- Joined
- Feb 16, 2008
- Messages
- 10,443
- Reaction score
- 4,479
- Location
- Western NY and Geneva, CH
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Other
Not particularly. The bedrock, deep-down structure of the Internet is such that most of what happens on it is right out in the open, and the society that has been built upon it involves many "free" services used by millions of people -- services that pay the bills by selling demographic data by the metric ton. Even if the collection of such data or the tracking of our activities online became a class A felony, it would still be done -- only the data would be far more valuable, it would be skimmed by people with far more sinister intentions, and it would be collected under the metaphorical cover of darkness. Additionally, the face of the information superhighway would radically change as corporations scrambled to find a new financial model, which pretty much guarantees data collection will continue to be legal.
What was that about false choices? I think you just offered me one. Technical proficiency isn't a requirement for protecting your privacy. There are a variety of software programs, many of them free to the public, that assist in making the process of defending yourself point-and-click. Furthermore, there are whole privacy protection networks out there operated by people like you and me, using make-it-so-simple-a-dog-could-do-it software.
All you really have to do in order to protect your privacy better than 90% of the surfing public is:
1) Care
2) Do some reading
3) Set up some software
Take a look around DP and ask yourself just how easily a consensus can be obtained here, where people communicate regularly. I mean, seriously? The American people are stirred up worse than a hornet's nest half the time, but with so many sticks swinging in so many different directions, most of them we're too busy attaching each other to even agree on the real culprits much less go after them.
