Privacy is a trend?

I just read this article. Read it and then come back please.\

You read it? Perfect!

I believe that the logical conclusion is accurate and I believe the same thing. Transparency is the natural conclusion and unavoidable result.

Privacy has become kind of a sensitive issue the lately. As I understand it, privacy is the defence mechanism to the vast amount of information available online. It makes sense. You Imagine a creepy guy stalking you over the internet or a big brother tracking your every move to make profit from it.

I have many friends that avoid using the internet and connecting through social networks because they are afraid that they will lose their privacy. Most of the times their concerns involve hesitation of giving their email, and fear that their sensitive data will be used for something. At the time they are asking that, their sensitive data is their birthday, their phone number, maybe their home address and most of all their photos. If we ignore the fact that most of this information can be founded by anyone (at least phone number and address) their just affraid that they will lose their privacy. That this guy they don’t know can see them or have access to their info in any way.

It is true that people likes and dislikes have been used against them in the past. For example if you were a member of a social or political group let’s say a homosexual or a communist, you could be defined by that and face pretty bad consequences. And things worked vise versa of course.

However it is my belief that people should be free of fear of what they do with their online living and responsible for it. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t say that you should post your life online or your deepest secrets. As another article stated some time ago “Did you murder someone? Don’t tell your lawyer over email”. Be carefull but not afraid.

We live in an age where your personal beliefs are respected and the internet helped a lot to erase social censorship. This is what people expect from the internet. Freedom! Personally, I don’t like the terrorising Scroogled Microsoft campain. I don’t like being terrorised to stop using a service or terrorised for any purpose and no one can guarantee me that Microsoft or any other who claims that respects my privacy, does so.

Of course you can be anonymous if you want. That involves connecting to the internet through different proxy servers, using nicknames and weird email accounts and doing a lot of work just to stay untracable but on the grid. Even if you do those stuff you have some existance to the network if this happened before you started using all these.

I cannot do all these and not many people can or want to. If you do something that requires top secrecy then do the necesary actions. Otherwise I believe that your tastes and photos don’t matter to most of the governments or enterprises and you can live happily ever after.