Digital FootPrints

Have you ever vaguely thought how 'convenient' it is that the ads that show up on the sidebar of your computer seem to be the sort of stuff that you are interested in?  Ever noticed that you don't ever really see anything other than your interests?  No?  Never thought about it?  Well, maybe you should.

The weblink below  takes you to a documentary about the web economy and privacy - or the lack of, mainly.  It is apparently personalised so everyone watching will have a slightly different experience depending on the computer they are on - and it hopes to make people think about privacy on the web, both theirs and others. Everything is driven by the almighty dollar, and how to separate us from our dollars.

Most of us have no real idea how we can be tracked by our mobile phone or how an advertising network operates, nor do we even really know how much information is being collected about us through our activities on the web. 

Check out the link below and see what you think.  
https://donottrack-doc.com/en/intro/

 And further to that, if anyone is interested, there is a book called 'The Filter Bubble' by Eli Pariser - which talks about how and when Google began customising results for it's users instead of giving a broadly popular result.  This quote from the author probably explains it clearer than I can.

"We’re used to thinking of the Internet like an enormous library, with services like Google providing a universal map. But that’s no longer really the case. Sites from Google and Facebook to Yahoo News and the New York Times are now increasingly personalized – based on your web history, they filter information to show you the stuff they think you want to see. That can be very different from what everyone else sees – or from what we need to see.
Your filter bubble is this unique, personal universe of information created just for you by this array of personalizing filters. It’s invisible and it’s becoming more and more difficult to escape."

Hmmm,  anyone else see the computers and the Internet taking over the world??  Or is that just me?? 
(Cue Twilight Zone music here)