People's situations may vary, but most of the ones you list differ in two important ways. One, they need to make an effort to invade your privacy. Yeah, my neig

People's situations may vary, but most of the ones you list differ in two important ways. One, they need to make an effort to invade your privacy. Yeah, my neighbours could observe my daily routine, my electric company may do more than know my use of electricity, but these would take some effort, while the tech companies can data mine about millions of people at a time. And the other important distinction is that these other things are highly compartmentalized, tech isn't, especially for the kind of person likely to be reading HN. I'm sure I am not alone here in that I basically live on the Internet. I read news online, I buy the books that I read online, discuss topics that interest me, watch movies, research my medical issues, read about stocks I invest into, talk to friends and family. My complete browsing history would certainly reveal more about me than ransacking my house for all the physical items, and corporations like Facebook try to have access to that, plus more - such as your private conversations, which is why they push their own messaging services. This is the truly scary combination. The extent to which online activities matter in your life (especially for the tech-inclined), and the ability of large companies to automatically process and analyse those activities.