I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did- Interesting and Disturbing

I have noticed over the past few years that ads I see on different websites always pertain to me. I always thought it was interesting that they were able to pull this information from me to suit my interests but I never dreamed just how extreme this industry really was.

I remember the first time I noticed this ad placement was an assortment of ads for "Mormon Underwear". I belong to the LDS church and may have looked up something concerning the church recently, but I had found it interesting that those were the ads that kept coming up considering those garments are actually pretty personal and sacred items to the church. I had also never purchased any of these garments before. These ads popped up every time I logged into Facebook and came up on several other websites for several weeks and I became rather annoying. I could definitely see these ads to be offensive to stronger members of the LDS Church simply because those items shouldn't be advertised like that. Since that time my advertisements have changed and most recently I have been getting a lot of ads for new moms and baby products even though I'm not having a child any time soon. My guess is I probably "liked" so baby group on Facebook or something.


As I read this weeks assigned chapters from I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did, I was shocked, intrigued and definitely disturbed. I was one of the many who thought that fixing my privacy settings on Facebook would prevent people who weren't my friends from seeing it. I was glad to see that it saved me from a little turmoil, but not enough to truly feel comfortable with the happenings of Facebook. I had no idea that Facebook made so much money each year, and I never would have believed that the majority of it comes from sod information. Personal information from each and every user of Facebook and several other web-based companies is sold to companies constantly in order to place appropriate product ads on our web-browsers and also to have in information data-bases all over the internet.

Spokeo (first mentioned on pg 9), is a website I had never even heard of before, yet when I went to the website and typed in my name, sure as day it had my name, address, phone number, and plenty of other information which I would have to pay for to see. The site even had a Google map showing my parent's house. The fee for the site to see all this information was rather cheap too. I couldn't believe that all that information about me was right there for the world to see. It made me wonder what other information about me is out there.


As I read further, my anxiety over this new-found information was worsened as I read about websites like Axciom (First found on pg 19). These websites have information as detailed and personal as your social security number yet they also are known to hold inaccurate information about individuals which can lead to inaccurate credit ratings and can cause a business not to hire you even though you have no control over the information or its accuracy.


To worsen this pandemonium even more, similar, smaller companies like ChoicePoint have been know to make mistakes in who they allow access to this information and have been the cause of mass identity thefts. (pg 20)


These things along with information about how credit companies use your search history as means of deciding how much and what kind of credit to grant you were among the most interesting and disturbing things I've found thus far in the readings. As I read, I am very upset by the stakes businesses have taken to get ahead in the world. Jeopardizing the security of individuals all over the world is beyond inappropriate. I am all for creating laws against these piracies of privacy, not only to protect our personal information but to protect our livelihood. No one should have the right to hold someone back from moving up the economical ladder simply because they started out poor!