(Image from long time favorite, Toothpaste for Dinner.)
Tonight, some thoughts on privacy. Mark Zuckerberg says that privacy is dead. At the very least, we're forced to rethink the idea of privacy online.
I feel like there are two camps (over-generalizing, of course). One is up in arms about this year's privacy issues involving Facebook and Google. But I get the sense that the layperson - namely the millenial - is still apathetic to these privacy concerns. Given that Facebook and Google are so ingrained and ubiquitous in our online lives, most accept a certain level of data storage and mining in order for the sites to perform as they do. The question is, how bad would it have to get for the latter group to care?
Privacy is one of those issues that isn't a problem until you start thinking (obsessing?) about it. For me, I'm semi-wary about entering my credit card number online, but I never give a thought to what info Google or Facebook has access (Check out google.com/dashboard to see a summary of all data stored for your account. Kind of nuts when you see it all in one place). But of course, if asked whether I want info about me out there, I'd say I would rather that it wasn't.
I'd love to see a consumer study of how many people are actually concerned about privacy. It's a much hotter topic this year, and the media has given it a lot of attention. Still, I get the feeling that it's a smaller (yet vocal...and growing?) portion of Internet users.
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