I just heard about a data mining company that stated that in the United States we have a right to privacy but not to anonymity. In other words, you can never just go off, get lost and be alone if this is what you’d like to do. Their business model is to collect as much information on individuals as possible, shape it into some meaningful format and sell it off.
The U. S. government’s Patriot Act has been seen as many as a trade off of some personal privacy for the security of all. There are many objectors to this model as well.
When people first start flocking to the Internet, they reported that they like the feeling of anonymity since they felt free to express themselves in ways they could not in everyday life. As the Internet has developed, anonymity has all but gone away. If you sign up for anything, free or otherwise, your PC’s IP address is recorded. If you give a credit card number then all sorts of information is recorded about you. Also, for those who commit crimes, the police and FBI can make the ISP’s hand over all sorts of information.
The struggle now is to retain a since of privacy on the Internet. Guarding one’s email address like it was gold so that it doesn’t get into the hands of spammers is a priority for many. But many people still don’t know that most search engines and many websites place cookies on their PC’s in order to track their movements, buying habits and other habits. Some sites will place adware or spyware on your PC without any warning and the only way to get rid of this is with anti-spyware software.
The Internet is not the Wild, Wild West that it used to be. I miss those days.
Sometimes I yearn to just go off, get lost and be by myself for a while in total anonymity. And just the fact that you cannot do this by land or by Internet anymore, I feel a bit less free. Where can one go and not leave a trail?
someone else’s computer 🙂