There are two things about the Internet that baffle me. First) is that people who grew up with it trust it more than their own common sense and Second) they don't believe that they aren't being watched and watched closely.
The first part takes just a modicum of intelligence. Years ago, an information book took editors, peer review, and the peer review critical eye. People wrote "errata" or lists of errors. Not so now. A news story broke yesterday that two farms in Laredo Texas were invaded by drug smugglers yesterday and there was a stand off of sorts going on. It flew around the internet. It was false of course but it made Faux Noise, Breitbart and a pile of other sites before someone wised up. However if you weren't curious and took "news" on face, then you went away believing it. If you didn't hear later that it was a fake story you might have awakened today and be none-the-wiser. You could argue it at the water cooler at work and someone might hear you who knew nothing and believe you and tell a friend and so on. That is how 60% of the public though that the 9-11 planes were flown by Iraq pilots.
Second, I've been to a few of the big ad-serving places as a consultant. I asked what they "had" on my online habits. My profile went out 126 columns. They knew every member of my family, their birthdays and anniversaries, addresses - real and online - the color of my eyes and the last time I bought sports equipment (a pitching wedge for golf) online and how I paid. I asked them to check my "other email profiles". Like a lot of people, I use 1 email for business, 1 for family correspondence, 1 that I've had for 10 years (I have 5 of those by the way)....yada yada...in total, they went back to h2232 on AOL which died years ago and profiled me, cross compared me and even noticed that generally I open and respond to my first set of emails at 5:15am daily M-Su almost never fail.
There are vast data collectors out there. Their purpose is to "deduce" your behavior and send you advertisements based on your profile. No dresses or high heels to him...just CDs and historical fiction ads...and I am amazed that there are folks out there who don't think that this is being done every second you are online.
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