The internet is a modern marvel growing at an exponential rate every day, so of course advertisers and retailers have to exploit it. The “online piracy” article brings us up to speed about how invasive companies and markets can be when they do “targeted advertising”. It seems that regardless if you have to click “I agree” before joining social networks or signing up online to any server, that is all just for show as it doesn’t actually hold any value. According to this article and “targeted advertising” companies still have access to your privacy and know exactly what you are doing. Even better than that, they sell or relay the information they gather and send it to another retailer online. Together they make a profile that targets you based on your searches and interests. So not only has advertising reached the internet but it has become much more sophisticated in gathering information on you.
The thing is, people don’t necessarily have to provide all their information on the Internet – they could easily falsify information if they want to avoid detection, but here’s the thing: falsifying information, even on the Internet, could be considered a crime (I could be wrong!) and no doubt the government would be suspicious as to why a person would do such a thing, even if it’s just to avoid having their information sold to third party groups who would be more than happy to buy them off.
Privacy policies leak all the time and not only online. Take for example what you mentioned about companies selling or relaying your information, this holds true even when you agree to terms and conditions when applying to a credit card in a bank. I had an experience before where I signed the agreement of terms for the credit card I was applying to, and was given a separate notification indicating to call an 1800 number to minimize the amount of credit offers I would be getting from different companies there after, and so I did. Weeks later I still received unwanted credit offers from companies I had no interest in. The definition of privacy has become completely vague as it is continually misused all the time.
The thing with online privacy is that most companies do ask you to agree to a specific set of guidelines so that you can use their services. The problem with that is when a person is reading the terms of services and find something they truly disagree with and refuses to fully accept the terms. And what becomes of that refusal to that specific term is that the individual is not allowed to use the company’s services. A term could be that the company is allowed to use your information so that they can try to make your online experience as enjoyable as possible. Yeah, a person wants to have an enjoyable experience but not at the expense of his or her info leaking out on the internet where everyone can see. But what can we do? It’s not like we can sign a petition to stop this, right? The whole country, or even the world, would be in turmoil.