We have breached extremes in every category of news. Geo politics, social media, medical issues, even the weather have become nearly too controversial to be thrown around in casual conversation, but… have you ever read your Bell, Rogers, Apple or Google terms of service?
Did you even know you there is an exact duplicate copy of everything on your phone back at Apple or Google? All your data, photos, contacts, health data, banking data, everything you store on your phone, and your software configuration are kept by Apple or Google, “for your protection”.
If these ideas never occurred to you, you’re not alone.
The internet has matured into a gigantic fountain of a new renewable resource: personal data. Essentially, anything you send over the internet has entered the public domain. Keeping intellectual property private is arguably impossible today. Virtually every detail of your lives are captured and stored for monetization now and in the future. The potential for abuse is clear and present, if not playing out on a daily basis.
The power of information technologies is shaping our media, politics, and societies today. This type of data gathering and subsequent manipulation is fairly well understood to be universally used by every hardware, software, and telecommunications company today.
Historically, monopolistic power always leads to abuses. The value of keeping your personal data private grows every day. The shock would seem to be how unaware we are, while it’s all laid out in the Terms of Service.