|
As for your examples; With the landlord and phone company we have a contract that establishes what our rights and duties are. If the contract would stipulate that the landlord can enter the premises at a whim or the phone company can listen in on my conversations I would opt out of those contracts because I feel they would violate my privacy.
I know that FB tracks my every move on their site, and I am not comfortable with that, hence I opt out. I'm sure that MR also keep logs of what we do, visit, maybe even how long we have a certain thread open (but hey, sometimes you have to visit the bathroom or make coffee, so they aren't exactly accurate in terms of what we read and are interested in), but when we sign on we also have the option of being anonymous. Not so much with FB. Hence, my preference for my privacy over reading what friends are having for dinner or looking at pictures of new shoes that a friend bought.
When it comes to eBooks, you could if you want to, close down WiFi after a purchase, read the book, delete it, delete the log files, so the next time you turn on WiFi there is no data to sync. Now, I don't do that, simply because it isn't something that bothers me. If I purchase and read several books from a certain author I can see it reflected in Amazon's recommendations, and I actually appreciate that (sometimes they miss though). However, if I lived in North Korea I would not want to have an eReader that synced with the Ministry of Information's servers. So, naturally I would opt out.
In my view, you are the one who makes a choice. Hence, you also need to make that an educated choice. I trust my ability to find the required information and make that judgement, more than I trust the provider. Always have, always will.
|