Privacy isn't as simple as targeted advertising

We are in this generational grey area when it comes to privacy. To the generation before us, privacy was a tangible thing with very defined *physical* boundaries. Your house, for example, is a physical boundary for your privacy. What you audibly tell a neighbor or a grocery store employee is equally tangible and controllable.

We don't live in that world anymore.

Privacy is now completely nebulous and technology is moving so fast that even the most savvy people working on the bleeding edge of it don't really grasp the implications of it. Of course, we can't even define the problem to begin with: "What is private information?" Sure, some of it is obvious: a credit card number, SSN, bank account, etc. Unfortunately, most of it is not.

Is your IP address private? A few years ago, I would have said no, but with the current advancements in geolocation technology and/or the loose lips of today's Internet Service Providers, the distance between IP address and physical address is getting shorter and shorter.

It is also possible for a website to accurately identify you from millions other visitors simply by asking your computer what web browser you are using. It doesn't ask you, the user. In fact, this query happens invisibly behind the scenes before you even see the first image appear on your screen.

Your IP address and web browser information becomes just another entry in a companies marketing database so that they can provide better services, right? Yeah, at first...

Turns out, that database is a goldmine. Publicly traded companies are required by law to make a profit, right? Well it's amazing how fast shareholders will sell out their customers when times get tough, say around a bankruptcy filing. Your private information just became an asset that can be used to make a profit and/or pay a debt. I personally saw this happen when I worked for Harry & David. If you ever order anything from them, you will invariably  notice that the very next year, you will have a mailbox stuffed full of catalogs from crap companies you've never heard of. Harry & David sells your personal information with impunity and once they have it, there's nothing you can do.

Enter Choicepoint. Choicepoint was a data aggregation company. They bought databases like this, aggregated their information, chopped it up into bite sized chunks and sold it to the highest bidders... At their heyday, they had over 17 billion records and sold this information to over 100,000 clients, including over 7000 different government agencies. (Wikipedia) They didn't adequately protect this information and in 2004, they were hacked.

Choicepoint's database is now in the hands of LexisNexus, the largest searchable database of personal information in the world.

I take my privacy very seriously, but even I can't keep up. If you want a scare, go to your Google Dashboard and just see what this one company knows about you. Go to Pipl.com and just search on your name and see what's just available to anyone with an [ENTER] key.

Complacency in the name of savings at your local big box store is not the right answer... primarily because we are still struggling to ask the right question.