Watching Every Click You Make
The robots are watching us.
They’re announcing to the world that we just looked at Eames chairs on Pinterest and that we’ve listened to Taylor Swift and Conway Twitty on Spotify. They’re sending us ads labeled “Being Conservative in South Carolina” simply because we checked our e-mail in Charleston. They’re broadcasting the fact that we just read an article called “How to Satisfy Your Partner in Bed.” They’re trumpeting — with an undue amount of enthusiasm — that we just scored 6 points on Words With Friends for making the word “cat.” When Facebook bought Instagram, the social photo app for iPhone and Android devices, on April 9, a chorus of concern emanated from the Twittersphere: Facebook would have access to Instagram users’ uploaded photos. Would that photo of Aunt Letty in her bathing suit suddenly show up in an ad for embolism stockings? Granted, some of these invasions of privacy are the result of our not having correctly wrangled an app’s privacy control settings. But when did privacy become a choice rather than a given? And why does slogging through a new app’s voluminous terms of service or figuring out how to activate a site’s privacy control settings sometimes feel as if it requires a graduate degree in tiny print? Yes, the Obama administration has rallied for a privacy bill of rights that would give consumers more control over the online data that is collected about them, and many people in the tech industries support a do-not-track mechanism that would let users opt out of having some, but not all, companies keep data about our online activities. But the slightly creepy, Big Brother-like invasions of our privacy continue apace. You can’t sunbathe nude in this backyard without constantly looking over your shoulder.
Watching Every Click You Make