“If the product is free, you are the product!” No truer words have ever been spoken. But in today’s internet-connected, ad-everywhere world, even if you are paying for the product or service, you are still the product.
If a device has power and an internet connection, it is either surveilling you, trying to surveil you, or wishing it could surveil you.
Your computer is surveilling you. Your phone is surveilling you. Your apps are surveilling you. Your car is surveilling you. Your phone’s battery is dying quicker than it needs to be because so many apps are tracking exactly where you are each second and sending it to a vendor you have never heard of before so they can sell it.
What you do, where you go, and who you interact with are all sellable commodities for many hundreds of vendors’ sites. And nearly anyone with money can get that information. Most of the time, it is simply being used to send you “personalized ads”. But it can be used by law enforcement and other entities that are not necessarily acting in your best interests.
The U.S. Congress is trying to pass a bill that will forbid vendors from sharing your personal data with our adversaries. Understand what that means. Not just to foreigners or foreign companies, but foreign ADVERSARIES. Right now, it is still legal for a “data broker” to sell or give your data to a foreign adversary and there is not much you can do about it. It is hard to believe that it is not illegal already, but welcome to the world of consumer surveillance.
Most people understand that vendors are trying to track them to send personalized ads. We have all looked for something on the Internet and suddenly that item we were interested in is incessantly popping up in ads on our phones and computers.
Even spookier, we have all had the experience of simply talking about something with a friend and all of a sudden that item, which we have never searched for is popping up in our ads. They say they are not listening into our private conversations, but many times, there does not seem to be any other logical explanation to explain how this coincidence occurs.
Attend my latest webinar entitled, How The Internet Is Surveilling You to learn who is surveilling, how, what information is collected, who it is sold to, and how you can best defend yourself. I think most people understand that information is being collected on them, but most do not know how bad it is.
