All those free cute games and the like aren't free. Once wanted to download a flashlight app. Google store wanted access to contact lists, phone log history, and text messages. One of the reason I am writing my own apps that don't have all that tracking bullshit.
Good Article!
This is the type crap you should have to opt in for, not be the default setting.
"There are enough people willing to pay me to track your movements, that I can afford to give you free navigation software on your phone. There's enough people willing to pay me for the content of your emails, that I can afford to give you email for free. There's enough people willing to pay me for your surfing history, that I can afford to give you a browser for free."
There are no programmers working for Google, or Bing, or LinkedIn, or Facebook, for free. They are paid employees, and their salaries are paid by selling information about you.
And, that also means, the sad reality is that if the model was opt-in, there'd be no google, no gmail, no Google Maps, no Facebook. They can only exist in environments where most people won't, or can't, opt-out or they'd go broke.
Also, the idea that so many people accept this loss of privacy speaks to the shallowness of our culture today. That is what happens when people get dumbed down. IMO
The rough estimates are that about 25,000 soldiers died in the American Revolution, perhaps half of those died horrible, miserable deaths of starvation after being captured.
I wonder if they would have done it, had they known that 200 years later, we would disgrace their legacy by thumbing our noses at the very rights they were willing to die for. I'll bet not. From April, 1775 to today, hundreds of thousands of Americans died, and tens of millions were badly wounded, fighting for rights we don't even care about any more. We have to ask ourselves, "would they have done it, would they have made that sacrifice, if they knew that eventually, we'd sell out?" I believe they would not.
-- Modified on 8/18/2014 1:55:40 AM
When the government does this, people (well at least a sizeable percentage of the population) get angry about it. But when private corporations do it, the vast majority just blithely go along with it.
All those free cute games and the like aren't free. Once wanted to download a flashlight app. Google store wanted access to contact lists, phone log history, and text messages. One of the reason I am writing my own apps that don't have all that tracking bullshit.