As American citizens, we really have no personal privacy anymore. Someone is always watching us, collecting information and tracking our every move. You may think this is no big deal because after all, you’re an upstanding citizen with nothing to hide. But you’d be surprised how much data and information about you is continually being monitored and stored. Type your name or address into any internet search engine, and you may be surprised at what you find.
In today’s world of high tech, virtually every entity you interact with is collecting information on you. Of course, this has been going on for years, but things really ramped up in 2006 when a thing called “Facebook” was launched as a fun way to connect with family and friends and make new friends online. It grew quickly especially with the advent of “smart phones” and other hand-held devices. Today, nearly 3 million people use it, and many are addicted to it.
And like everyone else, I was clueless, at first, as to the true intentions and purpose of Facebook. I believe it was never actually meant to be an innocent social media platform, but rather, very likely it was a construct of one of our government’s three-letter agencies to harvest personal information on every user.
Think about it – if the government were to demand you supply them with pictures of all your family members, information and photos of your vacations, places you traveled, and personal information they had no business knowing about, few would comply. But using Facebook as a fun form of online entertainment, people handed that information over willingly and proudly. How many moms took pictures of their little kids’ first day of school, for example, and posted it, making it public information forever archived by the Facebook machine, and unknowingly alerting potential child predators exactly what your child looks like and where they go to school.
Facebook also offers another “fun” form of entertainment – quizzes, that ask questions like “if you were an animal, what animal would you be?” You get to answer a series of questions before it’s revealed that you’re a butterfly because you love flowers, etc. Other quizzes test your knowledge on history, math or problem solving or promise to reveal your ideal career.
You might be having fun, but Facebook is collecting your personality profile. Many would not willingly give up such personal information but disguised as a fun game, millions have turned over their personal and private thoughts and ideas without even knowing what they’ve done. And all this data is now archived, along with countless photographs and videos and untold amounts of other personal information which is now stored forever in the Facebook “metaverse.”
How many of us read the fine print in the dozens of pages in the User Agreement when we signed up for Facebook? My guess is, almost nobody. We just scrolled down and clicked on “accept terms” and now all that personal information we willingly handed over is the property of Facebook.
Amazon is another invasive corporation spying on you all the time. Evan Greer, the director of a nonprofit Digital Rights Organization stated, “People tend to think of Amazon as an online seller company, but really Amazon is a surveillance company. That is the core of its business model, and that’s what drives its monopoly power and profit.”
According to an article at AmericanMilitaryNews.com, “Last year, an Amazon customer reportedly requested all of the data that the tech giant had collected on her through her home devices, including smart speakers like the Dot and Echo, and was stunned to see Amazon had compiled thousands of voice recordings, location data and more.”
Many use the “Ring” video doorbell — but that’s owned by Amazon and it’s providing the tech giant with more personal information about you than you realize. Not to mention those “Alexa” devices in millions of homes. “Alexa” is a wi-fi device that is supposed to serve as a virtual assistant. Simply ask Alexa a question and you’ll get an audible spoken answer from this machine, after it searches the internet for information. You can also order things through Amazon.
Roomba is another Amazon acquired product. Roomba vacuums, learns to avoid obstacles in your home and automatically empties the collection bin. Here’s the creepy part – these robot vacuums are also mapping the interior of your home and storing that information in their archives.
So now, not only is Amazon listening to everything you say and do in your home through Alexa or any number of other online devices, but they’re also mapping the floor plan of your home. What could possibly go wrong?
Google is way more than an internet search engine. They own the Android company, maker of smart phones. They also own Fitbit which keeps track of your daily exercise, diet and personal health. That stored information goes directly to Google. Wonder who looks at it after that.
Google has also acquired an electronic thermostat called Nest that allows you to control the temperature in your home remotely through that smart phone. Of course, Google requires that you set up an account to use Nest. Each month you’ll get an email detailing your energy usage. If you use energy, you earn a “leaf” but, if you use more energy than the previous month you lose a leaf. I may sound paranoid but his sounds like the beginning of the establishment of a social credit score based on energy use which could well lead to forced compliance with the Green New Deal.
I would also caution everyone to stop using Gmail immediately, unless you’re ok with Google reading and storing your personal emails to build an even larger personal profile on you. And let’s not forget those Smart TV’s that are not only listening but watching everything that goes on in your home or those wi-fi wired refrigerators, washers and dryers, and other household appliances that are collecting data 24/7 and storing it somewhere for someone.
At one time you could prevent your smart phone from spying on you by simply removing the battery but that’s impossible with the new phones. If you want “privacy” you need to turn it off and put in inside a “faraday” bag that blocks RFID transmissions.
Friends, big tech is monitoring, harvesting and storing all of your personal information, every keystroke on your computer; every call you make, every photo you take — they’ll be watching you.
We’ve witnessed the death of personal privacy in America, and nothing good can come from this.
source: The Death of Personal Privacy by Rob Pue, USSA News
