Here's a follow up thought to yesterday's post. Companies following you to your home is just a step up from them stalking you online.
Isn't is just annoying how they manage to target ads to what you search for online? or when you visit sites such as ebay or Amazon, product suggestions are based on your search history?
The amount of personal information you leave behind online is staggering, and its a sobering thought what can be accomplished when all this information can be collected and analysed, it might reveal your distinctive personality, shopping behavior, your hobbies, interests, if you got a new job, just lost one, your medical history, star sign everything.
Just providing targeted ads while you surf is just the tip of the iceberg of what can be accomplished, especially by imaginative and zealous organizations, the sky's the limit!
This is increasingly true as our online behavior becomes more predictable and consolidated. We use Google as our primary search engine, Gmail for our e-mail, Gtalk to IM, Google Chrome to browse etc. as we grow more dependent on a single company (let's be fair Google are taking over the internet and are better than most), Google in return is able to collect massive amounts of information about us, which its then able to provide to companies, in the form of Google Analytics, for free!!
Google now are even planning to capture a large chunk of the social media market, see Another piece to Google's social puzzle As there are no industry watchdogs to ensure fair play in the online world...are we looking at the next big brother??
Whatever happened to the power is in the hands of the consumer?
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