Internet Privacy – Do We Really Want it?

As the battle for Internet privacy rolls on in Washington, privacy advocates are condemning  the vote to repeal Internet privacy protections approved by the Federal Communications Commission in the final days of the Obama administration. The rules would have required Internet service providers to get your permission before collecting and sharing your data and to notify customers about the types of information they collected and shared.

Internet service providers have a lot of data about on your web browsing history, app usage and geo-location.

We give them that data for convenience. We allow them to have it so we can quicker find what we want when we shop, so we can be informed about great deals we might appreciate when shopping. We check in on social media, leave reviews of restaurants, car services, hair salons, and hotels.

We look to the internet for recommendations about where to shop, what car to get, for best deals on plane tickets, vacation spots, boutique stores, fashion advice, and school research.

We put an enormous amount of information about ourselves out there for people to see.

Facebook has become a definitive record of people’s lives. From birthdays to wedding anniversaries to pregnancies, religion, health issues, and family tragedies – it’s all out there for the world to see. I rely on Facebook to remind me of birthdays and anniversaries. We schedule parties, meetings, and other events on social media. We post photos of trips, children, and activities.

When we were looking at buying a new car six months ago, I did a lot of Internet research. Every ad I saw all of a sudden showed me vehicles for sale in our area.

I clicked on a real estate ad once, because I saw a neat house and wanted to explore the interior. I’m still seeing ads for realtor.com, Redfin, and other sites trying to entice me into buying a home.

I have an email account strictly for spam. Anytime a website requires an email login, that’s the one I use. I haven’t logged into that account in probably more than a year. I expect there will be more than 10,000 messages from various websites, trying to sell me a car, a house, a magazine subscription, or a candidate.

Netflix makes recommendations for shows and movies I might like, based on shows and movies I have already watched.

There’s nothing the Internet doesn’t know.

There’s nothing the world doesn’t want to know about us.

Things that were once private and personal are on full display for the world to see and judge. Employers are using the Internet, social media, and comment sections in news sites to find out more about applicants than ever before.

Reality shows are more popular than ever. When I was working for WINC in Winchester as a news anchor, I had to go out and get soundbites from people on the street about a new series that took the country by storm. The finale of the first season of “Survivor” was airing that night, and the feature story was about whom people wanted to win the million dollars.