… Or at least I hope.<\/p>\n
A man I know just discovered — to his delight and horror — email apps that help create newsletters, then extensively track<\/a> who’s opening the mail, when<\/i> they open it, and what links in it they’re clicking on. “All without their knowledge, and completely legal.”<\/p>\n He’s delighted because that can help keep his business competitive. He’s horrified because … well, who wouldn’t be?<\/p>\n These things aren’t new and they can be thwarted by receiving email only in plain text format and not clicking on emailed links.<\/p>\n When I questioned the ethics of a company tracking its customers without full disclosure, my friend — in the nicest way, you understand — called me an old fogy. And called himself one, too: “We’re in an aging bracket. Kids today actually EXPECT they’re being tracked for books and clothes and food and you name it.”<\/p>\n Well, maybe. Sure, there are millions who don’t mind being tracked as long as tracking brings lots of goodies their way. Millions more probably don’t know, and wouldn’t care, that they’re being tracked. And many “kids” — giddy with materialism and caught up in the mania of “friends,” and “likes,” and “share this!” — may be among the unconcerned.<\/p>\n But I wonder. I think — and I hope — this doesn’t even remotely mean privacy is a lost cause.<\/p>\n First of all, there’s a huge difference between choosing to disclose your activities, as gazillions obviously do with Twitter, Facebook, Foresquare etc., and having information ripped off you. Sensible people eventually draw that distinction.<\/p>\n And what you are, and what you allow, when you’re 15 or 20 or 25 can change pretty fast when reality smacks you. For instance, recent research turned up the very surprising news that many young adults actually like<\/i> debt.<\/a> They don’t just see it as a necessity. They like<\/i> it. It boosts their self-esteem, makes them feel more grownup. By the time they hit 30 or so … different story.<\/p>\n Now, that has nothing directly to do with privacy. But I remember feeling that way myself, as if debt signaled that I was a responsible person. And I had a similar attitude toward the primitive version of customer tracking that was around then. Shortly before Christmas, when I was a yuppie-wannabe, my mailbox would fill up with catalogs from stores like Gump’s and Neiman-Marcus. Did I ever shop at such deliciously hoity-toity outfits? Nope. But I was on other mailing lists, or had other spending habits, that led marketers to expect<\/i> that I might be ready for the yuppie big time. So, thanks to my data, I Made The Lists.<\/p>\n I was so<\/i> proud. I really thought that meant I was hot stuff.<\/p>\n Now? Are you kidding? Things change. A lot.<\/p>\n This weekend in the Wall Street Journal<\/i>, some poor, aging 33-year-old mourned that that in his dotage he was becoming less enamored of new tech<\/a>. There’s some truth to what he says, for sure. We do become less flexible with age, especially if we don’t guard against it. But what he didn’t say was that ancient ages like 33, 43, and on up, also bring — if we’re lucky — the wisdom of experience and the realization of what we’re trading away when we rush mindlessly into every “latest thing.” Experience teaches that privacy ripoffs — a prime feature of much new tech — can have catastrophic consequences. And a lot of just-plain-annoying ones.<\/p>\n So are the “kids” my friend spoke of going to get that one day soon? Who knows? Maybe I’m being absurdly optimistic. Maybe privacy really is dead — but I don’t believe it. You tell me what you think.<\/p>\n But here’s one more interesting little databit: Preliminary figures say that Facebook — that champion raper of privacy — has just lost huge numbers of members<\/a> in countries where it was earliest adopted. Down six million in the U.S. Down more than 1.5 million in Canada. The folks who mined this data caution that we shouldn’t read too much into it. And let’s not.<\/p>\n But could it be, at least in part, that a few million former Facebookians are on their way to saying, “To hell with all that. No freebie is worth letting myself be stripmined for data”?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" … Or at least I hope. A man I know just discovered — to his delight and horror — email apps that help create newsletters, then extensively track who’s opening the mail, when they open it, and what links in it they’re clicking on. “All without their knowledge, and completely legal.” He’s delighted because that can help keep his business competitive. He’s horrified because … well, who wouldn’t be? These things aren’t new and they can be thwarted by receiving email only in plain text format and not clicking on emailed links. When I questioned the ethics of a company…<\/p>\n