In contrast to my Jan 17th post about social media, David Pogue’s, “Don’t Worry About Who’s Watching“, explains that although the majority of the websites we use gather some form of information about us, “the chances of of someone actually looking up the boring details of [our lives] are reassuringly small” (Pogue).
Websites such as Facebook, Amazon, and Google all record our information whether it be what we say, what we buy, or what we search for. As a result, online privacy concerns have become a hot topic and consumers are being more careful about what they say and do on the web.
On the other hand, in the wake of all this online privacy buzz it seems that most people have forgotten that “convenience-for-privacy” (Pogue) deals such as credit cards, phone bills, and mortages have been tracking us since long before the internet even existed.
Today, Google is collecting more information about us than ever before, whether it be “what we watch (Google TV), where we go (Google Maps), whom we call (Android phones), what we say (Google Buzz), and what we do online (Google Chrome browser)” (Pogue). To me, Google’s quest to know everything about their users seems far more harmless than the sensitive information those same users post on their social media pages everyday.