As I mentioned on this post, I take privacy a bit more seriously than most people. This is simply because in my Clark Kent life, I know the power of data and how valuable it is. People will pay top dollar for information about you because we live in a society that values the “personal touch”. It’s just not enough to market baseball (shout out to the Oakland A’s as they made the 3rd greatest comeback in MLB history to clinch the AL West!), but they want to market the exact team that we pull for with the exact products we buy at the exact level of our disposable income. At no time in history has this been possible, until now.

So I’m glad to see this video still making the rounds on the internet. I first saw it about 8 years ago, when I was amazed that the pizza place knew who we were when we called to order one Friday night. It was funny then, but it’s becoming more prophetic now. I’ve heard people say, “It doesn’t matter anyway…”, but yes it does if you care about your wallet. It’s not that companies are just making money off your information, but they are charging YOU more money based on the data that they find. Don’t believe me? Okay, skip next month’s electric bill and look at the impact it has on your credit score. Then watch that credit score then impact your insurance premium. If things get really tight, watch that insurance premium impact your employment-eligibility for certain job positions. The dominoes just keep falling and falling…

I may not agree with many positions of the ACLU, but I think they got this one right:

Let me also mention the device that we purchased for our Xbox Kinect. It’s called the Pritect Sensor Cover and it sells online for less than $10! It’s well worth it knowing that Microsoft isn’t using the information (and video!) that it collects while my kids play the Xbox or monitoring the movies we play…Netflix already knows all that.

Uh boy…

Oh yea, don’t believe me on the Xbox Kinect? Take a look at these screen shots I took while changing the settings that are WIDE OPEN BY DEFAULT. Plus, finding your privacy settings isn’t nearly as easy as finding all of the other meaningless items they plaster on the dashboard.

 

CSD