Living In Your Own Not-So-Private Bubble

Corporations are using vast stores of your personal data to reshape your every moment. And, as Jeff Moss argues, you’re letting it happen"

- JEFF MOSS

It’s said that information wants to be free—that, like life, it will find a way to replicate itself and show up where you least expect or want it. Your information now has more ways than ever before to spread, from online backups to the private messages your ex-girlfriend archived. But I can tell you this: My information absolutely does not want to be free. It wants to stay home and go out and play only when I give it permission.

Storage space costs next to nothing, and everything you do is recorded forever. That porn site you visited is not just in your browser history; it’s also in the logs of your internet service provider, the DNS server, the content-distribution network, the ad network the site uses, Google Analytics and finally on the actual site you visited. Clearing your browser history only hides it from whoever else uses your devices. If I want to browse the internet, my information has to go out and play, whether I like it or not.

It’s also said that we live in the “golden age of surveillance.” Simply put, surveillance is when an intelligence or law enforcement agency listens in and records traffic, be it voice, data, telemetry, radio, whatever. This is what Edward Snowden revealed.