Once every great now and then, I try to do a deep search for my name on Google to see what sort of personal information about me is available on the internet. I did this a month ago and was shocked to immediately see my LinkedIn profile in the top 3 results. This was especially concerning because, for as long as I have had a LinkedIn account, I have made sure to select the setting that specifically prevents my account from being public. Surprise! They had introduced a whole new “Public Profile” feature that allows you to curate specific information to search engines, and they had apparently opted everyone in by default. I was pissed.
To be fair, I didn’t really have anything on LinkedIn that couldn’t be viewed by another user who searched me. So in that sense, my information wasn’t exactly private in the first place. But at least anybody who accessed my profile would be logged. When you pump everyone’s information out on the wider web, it can be scraped up by pretty much anybody.
And no doubt that was the idea. After all, making everybody’s information public and searchable probably drives a huge increase in traffic, and only those of us zealous enough get angry and go change their settings back, and we only find out slowly over time. These fuckers will do anything for ad revenue, and LinkedIn is one of the filthiest, most cluttered sites in existence, and I’m seriously considering how I might go about deleting it, or whether it still has potential for finding jobs.
Some people say that you don’t have to worry about privacy if you aren’t doing anything wrong. I understand what they mean by this, but I would quote Snowden in response: “Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say”.
Time and time again, these big corporations decide to randomly pull the rug out from under their own users. Ever opted out of receiving emails from a company, only to receive an email from them several years later? I really wonder what happens in that meeting. “Well, these people have opted out from receiving communication from us, but so what? Fuck ’em, let’s send emails out again, we’ve got money to make, and what are they going to do about it, call and complain?”
I’m a bit riled up right now because, while trying to comb through my old online accounts and see which ones have either automatically been deleted or which ones I can delete (or at least obscure), I made the discovery that Target has a solid 3 years of information on me concerning absolutely every purchase I made through them during those 3 years. I am not completely sure how they associated who I am with my credit card, though I did buy an ottoman about 5 years ago because it was $20 cheaper online. Last Fall that number was stolen, so I had to cancel my card, and that’s when the trail goes cold. I was never notified that they were doing this, and it seriously, seriously creeps me out. At least with Amazon, I already knew they were doing this, but…Target? I won’t be making that mistake again. I’ll pay the extra $20, geez.
All I want to say is that corporations are not your friends. You are a number to them. A number that gives them money if they can trick you into it. And they will hire psychologists, advertisers, marketers, social engineers, database experts, scum, absolutely anybody to help them get more money from you. I see they’ve even had some graphic designers try to make things nice and inviting, and oh, they’d really love to have your phone number, too. They do not give a shit about you or your privacy, and they will only comply when the law requires them to (it appears only residents of California and Nevada can request the destruction of their data). Despite all of their statements to commitment on security and privacy, this really is never the case, since money is involved. Those are always empty words: you’re better off not giving them your data in the first place.
I’ll get over it, it’s just super creepy. I never signed up for this. I mean, dang, kind of funny to see how many breakfast sandwiches I’ve bought over the years, but I don’t take kindly to all of this being collected behind my back. I suspect most companies are trying to do this, though, and maybe this is my wake-up call. I don’t doubt that if I gave Target a way to associate my new credit card number with who I am, my more-recent purchases would turn up on my history. This is another reason a cashless economy is a really terrible idea, and I bet you can guess who wants it the most.
I have some thoughts about trying to obscure or delete old accounts. I wrote those up several weeks ago, but that post needs to be edited pretty significantly before I feel it’s worth posting.