EDITORIAL Big business is Big Brother

AggregateIQ, a small Victoria tech company, is being linked to the Brexit campaign in the U.K. and to the Trump campaign in the U.S. Those allegations haven’t been proven, but regardless of what happens to AIQ, we’ve been given a wakeup call — thousands of details of our personal lives are scattered across the Internet for anyone to collect, use or misuse.

What is being collected? Almost everything we do. Data consultant Dylan Curran, writing in the U.K.’s Guardian, says Google knows where you’ve been, what you have searched and viewed online, who you’ve connected to on Facebook, which also hoards reams of data about your electronic activities.

You think you erased those emails, deleted those dodgy photos? They’re still out there.

Facebook and Google are not free — you are paying with your personal information. You are being monetized.

In his novel 1984, published nearly 70 years ago, George Orwell foresaw a society in which Big Brother — the government — monitored everything the people said and did, using this ability to manipulate people.

Big Brother is real, watching us, manipulating us, exploiting us. Only it’s not big government that’s the problem, it’s big business.

Governments can correct only so much — it’s up to individuals to take steps to guard their privacy and to resist this rapacious use of personal information.