Submission + - Did we lose the privacy war? 3
eihab writes: I have been fanatic about my online privacy for the last few years. I've been using no-script and blocking Google Analytics, disabling third-party cookies, encrypting IM and doing everything in my power to keep data-miners at bay.
Recently, I've been feeling like I'm just doing too much and losing! No matter what I do I know that there's a weak link somewhere, be it my ISP, flash cookies, etc.
I've recently got AT&T U-Verse who, according to their privacy statement, will be monitoring my TV watching habits for advertisement purposes. I'm extremely annoyed by that, but yet I love the service so much and I don't think I can cancel it.
I just can't take this anymore. I have nothing to hide, but I do not want to be profiled and become member #5534289 in a database somewhere with everything I do recorded. I know I'm not that interesting to anyone, but just the idea of someone being able to pull up everything about me with a simple SQL SELECT statement and a couple of JOINS makes me cringe.
One of the reasons I hate data mining is that data security is not understood and almost non-existent at a lot of places. Case in point, I changed my life insurance two years ago, and the medical firm that conducted my health screening was broken into and computers with non-encrypted hard drives and patients data were stolen. I received a complimentary 1 year identity theft protection and an apology letter stating that they are "not sure" if my data was stolen, but, "here's a complementary 1 year protection... enjoy".
That medical firm didn't really need my SSN, but then again neither did AT&T when I signed up for U-Verse. However, it's becoming more and more difficult to conduct business without giving up your SSN or other sensitive data.
Am I just too paranoid? Is privacy dead? Should I just give up and accept the fact that privacy is not the norm anymore (like Facebook's founder recently said) or should I keep fighting the good fight for my privacy?
Recently, I've been feeling like I'm just doing too much and losing! No matter what I do I know that there's a weak link somewhere, be it my ISP, flash cookies, etc.
I've recently got AT&T U-Verse who, according to their privacy statement, will be monitoring my TV watching habits for advertisement purposes. I'm extremely annoyed by that, but yet I love the service so much and I don't think I can cancel it.
I just can't take this anymore. I have nothing to hide, but I do not want to be profiled and become member #5534289 in a database somewhere with everything I do recorded. I know I'm not that interesting to anyone, but just the idea of someone being able to pull up everything about me with a simple SQL SELECT statement and a couple of JOINS makes me cringe.
One of the reasons I hate data mining is that data security is not understood and almost non-existent at a lot of places. Case in point, I changed my life insurance two years ago, and the medical firm that conducted my health screening was broken into and computers with non-encrypted hard drives and patients data were stolen. I received a complimentary 1 year identity theft protection and an apology letter stating that they are "not sure" if my data was stolen, but, "here's a complementary 1 year protection... enjoy".
That medical firm didn't really need my SSN, but then again neither did AT&T when I signed up for U-Verse. However, it's becoming more and more difficult to conduct business without giving up your SSN or other sensitive data.
Am I just too paranoid? Is privacy dead? Should I just give up and accept the fact that privacy is not the norm anymore (like Facebook's founder recently said) or should I keep fighting the good fight for my privacy?
