The Orwellian World We Live In

We know that everything we share on social media is being “scrapped, sorted, and warehoused” by the usual suspects – Google and Facebook, writes Marc Goodman in Future Crimes. But data about you doesn’t just come from you:

“Your friends and family are leaking data about you as well.”

Like when they add your name to their phone’s contacts. Or when you are tagged on a Facebook post. Or when someone adds your birthday to Microsoft Outlook.

 

How can this be possible? Is it even legal, you wonder. Aha, remember those unreadably long Terms & Conditions that you approve when you install/sign up for those apps (many are longer than Shakespeare’s plays!)? Yes, those unreadable lines stop “just short of claiming rights to your immortal soul”…

 

Which brings us to the beloved smartphone. If you thought social media was the main source of info on you, you are so wrong because:

“(Smartphones) are veritable snitches in our pockets, digital spies tracking our every move.”

One can at least understand why the GPS app knows one’s location and movements. But even games (remember Angry Birds?) record every location you went to. Goodman points out how ridiculous things are:

“Why does your flashlight app need access to your contacts? Why does it ask for my location? My location should be obvious: I’m in the dark.”

So why does every app need access to everything about you? They sell that data to others who do have use for it. And no, they’re not too finicky who they sell to. One data broker named Experian even sold personal data of two-thirds of all Americans to an organized crime group in Vietnam.

 

And yes, governments too love this opportunity to snoop. Not just the usual suspects like China and Russia, but everyone, esp. the US. Once upon a time, the East German Stasi was the pinnacle of domestic surveillance. That’s laughable: they couldn’t monitor more than 40 telephone lines continuously! The comedic site, Onion’s satirical report wasn’t too far off the mark when it called Facebook “the massive online surveillance program run by the CIA”:

“We were astounded that so many people would willingly publicize where they live, their religious and political views, an alphabetized list of their friends, personal e-mail addresses, phone numbers, hundreds of photos of themselves… It is a dream come true for the CIA. Much of the credit belongs to CIA Agent Mark Zuckerburg.”

 

We can curse all we like, but ultimately this is the cost of all the free stuff we love and cannot live without – Google, Facebook, YouTube, Gmail, WhatsApp, Google Maps, Instagram, games… those companies do need to make money, don’t they? And this is the pact we have all signed up for. Voluntarily.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why we Deceive Ourselves

In their book, The Elephant in the Brain , the authors describe this weird aspect of deception that we practice: deceiving ourselves! That is so weird: “If our minds contain maps of our worlds, what good comes from having an inaccurate version of these maps?” The Sigmund Freud school of thought treats self-deception as a defense mechanism, “a way for the ego to protect itself”. The mind seeks to protect itself from anxiety and other negative emotions. Many object to this reasoning: since accurate information is so critical to our survival, surely distorting information would be dangerous. Wouldn’t the goal of protecting our self-esteem have been better achieved by making the brain’s self-esteem mechanism stronger instead? The new school of thought explains self-deception as “primarily outward-facing, manipulative, and ultimately self-serving”. This is based on Thomas Schelling’s work on game theory: “In a variety of scenarios, limiting or sabotaging yourself is the winn...
Read more

Europe #3 - Innsbruck

The last city we visited in Europe was Innsbruck in the Austrian Alps. After the cold and windy experience (at times) of Paris and Netherlands, Innsbruck was a wonderful change – it didn’t feel that cold, it was not windy all of which made it easy to walk around. Something absolutely necessary given how scenic the place is.   Since the hotel check-in time was much later in the day, we left the baggage and went to the Swarovski HQ-cum-museum about an hour by bus from Innsbruck. The crystal exhibits were brilliant – colorful, bright, shiny. Jewellery aside, it was a display of what one can do with crystals. While my wife and daughter loved the jewellery, I liked the superhero themed exhibits of Batman, Spiderman, the Hulk, and Star Wars. We didn’t buy anything there, though we did buy stuff in the Swarovski store in Innsbruck – jewellery, not the superhero stuff.   Innsbruck is a major tourist attraction during the skiing season but now in summer, we saw many groups of ...
Read more

The Thrill of the Chase

So many people complain about the difficulty in making decisions while shopping. Do you buy Brand X that gives 20% extra free? Or Brand Y that has 10% off? Or Brand Z that gives something else free with it? Do you buy that flat screen TV today or wait for the sale at Diwali? Now since the customer is king, shouldn’t companies be simplifying pricing choices? Like maybe offering consistently low prices all the time? Not so fast, as the US store, JC Penney discovered to its cost. Turns out that while people do complain about pricing choices, they are irrational. Also, they enjoy the thrill of the chase. Huh? The word “sale” acts like a siren call for many people: it lures them in to make that purchase. Consistently low prices don’t do the same. Besides, if a competitor lowers their prices just one time of the year, and Poof! Suddenly that low price claim becomes suspect in shoppers’ eyes. Then there are those sites that offer coupons: have lunch at Restaurant A on Wedne...
Read more