“You have zero privacy … Get over it,” Scott McNealy, then CEO of Sun Microsystems, declared in 1999. What might have sounded like a bold claim at the turn of the millennium has turned into a self…
I can’t inconveniently ask mobile carriers to stop tracking my location 24/7. I can’t inconveniently ask credit card companies to stop selling my purchase history, and a lot of places simply don’t accept cash anymore. I can’t inconveniently ask my car OEM to stop tracking me, and eventually there will be no old cars left or no parts available for them. I can’t ask my bank to disable SMS authentication. I can’t get a good job without forking over intimate details to sites like Indeed. I can’t inconveniently ask websites not to use browser fingerprinting to track my activity across the web, and there’s really no way to even block that effectively, either.
In some ways its inconvenient, in other ways its nearly impossible. Or expensive.
You can’t inconveniently ask, you now must inconveniently forgo entire sections of modern society and return to physical, analog workarounds - if you’re even legally allowed to go without, that is. Going all cash and forgoing most banks and several major stores, avoiding electronics as much as possible, driving around with bicycles instead of public transport or personal vehicles, settling for jobs that still accept physical CVs. At this point, the only proper opt-out would be to go live in the mountains, growing your own crops and living like in the stone age.
I can’t inconveniently ask mobile carriers to stop tracking my location 24/7. I can’t inconveniently ask credit card companies to stop selling my purchase history, and a lot of places simply don’t accept cash anymore. I can’t inconveniently ask my car OEM to stop tracking me, and eventually there will be no old cars left or no parts available for them. I can’t ask my bank to disable SMS authentication. I can’t get a good job without forking over intimate details to sites like Indeed. I can’t inconveniently ask websites not to use browser fingerprinting to track my activity across the web, and there’s really no way to even block that effectively, either.
In some ways its inconvenient, in other ways its nearly impossible. Or expensive.
You can’t inconveniently ask, you now must inconveniently forgo entire sections of modern society and return to physical, analog workarounds - if you’re even legally allowed to go without, that is. Going all cash and forgoing most banks and several major stores, avoiding electronics as much as possible, driving around with bicycles instead of public transport or personal vehicles, settling for jobs that still accept physical CVs. At this point, the only proper opt-out would be to go live in the mountains, growing your own crops and living like in the stone age.