Sold down the data river

SUDDENLY the world has woken up. The fairies have sprinkled the wake-up dust and we’re all starting to open our eyes.

Tech companies have been taking our private information and using it for financial gain. Shock, horror, outrage. Yawn.

Has everybody been living in a cave? Under a rock? Behind a force field, wrapped in aluminium foil?

Of course, Facebook, Yahoo, Bing, Google and others offering search engines, apps and internet access are taking and saving our personal information.

Did everyone really think they were providing these services for free?

It’s not a sharing and caring world. Well, yes it is, in the case of sharing but definitely not in the case of caring.

The only caring going on by these tech companies is about their financial gain.

Information is the new “black”. Information is the new ruling power.

Knowledge has always been valuable but now, more than ever, it can be instantly monetised and turned into cash – for good or for evil.

This is done by packaging up and selling our details and habits to research companies, or linking our online profiles to products and services, or exploiting our conversations with friends and family to find out more stuff about us and our lives and buying habits. It’s called data mining.

It’s nothing new, well not new for the past couple of decades, so I really don’t understand the sudden outrage. We only need to read the terms and conditions of any of these search and internet companies – even any of the apps on our phone or our own online banking conditions – to realise we agree they can do almost anything they want with our information.

That includes bombarding you with ads for sports socks or travel the next time you log on because you mentioned playing footy or searched travel destinations once.

Or annoying us with anything they are paid to push – financial products, job advertisements, medical research or political messages.

Oh sure, it can be argued the terms and conditions are so difficult to understand that they are technically “unfair” but, hey, we don’t have to download any of it.

We don’t have to have a Facebook page, use Twitter or post pictures on Instagram.

We don’t even have to use the internet. Or do we?

These days we are given very little genuine choice about doing business other than through the internet.

If we don’t get online, we get slugged extra fees for paper bills and statements.

Even dealing with the government and government agencies is all done online.

Almost every business and service model is now based around doing it ourselves – online.

Given the forced use of the internet, apps and using private online sites, I worry we have become extremely vulnerable to a handful of private companies with far-reaching global power.

The Facebook privacy breaches clearly signal how easy such data can be to access.

Perhaps it’s time control and responsibility for the access and privacy of this data was taken out of private hands and put into public hands.