civilisation of India - Sanskrit Texts - IHEB (ULB)
Member of the Centre National d'Histoire des Sciences (KBR, Bruxelles)
Member of the Société Asiatique (Paris)
Member of the International Association of Sanskrit Studies

Le ven. 7 avr. 2023 à 23:38, Dominik Wujastyk via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info<mailto:indology at list.indology.info>> a écrit :
That's quite suspicious.  Perhaps Kaul had a burst of online business and posted to INDOLOGY and at the same time uploaded the review to Academia, which triggered your notification.  We can't tell from Academia when papers are uploaded, but the review has 317 views, which suggests it was uploaded a while ago, not recently.  So that explanation is probably wrong.

How could Academia possibly be getting information about your incoming emails?  What mechanism can we imagine?  Emails don't deposit cookies, so cross-site cookies aren't the pathway.  If Academia is harvesting from the INDOLOGY archive, which is technically possible, then *everyone* would get the Kaul notification or similar ones, not just you.  It's hard to see how this might work.  Without a plausible mechanism, I'm staying with coincidence.

But I have all my Academia notifications turned off, so I never get anything from them.  If I want to know their stuff, I look at the website.

Best,
Dominik

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--
Cu stimă,
Claudius Teodorescu


--
Sent on the fly, please excuse typos.
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