Online Privacy: The Ultimate Oxymoron

photo by toastyken

I hate to break this to you, but we’re living in the End Times of privacy as you once knew it. 2012 was on the horizon long before the advent of social media. When Don Peppers and Martha Rogers wrote about how technology would make it possible for Business to “personalize” the consumer experience, you knew that meant exchanging peeks into your soul for better deals on goods, right?

If you define yourself by what you do, what you buy, who you know, where you go and what you do when you get there, then you’re standing naked by the freeway and everyone’s snapping pics as they whiz by.

Technology affords you two choices: make yourself transparent and reap the benefits of personalization, or disconnect and live off the grid. I honestly don’t see the in-between. Your data may not all be accessible, but it’s all out there. And it’s only a matter of time before systems get better at mining it all.

Gina Trapani suggests that you can achieve some level of online privacy by (1) being “vigilant about what you publish online” and (2) “be willing to roll up your sleeves and dig into the settings area of the tools and services you use to do so.”

It’s a nice thought, but (1) you’re “publishing” something about yourself with every action you take online, and (2) have you looked at what’s involved in rolling up your sleeves even at one service? Do you honestly believe that more than a tiny fraction of the population has the intestinal fortitude to do the work necessary to cap the gusher of data that’s flowing into the gulf?

Last year I wrote about how the proliferation of social media options were overwhelming us with too much choice. What I failed to mention is how, every time we choose another tool, it’s another shovel to dump more data into the virtual maw.

Privacy as you know it is going the way of the buggy whip. Writers of science fiction have been telling you this for decades. You just weren’t paying attention.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Tagged as: don peppers, gina trapani, martha rogers, personalization, privacy