It was sarcastic, I’ll apologize for that. It’s mostly a frustrated response to all the “they’re listening” comments on every tech thread ever lately. The truth

It was sarcastic, I’ll apologize for that. It’s mostly a frustrated response to all the “they’re listening” comments on every tech thread ever lately. The truth is I think they’re right. The problem I see is most of these same people are using Facebook, Amazon, Google search, Gmail, Windows, Smartphones, Verizon, or one of the many products or services that brazenly and openly hoover up every bit of information for the purpose of selling it or marketing back to them. The expectation to privacy is nearly dead and we’re concerned about all the wrong things. You could make the conscious decision to try and be off-grid, but even that won’t keep you anonymous. Next family BBQ you go to, your family member snaps a picture uploads it to Facebook and tags you in it. Then suddenly it’s reccomending them to be friends with your coworkers because you were tagged in a work photo uploaded to a coworkers Facebook page. Companies are actively collecting astronomical amounts of data, some data they don’t even know how they’re going to use yet. But you don’t get a decision about any of it. At this point I think some of these companies know more about us than we know about ourselves. Government agencies are going to non-governmental agencies to get information they couldn’t legally collect themselves. So yes, I was being sarcastic. I just wish we’d focus on how to take back control of our data and worry less about how they’re collecting it. I’m sure the majority of us are freely giving it away through our choice of services and products. Why would they risk getting caught spying?