We have been hearing a lot about Google changing their policies. We have been seeing more and more warnings from Facebook and other sites about increasing our security to protect our information and our privacy. We have been reading almost daily on Yahoo News (Yahoo News - quickly becoming Yahoo Crap Stuff) about how to protect our privacy online.
We have one simple question concerning all this...
Who is going to protect our information from Yahoo, Google, Facebook and other sites when they require that information to join yet in turn sell it to third party advertisers?
Our cell phones have gone public making my government issued phone with government issued minutes becoming a sounding board to advertisers calling me regularly. The National Do-Not-Call-List has never amounted to much when signing up with them. I had my home phone number on there since day one yet regularly yielded calls from advertisers wanting to talk to me about everything from Credit Card Debt to my Time Share Investment. Neither of which do we have.
Where and when does our privacy really remain private? Our local government already knows where we live. What our home is worth. How much we pay in taxes and a lot of personal information. Same can be said about Federal government.
Do we really have any amount of privacy or is it only privacy from certain people? Maybe only certain people have a higher degree of privacy. One example of that would be the President. It isn't like you can find his personal cell phone number or a home phone number for him without running the risk of the Secret Service hunting you down. Celebrities phone numbers are not exactly public either.
So before you start worrying about your online privacy ask yourself how much privacy you already have available to the general public. It may surprise you and make online privacy seem a lot less harmful.