The chapter from Technically Wrong, by Sara Wachter-Boettcher, was my first piece of this weeks material that I read. As I began reading it and getting into the introduction I was somewhat guessing the mysterious store she was describing was an Apple or Amazon popup store. Reading about how it was a place for visitors to come in and get an understanding of how much of their personal data is being tracked and catalogued was interesting.
I still remember, years ago, when I went to finally open a Facebook account. I was never, and still am not, a big social media person. So, I was a late adopter of Facebook for sure. When I went through with creating my account, the first thing it showed me was a bunch of suggested friends, including someone I hadn’t been in contact with in years (and didn’t want to be in contact with again). I found it extremely creepy that Facebook had somehow connected the two of us like that, somehow. I pretty much immediately turned right around and proceeded to delete my Facebook account I had just made.
It is certainly a struggle, as someone who utterly loves technology and the possibilities of what we can achieve with time, to also feel strongly about personal data ownership and privacy. I completely agree with Glen Greenwald when he says its a complete fallacy that only bad people seek privacy. We all want some semblance of privacy and our personal space at times. The point he made about just the potential of being watched altering our behavior was really interesting. It made me think a lot about that in my own life and my behavior. How just the possibility of being watched changes how we act. That initially sounds bad, like someone is up to no good, but that’s not really the case. There is plenty of behavior that is mundane but we still might feel embarrassed to be seen.
As far as technology, Big Data, and privacy goes… I know in a lot of ways I am certainly giving out plenty of my data. I have an Android Smartphone. I use several Gmail accounts. I use quite a few of the Google suite of services for personal use, school, and even work. I also try and fight back where I can. I like to use Firefox web browser because I think they try and do a good job of keeping my data private (to the best of my knowledge). I also have added web extensions to try and prevent third party tracking from all of these data collectors. In the larger scope of reality though, it takes (I think) quite a high level of technical knowledge and aptitude to even be able to fight back against Big Data and their data collection. Which poses some unsurmountable problems for your average user.