Our online privacy grows less and less

I don't know about you, but I'm getting more and more fed up at the onslaught being directed against our online privacy by corporate interests. It's gotten so that one has to take almost wartime security measures to protect one's browsing habits, preferences and personal details!

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent series on the problem, called 'What They Know'. It includes many articles on various aspects of online security. The latest in the series is titled 'Your Apps Are Watching You'. It examines how smartphone apps are tracking your movements, habits and expenditure. Scary stuff! (A very useful article in their series is 'How To Avoid The Prying Eyes', which goes into detail about how you can keep your browsing habits as private as possible.)

The Journal also points out that new technology allows monitoring firms to 'fingerprint' individual PC's, smartphones and other Internet-connected devices. With that information, no matter what steps you take to protect your privacy, others can track your every move. To my mind it's a gross, flagrant and intolerable invasion of privacy: but there's apparently no law against it. Something to discuss with my Congressional representative and Senators, methinks . . .

Of course, there are some areas of commerce and industry that offer incentives to give up your privacy. Jalopnik reports that we may be encouraged to do so by auto insurers, who want to put cameras and monitoring devices in our vehicles to record our driving behavior, distance covered, etc. If we co-operate, we benefit from lower insurance rates: but if we value our privacy, and refuse to be monitored in this way, what's the betting that our insurance rates will skyrocket? Sounds like a no-win situation to me!

What say you, readers? Is the battle for our privacy already lost? For myself, I don't intend to stop fighting such intrusions . . . but I think 'Big Brother' is a long way ahead in the race.

Peter