How many people do you know who are not on Facebook because they want to preserve their anonymity? How about people who won't use online banking? These poor deluded individuals think they are preserving their anonymity.
Here's what they have conned them selves into believing.
They have some privacy.
These poor saps think they actually have some. You might too. You don't! If you travel outside your home, your photograph will be taken the first time you drive past a business. If you drive three miles your photograph will be taken dozens of times. My Mac, Facebook and Picasa all have facial recognition software, and it works really well. It's in a business' best interest to know who you are and build a dossier on you. That way they can better sell you stuff. So with free facial recognition software all over the place and cameras everywhere you turn, do you really think you are NOT being identified many times each week? It doesn't stop there either.
Got a bluetooth device? Every bluetooth device has a unique ID code that can be detected by another bluetooth device. Stores in the shopping malls have sniffers that record these unique identifiers and remember you. Most only know you're in the store, more sophisticated systems tie this info to the store's security system and pinpoint your location on the store's security cameras so a helpful salesperson can come see if you came back for a second look at whatever was on sale the last time you were in. They don't necessarily know who you are, until you buy something with a credit card or ATM card.
Privacy is a leftover myth of the twentieth century. Ever see the movie: "Minority Report?" In that movie your retina would be scanned every time you walk through a doorway and custom ad devices would address you by name offering their best guess of what you might want to buy.
The other day for the first time ever, I did a search for a particular model of bike frame. The very next web site I went to "coincidentally" had ads offering me that very same frame. This is done through the use of cookies. So if you delete the cookies from your machine that should wipe your trail. right? Wrong! Every single change you make to the configuration of your browser is detectable and trackable by web sites too. Even if you delete your cookies a web site can obtain a profile of you based on a combination of your screen resolution, graphics processor speed, flash version installed...the list goes on and on. The things a web site can use to identify you goes way beyond cookies and the more ways you customize your machine's configuration the more identifiable you are.
They want to keep their banking info off the internet.
Come on! Every financial record about you is available over the internet whether you put it there or not. Same goes for your medical record, charge receipts from the adult web site where you buy your sex toys and from the other adult web site where you rent your porn. Your seedy little donations to the Democratic Party, your subscription to Ashley Madison, Adult Friend Finder and the Russian sex chat channel. It's all accessible over the Internet and there's nothing you can do about it.
In short, people who attempt to keep their information off the internet are living under a very serious delusion. One in which they think their anonymity is preserved when the opposite is actually true. You can try to keep your info off the internet and be in control of none of it. Or you can flood the internet with information about yourself and be in control of all of it.
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