Quote:
Originally Posted by xg4bx
Until Amazon has the power to arrest and indefinitely detain me for things I buy, I'm not too worried about targeted advertising and the like.  |
So Amazon collects and (presumably) stores the data. Then the government comes along, requests it (in one swoop with about a million other records), adds it to your movement profile they have from your cellphone carrier... and this doesn't worry you?
What sounded like a conspiracy theory a few months ago has been proven to be real. I agree, Amazon isn't likely to do much harm with this for now, but the thing that I find disturbing and wrong is the fact that it isn't necessary to collect this amount of private data for targeted advertising. They just do it because they can. And because almost nobody really cares.
I don't buy this "If you don't have nothing to hide" argument for a second. Like Cory Doctorow said in a Guardian article (paraphrasing here): "Privacy is important. I know what you do in the bathroom, but you'd probably want to close the door anyway."
This is
my life, and
my private data. Granted, I do not install toolbars (and haven't installed the 1Button App), but I work in IT. I'm not your average Joe who thinks "Well this is great, it'll help me look for stuff on Amazon from anywhere on the web, what can be the harm?" and then has his whole web-surfing habits transmitted to Amazon.
At some point, I believe, we have to stop making excuses for the big companies and stop shrugging everything off. This amount of data collection
should scare you. You'd think that folks who've read 1984 should know better.
I think it'd be funny if it weren't so scary. A country like the US that praises itself on freedom, where even background checks for guns get voted down because it could lead to a national database on gun owners (gasp!), collectively shrugs when the government routinely collects metadata on millions of its citizens and when corporations track your every move.
I don't want to sound like a conspiracy nut, but how is that
not a problem?
To those who say "Don't like it? Don't install it?": yeah, fine, but first you'd need to know what it actually does to make an informed decision. And not only doesn't Amazon go out of its way to explain what the toolbar does before you install it, but it actually and wilfully misstates what it does and does not do in the privacy statement (read the article I linked to).
Sorry, but I think that should be illegal. You may disagree.