Have We Lost Our Privacy To the Internet? 222
An anonymous reader writes "An article in the Guardian, penned by Joss Wright and Tom Chatfield, discusses whether we — as in Internet users in general — are, or indeed are not, giving away way too much information about ourselves to large Corporations that profit handsomely from mining the info. The article talks about how contemporary internet companies — perhaps predictably — are run with a 'privacy is dead' motto. It considers what implications having all your private data out on the internet — where it can be seen, searched, shared, retransmitted, perhaps archived forever without your consent — has for the 'future of our society' (by which the authors presumably mean the society of the UK). The (rather long) article ends by mentioning that Gmail scans your email, that Facebook apps frequently send your private data right to the app developer, that iPhones are known to log your geographic location, and that some smartphone apps read your address book and messages, then dial home to transmit this info to the company that developed the app."
Re:Data Protection Act (Score:4, Informative)
They certainly do get enforced - http://www.computerweekly.com/news/1280094253/Google-breached-UK-data-protection-laws-says-ICO [computerweekly.com]
Google also respond to Data Requests under the DPA.
Re:To give away or not to give away our privacy (Score:4, Informative)
This is the difference between the US and the EU. In the US privacy is perhaps a commodity. In the EU it's a fundamental human right protected by the constution.
Re:Just try shutting down your facebook account (Score:5, Informative)
The cat is out of the bag and no matter what I do I can't get it back in.
Well, the one thing you *can* do, is to inject so much noise into the internet about your persona, that the information that is currently on the web becomes practically useless.